Al’s Loupe

Operation Pedro Pan: A horribly black mark on (U.S.) history

By Alvaro F. Fernandez                                                    Read Spanish Version
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“… There are some difficult stories associated with this operation but there are also stories of human solidarity and survival. I learned tosurvive against all odds… I will always respect my family’s decision to send me abroad…”

--Silvia Wilhelm,one of more than 14,000 children sent to the U.S., parentless, duringOperation Pedro Pan.

A few of the Pedro Pan children became great successes. In the U.S.,these cases are always highlighted. They include Willy Chirino andLissette, both musical artists; the first Cuban U.S. senator, Mel Martinez; and the wildly successful Miami businessman Armando Codina. Hardly ever mentioned is that every single one of the 14,000-plus Pedro Pan children was scarred -- for life. Understandably so: Close your eyes and imagine a 9-year-old son or daughter. Then, from one day to the next mysteriously heading to the airport and putting your child on an airplane, sending him or her into a future that’s unknown… alone.

I’ve wanted to write about Operation Pedro Pan since May 18, 2001. I’ve decided to write about it on Monday, May 18, 2009. Personally, May18^th is significant. On that date in 2001, my father died here in Miami. After reading all the hoopla The Miami Herald created surrounding Pedro Pan this past weekend, I decided it was time to write my side of this horribly black mark on history.

The Cuban revolutionary movement had triumphed in January 1959, and many Cubans fled the island for numerous reasons. In the early 1960s, a sense of instability was the order of the day in the island nation; external pressures, especially from the United States government, had much to do with the disorder. Changes taking place alarmed many Cubans. But what set off a panic among a large number of parents was a rumor that the new revolutionary government was in the process of drafting and implementing a new law that would remove parental rights over their children from Cuban parents. These children would then betaken and sent to the USSR for indoctrination.

Thus was born Operation Pedro Pan. At the time, the CIA, with the help ofthe Catholic Church, drew up a plan that if successful, would help destabilize an insecure and young government and lead to its undoingand eventual overthrow. The pawns in this high stakes game of political chess were 14,048 Cuban children -- and their parents.

My father, Angel Fernandez Varela, used to love to watch James Bondmovies. “Oh, if it was only so…” he’d say to me as beautiful movie stars seemed a dime a dozen in Bond’s arms. You see, Angel Fernandez Varela was probably the most important CIA agent of Cuban origin of that failed 1960s era that led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco.Years before his death, in Miami Beach in the presence of my mother, my sister Maria, her husband and me, he told us that he was one ofthe persons responsible for redacting the fakelawthat caused the “removal of parental rights” hysteria. It is whyI know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Operation Pedro Pan was asinister immorality play designed and dreamt up by the CIA before the1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Angel Fernandez Varela was also a fervent Catholic. Not like Padre Alberto Cutie, the paparazzi-loving and now paparazzi-hating Miami priest who was recently photographed handling a 35-year-old attractive woman’s derrière. My ‘old man’ was the type who spent his whole lifetrying to help others in need -- never seeking the limelight when performing good deeds. When he died in 2001, I know his heart felt heavy with guilt over Operation Pedro Pan.

I’ve lived in Miami since April 1960. It gives me some form of expertise over things that are of Miami. And I have always been amazed about how this city loves to distort history, the truth (often), and anything that might affect its next scheme. I say this because when you read of Operation Pedro Pan in Miami, and the United States, you get the feeling that the Cuban government should shoulder full blameand responsibility for this sordid plot -- devised on U.S. soil andby operatives answering to the U.S. government.

Andsurely, the Cuban government and its leaders have made some horrible mistakes in their 50-year, revolutionary history. But, Operation Pedro Pan -- the first time family division was used as a strategy during never ending war between the U.S. and Cuba -- was not the brainchild of Fidel Castro or any of his people.

This mortal sin belongs to the U.S. government and the Catholic Church. It’s time they came clean and repented. The grief they’ve wrought was bad enough; it might even be worse to have so many believe it was somebody else’s fault.