By Deborah Shnookal
Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the small Cuban boy plucked from the sea and taken to the United States against the will of his family and country, has become the focus of Washington's cold war against Cuba.
However, this is not the first time children have been used as political pawns by Washington. In 1961, the CIA, counter-revolutionary emigres in the US and elements in the Catholic church circulated the rumour that Fidel Castro's revolutionary government was about to negate all parents' rights over their children and institutionalise all children in Cuba over the age of five.
A fake law was printed and distributed at Catholic churches around the country. CIA-run radio stations broadcast urgent "warnings to Cuban mothers". As a result, a wave of panic swept the island and more than 14,000 children were shipped unaccompanied to the "safety" of Miami in what became known as "Operation Pedro [Peter] Pan".
Castro vehemently denied the existence of such a law, denouncing it as a hoax. He pointed out that such a plan would be totally impracticable and an impossible drain on revolutionary Cuba's resources.
The "humanitarian" concerns of the US government that led to Washington waiving visa requirements of these Cuban children did not extend to their parents whom the CIA wanted to keep active in the anti-Castro opposition in Cuba.
Restrictions
In December 1960, as Washington took measures to establish a large-scale program to care for Cuban children in the US, it was made harder for Cuban adults to enter the US. A dispatch from Daniel Braddock, charge d'affairs at the US embassy in Havana, argued that there would be significant benefit in the rupture of US-Cuba relations as it would "close [the] visa escape valve" and "the departure from Cuba of Cuban dissidents should no longer be facilitated".
Meanwhile, US foster parents for the Cuban children were recruited in church-sponsored newsletters, with appeals such as, "We can think of few better ways to 'fight communism' than to care for the children who flee from it" (Christian Century, April 4, 1962).
The October 1962 missile crisis and the subsequent cessation of all air traffic between the US and Cuba meant that thousands of "Pedro Pan" children found themselves alone and stranded in a foreign land for years.
Unlike J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, these little Pedro Pans had to grow up too quickly. Many are now very bitter about their experience, the deliberate manipulation of their parents' fears and the resulting tragic consequences for so many families.
Father Bryan Walsh, director of the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami which coordinated Operation Pedro Pan has always maintained that the "rescue" plan had to be kept secret because of the fear that the Cuban government would prevent the departure of the children.
The truth is that during Operation Pedro Pan, the Cuban government did not prevent any child from leaving the country if they had their parents' consent.
In March 1962, according to Walsh, a journalist with the Cleveland Plain Dealer was about to blow the story. So Walsh and US department of health, education and welfare secretary Abraham Ribicoff held simultaneous press conferences in Miami and Washington, detailing the "humanitarian" campaign to "save the Cuban kids from communism".
However, a few weeks earlier, the CIA's Cuba Project Committee had decided that there would be a propaganda value in publicising the plight of the Cuban child refugees.
Elian
Little Elian set sail for Florida with his mother without his father's knowledge or consent.
Cuba and the US in 1994-95 signed migration accords in order to prevent the dangerous and illegal trafficking in human hope that took the life of Elian's mother. Having lost his mother, is he now to lose his father, his closest family and his citizenship of the land of his birth?
Those wishing to make Elian a new little star on the star-spangled banner argue that it was his mother's wish that he live in a "free country". We will never know. But, along with his father, Elian's maternal grandmother is among the most outspoken in demanding he be allowed to return home to Cuba.
Cuba's high standard of education, health care and social welfare, as well as its declining rate of infant mortality, offer an environment where children can thrive. The material privations Elian might face in Cuba — due in large part to the US economic blockade — are nothing like those faced by children in Mexico, central America and Haiti. Parents and children from these countries frequently risk their lives to reach the US "promised land" only to be incarcerated or deported.
[Deborah Shnookal is the author of a forthcoming book, Operation Pedro Pan: The Exodus of the Cuban Children (1960-62) — A case study in Cold War psychological warfare.]