OPERATION PEDRO PAN

Operation Pedro Pan opened the door to the United States for more than fourteen thousand unaccompanied Cuban children. How did this come to be called Operation Pedro Pan? It was important from the very beginning that we in Miami avoided anything that could jeopardize the exodus, or the people in Cuba who worked to make it possible. We were never under the illusion that the Cuban government was unaware of what we were doing, nor that any publicity could easily have been used as propaganda to provoke some reaction. Therefore, we remained silent. Inevitably the Miami press discovered what was going on. When they came to me looking for a story, I told them the truth; but I asked them not to report it. The press cooperated and gave our work the code name Operation Pedro Pan, perhaps because the first unaccompanied Cuban child who arrived in Miami under our protection was named Pedro Menéndez.
Relying on the testimonies of just some of those fourteen thousand refugee children, and of some of the adults who helped them, Josefina Leyva tells their stories.