Operation Pedro Pan, Revised Edition

Praise for the first edition:

“Compelling reading.”—New Republic

“A collection of tearful testimonies woven with a tale of the event that unfolded in Cuba and led desperate parents to make the heart-wrenching decision to send their children along to a foreign country.”—Miami Herald

“[Conde] does an impressive job of reporting dozens of personal stories and fascinating vignettes. . . . A compilation of tales, some moving, many astonishing.”—Chicago Tribune

“A well-researched history of Operation Pedro Pan, a portrait of early revolutionary Cuba and a compendium of testimony from the now-grown children.”—Publishers Weekly

“The book’s primary value lies in the individual stories, from tearful departure and arrival in Miami to temporary shelters and placement in homes or, in some cases, in orphanages; to learning a new language and adjusting and, in many cases, assimilating; to reunions with parents, adolescence in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and adulthood.”—Booklist

“Conde does an excellent job of narrating the essential outline of the history of Operation Pedro Pan, and an equally superb job of analyzing the circumstances that created this exodus, from the viewpoint of those who felt compelled to create it and keep it going. . . . Operation Pedro Pan is . . . as much a primary source as it is a work of history, as much a window onto a mentality as it is a guide to events, names, and institutions.”—Carlos M. N. Eire, Hispanic American Historical Review

“Fascinating is the least one can say about this book. It’s the story of thousands of Cuban children who wouldn’t grow up under communism and were sent by their parents to the never-never land of America. Some of them lived happily ever after because this version of Peter Pan is a tragedy with a happy ending sometimes. Fidel Castro, by the way, plays a very credible Captain Hook.”—Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Cervantes Prize‒winning novelist