Come and hear Victor Triay speak on OPERATION PETER PAN at the Donahue Academy Aug. 18 from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m.
\nFid el Castro promised the Cuban people he was not a Communist when he took ov er Cuba ...but some of the Cubans knew better!
\nBetween 1960 and 1962\, over 14\,000 children were sent out of Cuba alone by despe rate parents who feared for their children's future under Castro. Victor d iscusses the events and key figures surrounding the exodus\, including the roles of the Catholic church and the State Department\, and the extent of the CIA's involvement.
\nA stirring account of the cover t effort to smuggle Cuban children into the United States in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's rise to power\, Fleeing Castro brings to light the huma nitarian program designed to care for the children once they arrived and t he hardship and suffering endured by the families who took part in Operati on Pedro Pan.
\nFrom late 1960 until the October 1962 mis sile crisis\, 14\,048 unaccompanied Cuban children left their homeland\, t he small island suddenly at the center of the Cold War struggle. Their par ents\, unable to obtain visas to leave Cuba\, believed a short separation would be preferable to subjecting their offspring to Castro's totalitarian Marxist state. For the children\, the exodus began a prolonged and tragic ordeal--some didn't see their parents again for years\; a few never did.< /span>
\nUntil now\, this chapter of the Cuban Revolution has be en relatively obscure. Initially the result of an effort by James Baker\, headmaster of an American school in Cuba who worked closely with the anti- Castro underground\, Pedro Pan quickly came to involve the Catholic Church in Miami and\, in particular\, Father Bryan Walsh\, who established the C uban Children's Program\, the nationwide organization that cared for those children without relatives or friends in the United States--almost half o f them. The latter program\, in effect until 1981\, was the first to allot federal money to private agencies for child care\, an action with far-rea ching repercussions for U.S. social policy.
\nVictor Andr es Triay traces this story from its political and social origins in Cuba\, setting it in the context of the Cold War and describing the roles of the organizations involved in Cuba and in the United States. Making use of ex tensive interviews with Baker\, Walsh\, and influential underground figure s\, as well as personal letters that document the fears and dreams of both the parents and the children\, Triay presents this history of Pedro Pan-- the largest child refugee movement ever in the Western Hemisphere--with th e drama of an international thriller and the pathos of a heartbreaking fam ily drama.
DTSTART:20120818T000000Z SUMMARY:Talk on Operation Peter Pan - Child Exodus from Cuba 1960-62 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20120818T190000UTC-4e511f@http://aveherald.com/ DTSTAMP:20260609T094444Z DESCRIPTION:The Donahue Academy Shamrocks take one Nicea Academy at home
in the team's first game of the six-man football season. 7 p.m. Saturday\
, Aug. 18\, at North Park in Ave Maria and all are welcome.
Click here for complete 2012 Donahue football schedule.