Customer Reviews

Operation Pedro Pan: The Untold Exodus of 14,048 Cuban Children

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I just finished reading Operation Pedro Pan and I found it engrossing! I couldn't put it down. Although I am Cuban and a Pedro Pan child myself, I believe I am objective when I say that, yes, the book has a couple of typos, but nothing that detracts from the overall quality of this important historical work. As for it not being "organized"according to the Booklists review, Ms. Conde has presented a wonderful chronological sequence of events, starting with a thorough explanation of the political events in Cuba 1959-62 that made our parents take the drastic action of sending us away. It is followed with information on how the program started, how the visas were distributed clandestinely in Cuba, the temporary shelters in Miami where we were placed, letters from the children back then, and chapters on orphanages, living with foster families, abuse, forgetting our Spanish, the reunions with our parents, what happened to some of us in the 60's and 70's and comments from the children today on how this experience affected us. It finishes with the very valuable results of her questionnaire to 442 of the children, the only research of its type to date, as far as I know. Not well organized? C'mon! As for "not particularly well written"(Booklist again) people either like or dislike different authors and their styles, I found hers to be journalistic and easy to read. Who are these critics and what are their hidden agendas?

It is a vivid, accurate, well documented and honest account of the events that took place four decades ago. As a Pedro Pan participant, this book brought back many memories and experiences that I lived through. It is very well written and easy to read. It makes the reader feel that she or he is witnessing the story unfold before their own eyes. Some addresses, direction to places (the entrance to the Kendall camp was on SW 117 Ave, not 107 Ave) and sequential events in the camps are incorrect (the Marists brothers were the ones that closed Kendall and opened the Opa-Locka camp). These are minor details that do not subtract from the overall content and quality of this book. It is the best written and the most informative account of this exodus of unaccompanied children that I have read to date.

This book brings to light a historical phenomenon hidden beneath the spotlight of cold war headlines of the early 1960s. Nearly forty years later, the exodus of 14,000 Cuban children whose lives were devastated by those headlines would still be hidden, if not for the diligent work of Yvonne Conde. Through painstaking research and sensitive, insightful writing, Conde has laid out in meticulous detail a more complete story of the effects of Castro's revolution on the lives of the Cuban people than I have read before.

As a middle-class American who was fourteen in 1961, I was shocked to read of this all-but-lost piece of history-14,000 Cuban children sent alone from their homes, many of whom were my age at the time.

Impressive in her ability to combine a clean, journalistic style with empathy and deep insight, Conde has written a beautiful and important book that lays out a timeline of political events even as it captures the personal pain, loneliness and fear of innocent children. The author tells each story in a way that compels the reader to imagine being a child again, suddenly sent away from parents and home to adjust, at best, to a foreign language, strange food and customs and harsh climates and, at worst, to endure the nightmare of physical, emotional or sexual abuse at the hands of strangers. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the whole story.

This book narrates a very important chapter of the cuban exile history. I am one of the children of Peter Pan and proud of it. Buy it for your children and the generations to come.

As a Cuban-American, I looked forward to reading this new study. Although the information presented was interesting and even touching at times, I was greatly disappointed by the apallingly bad editing of the text. Examples abound of incomplete sentences, grammatical mistakes, typographical errors, Spanish words inappropriately accented and bad syntax. One can blame the author, of course, but then you are left wondering why Routledge can't afford a more attentive editorial team. I expected more of this publishing house. Both the subject and the author merit their full attention.

To Yvonne M. Conde I want to say, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for writing this book. This true story is very close to my heart, for I am also, a Pedro Pan child. Reading this book was painful at times but at the same time it validated my part in it. As time goes by sometimes you wonder, did all that really happened or is my memory playing tricks on me? For me it has been almost 38 years. The book is very easy to read and the research that was involved comes through. I am buying two more copies to give my american born daughters. They have heard some of the stories from me, but again this is validation. I can identify with many of the feelings expressed by the other stories and I could not have said it as eloquent. This book will be with me forever.

I loved it, still loving it, because the author has put her heart into it. The stories of the children, the historical facts, the statistics she compiled from the responses of her questionaire, all of it is a REVELATION. There are so many feelings that keep flooding back over me like compassion and empathy for all the children that left everything behind that was familiar and safe, for unknown places, people, and language. Then there is relief for the ones reunited with their families, and sadness for the ones that never reunited or had failed reunions. Those are the sadest of all, the ones that could never rekindle their relationship with their parents. Read why this happened in the children's own account. It's a testimony to the fact that not always, does distance make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes, time and distance eat away at the bonds between parents and children, especially when the children are very young or at the crucial age of the teen years when fitting in is all consuming. Congratulations to you Yvonne. Indeed, you accomplished your mission and more. You have brilliantly exposed and compiled "our version" of Peter Pan's Flight for all the world to see.

This is the most comprehensive book I have read regarding the Pedro Pan experience. Ms. Conde is able to present the real experience of this group of Cuban children. This experience has left wounds in some of these children which have been difficult to heal, some have not been able to heal as of today. This is a story that needs to be told. I found the book interesting and easy to read. Ms. Conde was able to give the historical perspective of the Operation Pedro Pan as well as personal experiences. Her research gives valuable information, as well. Well Done!

I was one of the many children who took part in Operation Pedro Pan. I remember the fear, hopelessness, and loss we felt. There are many kinds of books, some are academic and scholarly, others are fiction, mystery or adventure. Some are written from the heart. This is one of the latter. As Angela's Ashes did with the tragic story of one family and individual, this book does for the thousands of children and families broken apart by the tragedy of exile from a repressive regime like Castro's. I found it irrelevant that the editing was not perfect and that it may not have been scholarly enough for some. A human story such as this one cannot simply rely on statistics and scientific models of migration. These little children were sent to the United States to escape communist indoctrination and forced labor workcamps in the fields of Cuba. It is an often repeated story of innocent children displaced by a megalomaniac who believes in himself more than he should. The tragedy of the story is that it is still occurring in many places throughout the world. I'll never forget the words of "EL Gallego" who said while we were living at St. Vincent's Home in Saginaw, Michigan, "I'll probably never see my mother again". I hope he did. The book does have one fault and that is that it was not written much earlier while these events were fresh in the minds and hearts of those who cared what happened to us.

The children that flew Cuba in the sixties were never the same, sad but truth. They lost their childhood. Only middle class children were a able to escape communisn and poverty. What happens to the generation left behind...