50 years on, ‘Pedro Pans’ reflect on Cuba-US trip

September 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA

Maria Josefa Guerra walked to the Pan Am gate amid the hustle and heat of Havana’s Jos Mart Airport. It was January 1961. The 10-year-old and three of her siblings were flying alone.

The children — the youngest 6, the eldest 11 — were excited, but their mother, Josefina, was nervous. She handed them round-trip tickets to Jamaica and told them to say they were going there for vacation if anyone asked. But the plane would stop first in Miami. The young Guerras were to get off.

With Cuba in turmoil two years after Fidel Castro’s takeover, their mother had tried to get a U.S. visa so she could go along. She was denied.

Now, desperate, she slipped them into the slow, quiet “Pedro Pan” exodus that brought 14,048 Cuban children to America on scattered commercial flights, through a dissident network that hid them in plain sight.

As the plane took off, Josefina Guerra lowered her head.

“Blessed Mother,” she prayed, “take care of them. You are their mother now.”

Equality was the promise of the Cuban Revolution that overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. But the better-off classes saw their property seized, parochial schools closed and military units posted on their blocks.

Disillusioned, thousands of Cubans such as architects Josefina and Juan Guerra made the agonizing decision to send their children away. Most believed it would be temporary, until Castro’s regime foundered.

Josefina Guerra, however, sensed it would be forever.

From Dec. 26, 1960, through Oct. 22, 1962, a steady stream of children age 6 to 18 left Cuba for Miami under a special visa-waiver program coordinated by the State Department and the Roman Catholic Church in America. It came to be called “Operation Peter Pan,” or “Pedro Pan,” a Latinized allusion to the Lost Boys of the children’s tale.

But unlike the fictional Peter Pan, the Pedro Pans had to grow up overnight, as older siblings stepped into the role of protectors of younger brothers and sisters. The oldest Guerra child, Maria Lourdes, was “11 going on 40,” recalled her brother Antonio, now 57 and living in the Philadelphia area, where most of the family settled.

In their 50s and 60s today, Pedro Pans are preparing for ceremonies in Miami this November to mark a half-century since the flights that changed their lives.

Some are wistful about their long-ago homeland. Some look back in anger and reject Obama administration proposals that could begin the normalization of relations with Cuba. U.S. restrictions on travel and its economic embargo have only deepened the estrangement they feel.

The Guerras do not expect to participate in the reunion.

Though the children are curious about their native land, their parents, now also in the United States, have no interest in seeing Castro’s Cuba again.

The four oldest Guerra children were followed eventually by their mother with the three youngest, then their father.

They consider themselves lucky to have been reunited. Some Pedro Pans never saw their parents again.