Exiled ‘Peter Pans’ measure new ties with Cuba against the ties they lost

Exiled 'Peter Pans' measure new ties with Cuba against the ties they lost
By David Montgomery May 18 at 12:23 PM

"Peter Pans," who came from Cuba as children in the early 1960s, hold a
reunion in Arlington. (David Montgomery/The Washington Post)
"I feel betrayed."

"I feel this is a time to really influence the future of the island."

Opposite opinions expressed with equal passion are nothing new when the
subject is Cuba. Especially for a subset of the Cuban American community
in the Washington area, the talks to establish "normal" relations with
the island stir profound emotions rooted in ruptured childhoods.

Local "Peter Pans" held their annual reunion Sunday with about 40 people
in the party room of an apartment building in Arlington, just as Cuban
and American diplomats are set to hold their fourth round of talks
Thursday in Washington. These exiles are among the more than 14,000
children whose parents sent them to the United States from 1960 to 1962
following the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959.

The so-called Operation Pedro Pan was initiated by the Rev. Bryan Walsh,
a Catholic priest in Miami, working with the precursor to Catholic
Charities, and supported by the American government, which granted visa
waivers to the children.

The children arrived not fully understanding why they had to leave. For
some, it would be years before their parents could join them. Until
then, they lived with friends and relatives, or in dormitories and
foster homes across the country.

Over heaping plates of lechón and black beans at the reunion, the
opinions were wide-ranging but mostly tending toward skepticism.

"This negotiation with Cuba has made me sad," as if "all our experiences
are in vain," said Elia Haza, who arrived in 1962, at the age of 8, with
her twin sister.

Now she and her twin, Eva Jimenez, feel goosebumps and tears about to
fall as they recall holding hands and walking onto the plane as children
in Havana. Their mother had instructed them not to look back — for she
knew they would never board the plane if they looked back and saw their
anguished parents. The twins did not look back, Haza says, reaching out
to hold Jimenez's hand once again. It would be a year before they saw
their mother again, two years before they saw their father.

"I felt betrayed" by the start of the current diplomatic talks, Haza
said. Her husband's father was executed by the revolutionary government.
"So my experiences as a Peter Pan are insignificant? Why did we go
through all that?"

In the circle of Peter Pans listening to Haza was Orlando Artze. He
arrived in the United States in 1961, also at the age of 8. He said he
respected and empathized with Haza's view, but his perspective was
different. He thinks Peter Pans are uniquely prepared to help Cuba enter
a new phase.

"How do you take advantage of the skills they have to create a new
economy?" Artze said. "I feel almost an obligation to understand how you
can make that transition."

Artze works for a nonprofit affordable housing developer in Richmond and
is planning his first trip to the island to explore ways that a network
of affordable housing groups could help more Cubans have decent places
to live.

"I feel strongly that I want to contribute to that," Artze said.

The reunion was organized by Susana Gomez, the vital connector at the
center of the local Peter Pan community, who worked in Jimmy Carter's
White House and was assistant director of civil rights for the AFL-CIO.
She said that the experience of Peter Pans making their way in the
United States might offer lessons for new waves of immigrants, including
unaccompanied minors from Central America.

"We had pride in who we were," Gomez said. "You just have got to study
and keep your language and learn English."

A special guest was Chris Baker, son of the late James Baker, who was
headmaster of the Ruston Academy, an American school in Havana. The
elder Baker helped organize a network of people on the island to
distribute travel papers for children. Many of the Peter Pans at the
reunion credit James Baker among those who made their American lives
possible. Chris Baker, now in southern Maryland, lived in Cuba until
college.

"My father felt the real heroes of this were the parents and you who
were involved," Chris Baker told the group.

Stephen Velasquez, from the Smithsonian Institution, described plans to
collect artifacts and oral histories to be used to tell the story of
Operation Pedro Pan in an exhibit.

Juan José Valdés, the geographer at National Geographic who directed the
creation of the recent comprehensive map of Cuba, gave a presentation on
the evolving portrayals of Cuba in maps, articles and imagery in
National Geographic Magazine.

As the Peter Pans contemplated what could be a new era in relations
between the two homelands that shaped their identities, they were
reminded how collective history and geopolitics are threaded with
personal stories and private realities.

"Hopefully an agreement will come where the people in Cuba are free,
with free elections and freedom of expression," said Seida Tamargo, who
arrived in 1961 on her 15th birthday and did not see her parents again
for seven years. "[President Raúl] Castro hasn't said anything about that.

"They did say they want all the money lost in the embargo. What about my
father's house, my grandfather's house, my father's farm and horses? Are
they going to give back what we lost?"

Gladys Gómez-Rossié, who works with the Cuban Heritage Collection at the
University of Miami, came to the reunion during a trip to Washington.
She arrived in the United States when she was 14 years old and was
separated from her parents for 17 years. Last week she took a tour of
the White House, were she was thunderstruck to see a picture on display
of President Obama meeting Raúl Castro.

"I had such mixed feelings," she said. "In one sense, it's a Cuban in
the White House. On the other hand, it's a Castro!"

She vows never to return to Cuba until both Castros are gone. "We were
separated for 17 years," she said of her family. "To say I'm going back
to Cuba to visit is to say those 17 years didn't mean anything."

The subject has the capacity to divide husbands and wives. Martha Prats
left Cuba in 1967 with her parents. She is firmly against easing
relations with Cuba while the current political system remains in place.

"People think lifting the embargo is going to help the Cuban people.
It's not," she said.

Benito Prats, who designs instruments for NASA space vessels through a
contractor that he runs with his wife called Einforme Inc., is still
close to the foster family that took him in at the age of 7, when he
arrived with his brother and two sisters. The children were reunited
with their parents four years later.

Thinking like the engineer he is, Prats says that sometimes a stuck
system needs to be shaken up a little to see how it might be improved.
That stuck system is the relationship between the two nations. Maybe
these first steps aren't perfect, he says, but perhaps they will lead to
something new and better.

"They don't have freedom [in Cuba]," he says. But "how is freedom going
to be returned if we don't see how the system works? I'm going to wait a
couple years and see what happens."


David Montgomery writes general features, profiles and arts stories for
the Sunday Magazine and Style, including pieces on the Latino community
and Latino arts.

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