Operation Pedro Pan: Cuba's Mass Exodus Of Children Explained
By Marina Manoukian/Feb. 24, 2021 4:47 pm EDT
For two years in the 1960s, Operation Pedro Pan, also known as Operation Peter Pan, resulted in thousands of Cuban children being relocated to the United States. With the help of the Catholic Welfare Bureau and the U.S. State Department, Cuban parents were able to send their children off in the hopes of finding a better future. And since this implied a rejection of communism, the United States was eager to accept children, and later their families, making the overall operation "the largest and longest refugee resettlement initiative in U.S. history."