Cuban Pedro Pans hold areunion in Washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/19/cuban-pedro-pans-hold-a-reunion-in-washington/[5/22/2014 10:18:26 AM]

BY DAVID
MONTGOMERY
May 19 at 2:04 pm
Comments
Cuban Pedro Pans hold a reunion in
Washington
Elia Haza was sitting at a table in Lauriol Plaza near Dupont Circle, reading aloud from
a carefully preserved letter she had penciled as a child of 8, more than 50 years ago.
She translated from the original Spanish, taking long pauses to control her emotions:
Mommy, I want to go back to our house. Mommy, take me away, I beg you. Mommy, if
you can, send me chocolate.
Haza stopped reading and looked around at the 40 people crowded at three big tables.
She had only just met them, yet they knew exactly what she was talking about. And
now they were friends.
I have been longing for this, especially since Ive become older, said Haza, an ESOL
parent coordinator for the Montgomery County Public Schools who lives in Bethesda.
This reunion has given me a sense of connection, a sense of therapy.
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Cuban Pedro Pans hold areunion in Washington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/19/cuban-pedro-pans-hold-a-reunion-in-washington/[5/22/2014 10:18:26 AM]
Haza had written the letter from a group home in Miami to her parents back in Cuba.
Her parents, like the parents of the others gathered at the restaurant, had made the
desperate decision to send her and her twin sister, Eva, away from home in Cuba
forever, as it turned out. What became known as Operation Pedro Pan was one of the
largest organized exoduses of minors in the Western Hemisphere, with more than
14,000 making the trip from 1960 to 1962. Parents of mostly middle-class families
gambled that their children would be better off in the U.S. as Fidel Castro consolidated
his revolutionary government.
The youngsters traveled unaccompanied, landing in Miami, then being scattered across
the U.S. to live in group homes, with foster families, or with relatives, until their
parents could join them. The sudden rupture of their childhoods, and the
commencement of a completely different way of life, was deeply searing.
This group of Pedro Pans held an all-day reunion in Washington Sunday inspired by
reading the story of Juan Jos Valds in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine in
February. The article described how Valds, who grew up to become the Geographer at
the National Geographic Society, was haunted by scraps of memories of his life in
Cuba. He resolved to return to Havana, which he had left at the age of 7, in search of
his past.
The story sparked an emotional response from readers, including Susana Gomez of
Arlington, a Pedro Pan who worked in Jimmy Carters White House and was assistant
director of civil rights for the AFL-CIO, before retiring. She organized the reunion.
Answering Gomezs call, Pedro Pans came from as far as Florida, North Carolina, West
Virginia and New Jersey. The day began with worship at St. Johns Church in Lafayette
Square, where Rev. Luis Len, the Rector, is a Pedro Pan. Then came the long meal of
masitas de puerco, bistec Cubano, black beans, rice and mojitos at Lauriol Plaza.
Elia Haza, left, and twin sister Eva J imenez hold the letter Elia wrote as a girl of 8 to her parents in Cuba. They
attended a reunion of Pedro Pans at Lauriol Plaza. (David Montgomery/The Washington Post).
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Cuban Pedro Pans hold areunion in Washington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/19/cuban-pedro-pans-hold-a-reunion-in-washington/[5/22/2014 10:18:26 AM]

The reunion coincided with planning for an exhibit on the Pedro Pan experience at the
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonians
ongoing Our American Journey project on immigration. Smithsonian researchers
attended the reunion to invite Pedro Pans to loan objects, photos and letters for the
exhibit, tentatively scheduled for 2016. Pedro Pans also can record their stories for the
project.
Despite the pain evident in her childhood letter, Haza does not regret her parents
decision.
They wanted their daughters to be free, she said.
Eventually the family was reunited in the United States. And yet, as a mother herself,
Susana Gomez, left, organized the Pedro Pan reunion. Elosa Echazbal, right, also a Pedro Pan, attended from
Miami, where she is a college administrator and a Pedro Pan researcher. (David Montgomery/The Washington
Post).
Cuban Pedro Pans hold areunion in Washington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/19/cuban-pedro-pans-hold-a-reunion-in-washington/[5/22/2014 10:18:26 AM]
Haza wonders if she could have made the same decision, to send her children away.
I dont know if I would have had the strength, Haza said. To this day I can still feel
the anxiety I felt as I walked up the stairway to the airplane.
We all have our tale of woe, said Maria-Elena Martinez, of Morganville, N.J., who
attended the reunion with two sisters. No doubt that experience has molded my whole
life. Basically the overwhelming and indescribable feeling of thinking, Im being
abandoned.
Experiences vary, of course, and there are those like Emilio Cueto, who arrived in
Washington at 17 and became a lawyer, who did not feel shaken by the experience.
To me, it was an adventure, he said.
Still, even for Cueto, the drama had its costs. His father had already died when the boy
was sent to the States, but his mother chose never to leave Cuba to be with her son,
because of family ties. He only managed to visit her years later, in the mid-1970s, when
she was dying. He had to go on a hunger strike to pressure the Cuban government to let
him in, he said.
Since then, Cueto has returned to Cuba dozens of times, frequently on research trips,
making new acquaintances in his native land. He has turned his home in Washington
into a kind of archive and museum to all things Cuban.
Many Pedro Pans vow never to return while the current government remains in power.
Others feel the tug, especially as they grow older.
Its like a worm eating inside an apple, said Jay Castao. Unless you go there, walk
the same streets, visit the church where you took your First Communion, only then you
can say the little worm wont eat anymore.
To start their reunion, Pedro Pans worshipped at St. J ohns Church, where the Rev. Luis Len, the rector, back row
in white, is himself a Pedro Pan. (David Montgomery/The Washington Post).
Cuban Pedro Pans hold areunion in Washington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/19/cuban-pedro-pans-hold-a-reunion-in-washington/[5/22/2014 10:18:26 AM]
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And yet, the Pedro Pans made new lives, new memories and new families in this
country. While they were waiting for their parents to join them, many formed strong
bonds with foster families that endure to this day.
Margarita Prats Lora, of Kensington, and Lola Prats-Kamprad, of Gaithersburg, lived in
the Syracuse, N.Y., area for about four years before their parents made it out of Cuba.
Their mother passed away earlier this year but they consider their foster mother in
North Syracuse another mother. They talk a couple times a month.
Their birth mother saved all the letters the girls and their two brothers, who lived with a
different family, sent home during the separation.
Every letter begins, When are you going to come? said Prats Lora.
Over the four years, the letters start in Spanish, then they start going to English, said
brother Benny Prats, of Glenwood, Md. They get less emotional. Its like were
detaching ourselves from our parents.
One thing about Syracuse was a shock: the climate.
For two little tropical girls, our first snow was amazing, said Prats-Kamprad.
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