On 62 years since CIA's initiation of Operation Peter Pan

 

A first flight to the United States departed on December 26, 1960 from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport, carrying children sent by their parents who tearfully bade them farewell from the other side of a glassy hall, a scene that would be repeated in the following two years as a consequence of the initial samples of the then called Operation Peter Pan, organized by the CIA, of what today we could call fake news.

The event was part of an alleged cultural war, with the aim of manipulating the sensitive values of the family, sowing mistrust in the people towards the new power by stimulating the prejudices imposed by the anti-communist propaganda for decades, very present in society at that time, and generating greater pressure and unrest in the middle and upper strata of the island to achieve support for the aggressive plans of the United States.

Members of counterrevolutionary organizations exploited the oral communication, known as "bolas" (today's fake news), which during the turbulent 1960s spread the hoax about the forthcoming promulgation of a law of the Revolutionary Government that would eliminate the parental authority of parents and in its place the State would take the children under custody and many would be taken to the USSR, to turn them into communist automatons.

To add credibility to the campaign, a law signed by the Council of Ministers to abolish parental authority was forged in a printing press controlled by dissident elements. As a curious fact, the authorities placed in the place, together with the deceitful law, photos and pornographic texts of the so-called relaxing novels of the time, a business to which the owners of the printing press were also dedicated.

The fallacious legislation, which was printed simulating the official paper and format, appeared signed by then Prime Minister Fidel Castro and President Osvaldo Dorticos, and was reproduced in hundreds of copies. Not a few illusions gave credit to that document, which stated that as of its validity, parental authority over persons under 20 years of age would be exercised by the State, through the individuals or organizations to which that authority was delegated.

The Florida press media, and especially the so-called Radio Swan, directly managed by American intelligence headquarters, broadcast these matrices synthesized in the following message, which was repeated ad nauseam:

"Cuban mother, listen to this, the next law of the government will be to take away your children from age 5 to age 18", a comment that they would alternate with the one of: "Cuban mother, don't let yourself take away your child! It is the new law of the government (...), when this happens they will be monsters of materialism. Fidel is going to become the supreme mother of Cuba".

The other part of Operation Peter Pan was the creation of conditions by the US embassy based in Havana for the processing of special visas and the departure of flights with the little ones sent to an uncertain destination in the northern nation, where they were placed in homes and institutions organized by the authorities with the complicity of reactionary sectors of the national clergy and Miami.

The United States spent large sums of money with airlines to guarantee travel and support "refugee" centers for the elderly and others with several pavilions for children without relatives in the country.

As a result, about 14,000 minors traveled from 1960 until 1962, when the operation allegedly ended. In addition, about 150,000 family members emigrated to the United States, according to information provided by participants in this program, which only many years later was declassified and recognized by the U.S. authorities themselves as something orchestrated by the CIA.

Thousands of those minors spent many years in shelters, sort of orphanages, without being reunited with their parents, victims of a cruel manipulation of filial feelings with which the aggressive policy against Cuba began in one of the cruelest and darkest actions of political and ideological subversion developed against the Revolution.