In August 1961 a 12-year-old Cuban boy landed alone in Miami with $3 in cash. Carlos Saladrigas’s parents had sent their only child to the US. They feared that Fidel Castro’s new regime would indoctrinate him, or even send him away – to an “educational camp” or the Soviet Union.
Operation Peter Pan – the airlift to Miami of 14,000 children escaping communism – began 50 years ago next month. Most Peter Pans are still in Miami today. I visit the city often, and when I met Saladrigas there I felt he embodied much of the Cuban exile experience: personal success, political failure, sadness. Politically, too, he has made the typical journey of el exilio: from raging against the Castros to seeking dialogue. Now he’s watching a bankrupt Cuban regime try to reform communism, and hoping this isn’t another false dawn.
Like most Peter Pans, Saladrigas left behind a comfortable white existence in Cuba. His father was a civil servant, and his mother ran a clothes store. “We had our home in Miramar, and a nice farm where I spent many happy days of my childhood,” he told me recently.