Operación Peter Pan: Volando de Vuelta a Cuba (1 de 4) (Qué Tengo Pa' Tí)

A documentary about one of the most sinister episodes of the long-running Cold War between the U.S. and Cuba. The documentary tells the story of the exodus of children, curiously titled Peter Pan, which was part of a U.S. State Department operation that exploited the fear that the Cuban government would abolish parental rights. The State Department used the Catholic Church in Miami as a conduit, through which unaccompanied children were placed in camps, foster homes, orphanages, and reform schools. This clandestine operation was based on a lie, supported by a fabricated "law" that supposedly abolished parental rights. The law was printed and widely distributed in Cuba as part of a conspiracy to frighten parents into sending their children on a one-way journey to another country. In one of the largest airlifts of unaccompanied children, 14,000 were sent to the U.S. between 1951 and 1964. Estela Bravo follows a group of five Peter Pan children—Sosa, Silvia Wilhelm, Ed Canler, Alex López, and Flora González—who return almost 50 years after being uprooted from Cuba. The trip was the brainchild of Elly Vilano Chovel, a delicate yet determined woman who was only 14 when she was sent away from Cuba by her terrified parents. Chovel grew up to become a real estate agent. But later, driven by her love for Cuba, she founded the Peter Pan Group in Miami. She dreamed of returning to Cuba with a group of members of the organization, a dream that never came to pass. She died in 2007, two years before the group's visit. "Elly couldn't make it to Cuba, but she's the heart of the film," Bravo said. "She was an extraordinary human being who found 2,000 of the Peter Pan children and reunited them for the first time in 50 years. The trip couldn't have happened without her." Sosa, a singer, was one of those who made the return journey. Her story, and that of her fellow travelers, is one of parental separation, utter helplessness, and, in her case and that of Alex López, a Washington travel agent, horrific emotional and sexual abuse. They are living proof of the cruelty and immorality of using children as political or ideological pawns. "Operation Peter Pan: Flying Back to Cuba" was recently presented at the 12th Havana Film Festival in New York.)