Carlos Eire was only eleven, and his brother Tony only 13, when their parents gave them the one thing they would never get in their Cuban homeland: freedom. As part of the Cuban airlift of children called Pedro Pan, these two boys would be swallowed up and spit out into a world that would almost forget about their plight. Before this airlift was over, about 14,000 adolescents were moved into foster and group homes in the United States to wait for the parents who were forced to remain behind in “Castrolandia.”
Carlos would attempt to assimilate, calling himself Charles and, later, Chuck, but he would never be able to rid himself of the terrible loneliness of abandonment that he came to call the Void; his brother would drop out of school and turn to drugs and alcohol to ease his own void.
In Learning to Die in Miami, Carlos leads readers to the precipice of the Void using dark humor only to escape back into the lonely land of life as an orphaned Cuban. At first, placed in a Jewish home with a loving couple, Carlos develops a new family even as he waits for his mother and father to get into the US. But relationships between the US and Cuba turn utterly bitter during the Bay of Pigs and Castro punishes his people by locking the gates to emigration from the small island. Social workers, recognizing that the short foster stays may last an entire childhood, move the kids into more permanent group homes run by Spanish speaking “parents.” Although Carlos and his brother are fortunate to be reunited in a group home he euphemistically refers to as the “Palace Ricardo,” there is a dearth of love, food and basic care in the boys’ lives.
It will take three years and a journey to a distant uncle in Bloomington, Illinois, before Carlos and his brother are reunited with their mother. They never see their father again.
I heard Carlos speak about this journey away from culture and family almost a year ago in Orlando, Florida. He described the tragic realization that he might never see his family again, lost hope, and hope found in learning to let go. He doesn’t flinch from the hard topics of racism and economic ranking that plague his early years. Nor does he shy away from criticizing President Kennedy’s promise never to raise a hand against Cuba in exchange for a Russian guarantee that missiles, aimed at the US, would be removed from the island. The story of Pedro Pan has been all but forgotten by many who were growing up during the Cold War years. But it is a story that should be told again and again because it offers a reflective look at what it means to be a refugee and an orphan in the United States.
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