Distant Memories: Merida, product of Operation Peter Pan, looks back on Cuba

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 8:25 a.m.

Otto Merida has a recurring dream.

He arrives at the airport in Havana. From there, he is able to remember exactly which roads will lead him to his childhood home.

"Let me see if I can go there myself," Merida says as tears suddenly fill his eyes. "Let me see if I remember where to go."

He has never returned to his home country.

On Aug. 11, 1961, carrying a suitcase full of clothes and little else, Merida waved goodbye to his parents through a glass partition at the airport in Havana. He then boarded a plane for Miami.

Today, Merida is executive director of the Las Vegas Latin American Chamber of Commerce. In Miami, Merida spent one month in a refugee camp with other Cuban children. From there he was sent to Wilmington, Del., to begin his new life in America.

His departure, though made alone, was part of Operation Peter (Pedro) Pan, a 14,000-strong exodus of unaccompanied children fleeing Cuba as political refugees. It has often been called the largest exodus of child refugees in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Orchestrated by a Catholic-run program in the United States, the children were shipped out by their parents, who feared new Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the last Miami-bound plane leaving Cuba carrying "Peter Pan" children whose departure had been aided by community leaders in Cuba.

The flights began in December 1960 and came to an abrupt end in October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis ended direct commercial flights from Cuba to the United States.

Many parents were reunited with their children a few years later when Freedom Flights began in 1965. Today there are thousands of former "Peter Pan" children and their families living in the United States.

Their stories are often similar: The children were sent to church representatives and community leaders awaiting them in Miami. From there they were taken to camps, placed in foster homes and in schools throughout the United States.

"It was sort of hush-hush," Merida said. "There were all these kids leaving the island without their parents. There were kids younger than I was.

"You will say they (parents) have to be insane because I will never send my children on their own and expect that someone will be there to pick them up."

However, Merida said, "It showed tremendous desperation ... Parents trusted people to not betray them and were willing to take this risk because, they said, 'I cannot allow that my kid would become a communist or forced to serve in the military."

When Merida left Cuba he was a teenager in his third year of high school. Aside from a few framed color photographs of buildings and scenes in Havana hanging on the walls of the entrance to the Las Vegas Latin American Chamber of Commerce, there is little hint of his Cuban past.

But Merida hasn't forgotten Cuba.

From behind his desk -- surrounded by stacks of boxes stored for the chamber's long-awaited move to a new location on 13th Street and Stewart Avenue -- Merida said he plans to someday return to Cuba.

But he vows that he won't do so until Castro either dies or is overthrown, blaming the dictator for ruining his father's business and breaking his father's spirit.

"Castro took everything from everybody," Merida said. "My father lost everything. When he came to Miami in 1962, he was basically a broken man."

Divided loyalties

Critics of Operation Peter Pan argued that the effort was an attempt by the U.S. government to rattle any support for Castro by breaking up otherwise solid Cuban families.

But proponents say families and communities were already becoming divided under Castro's rule.

"Brothers, sisters, parents became for Castro, against Castro," Merida said. "There was a committee on each block. They watch over you so they are able to tell who lives on this corner, who is for and against the government.

"You are afraid to visit your family or friends because they might have something to do with the government. It was sad because there was a lot of hope for Castro. At the beginning people thought he was going to be good for Cuba."

Leaning back and resting his hands on the desk, Merida shook his head and continued, "As Castro came more and more to the left and a pawn for the Soviet Union, a great many middle class left the island and went to Miami.

"The best of Cuba left at that time."

Among families participating in Operation Peter Pan, the popular belief was that as soon as Castro was overthrown, the children would return to Cuba.

In Merida's case, his family would follow him to the United States.

"They asked me if I wanted to do this," Merida said, referring to his parents. "I said, 'Yes.' I saw what was happening. My father lost everything. He was always home. They were making our life miserable. It was a way for the whole family to leave.

"We got taken by Castro. We wouldn't have minded the revolution if they would have done the things they promised to do."

Softly shaking his head, Merida added, "All the things he claimed the revolution stood for he gradually went back to the same instances.

"I remember Castro said the revolution was made because we have all these private country clubs and separation of classes -- no Cubans can go there. Now there are big hotels, and the only Cubans who can go there are the Cubans who work there."

Life in Cuba

Merida was from a middle-class family and attended private school in Cuba. He remembers having a "wonderful childhood" growing up in a suburb of Havana.

His father had driven a bus on a route, then became owner of the route and part of a business cooperative.

Then one day, Merida said, his father came home from work, told the family the new regime had "intervened on his company and that he could not go back to work."

For a while, Merida didn't know if or when he would be leaving. He had a passport from when he took a trip to Miami with his parents in 1957. The passport was given to community leaders working to help children leave Cuba who had come to his house, then handed to officials in the U.S. Embassy to stamp, Merida said.

"I was scheduled to leave the day the (Bay of) Pigs invasion happened. That day all flights were canceled."

A few months later Merida left for the United States, where he waited in a camp run by the State Department and Catholic Social Services.

"Every day they will call kids in and say, 'You are going to New York, Reno, Wilmington.' "

Merida was among a group of 20 Cuban teenagers, ages 15 to 19, who were sent to Wilmington where a Catholic brotherhood rented a three-story building. Merida attended the private Salesianum School, which still stands.

"I always felt very much welcome," Merida said. "At that time we (the U.S.) had problems with the Soviet Union. We (Cubans) were an example of what would happen if the government took over and became communist. So they went the extra mile to help us."

Merida's brother and sister also came to the United States. His aunts and uncles stayed in Cuba.

Merida's father was 50 when he arrived in Miami. He became a busboy, then a waiter. Twenty-five years later he retired.

"He kind of lost his hope," Merida said, tearing up. "Some people were able to recover but he lost some of the drive he had. He was never able to be what he was. He didn't want hassles of opening business. He chose to go to work then go home."

Merida took advantage of the opportunities that were given to him.

After spending a couple of years in Wilmington, he lived with his brother in New York, then later moved to Florida where he attended school under a Cuban loan, and graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Merida joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), a national service program in which volunteers worked with nonprofit agencies in poor communities.

Through the program, Merida moved in with a Puerto Rican family in Massachusetts and worked to organize employment and housing opportunities for the community.

In 1972 he bought a Chevrolet Vega and crossed the United States, stopping in Houston and Lawrence, Kan. He moved to Las Vegas in 1974 and worked as an elementary school counselor, then as an employment counselor.

In the mid-1970s Merida helped organize the Latin Chamber of Commerce, where he works to promote Hispanic business, education and culture.

Merida expresses gratitude for the assistance he received from the U.S. government. He said his lifelong efforts were a way of giving back to the country that helped him.

He said he plans to visit Cuba someday.

"I could do it right now," Merida said, "but I don't want to leave any dollars in Cuba and to the government that destroyed my father."

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