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EFE agency praises the first great fake news against Cuba: The Peter Pan Operation

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A few days ago, the EFE agency recalled  the so-called Peter Pan Operation,

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developed in Cuba 60 years ago. It is "considered - let us read in the note - 

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the greatest child exodus of the 20th century in the West".

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The text includes a single version: the Ileana Fuentes version, one of those Cuban girls

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who assures that it was the "greatest rescue operation for boys and girls

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recorded in history" and that had saved 14 thousand minors "from the hecatomb".

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It´s curious because about Peter Pan Operation there are numerous written works,

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books and two important documentaries:the American

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"Peter Pan Operation: Flying Back to Cuba" and the Cuban "Never Ever Neverland".

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that far from presenting it as a “humanitarian” action, 

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defined that as a psychological operation of the CIA,


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included the framework of the Covert Action Program against the Cuban Revolution.

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Let's remember. It was 1960. The first revolutionary laws were eroding

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the privileges of the wealthy sectors ... and of the powerful Catholic Church in Cuba.

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The Law for the Integral Reform of Education, for example,

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introduced the secular and free nature of education.

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The Church, which had 250 teaching centers and two universities, 

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started a fierce disinformation campaign,

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with the support of the country's major newspapers

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(Prensa Libre, Avance, Diario de la Marina), international agencies... and the CIA.

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In October 1960, Radio Swan, a station created by this Agency,

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began to broadcast an enormous fake news:

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Fidel Castro was preparing to approve a Law of Custody,

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by which this would no longer be exercised by families, but by the State,


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which intended to send thousands of minors to labor camps in the Soviet Union.

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As one of its authors confessed many years later,

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the text of that false law was drawn up by various CIA agents.

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Nothing about that is told by the EFE agency.

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With terror instilled in a big number of middle-class families,

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the Church took care of the rest.Bryan O. Walsh, director of the Miami Catholic Welfare Bureau 

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and James Baker,

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director of the Ruston Academy in Havana,

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with financial support from the government of Dwight Eisenhower and the logistics of eleven embassies,

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organized flights to remove 14.048 minors from the country,

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who in the US were under the protection of -mainly- Catholic agencies.

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Thousands of them were housed in unknown homes and orphanages,

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living a traumatic experience of loneliness,

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corporal punishment, exploitation and abuse.

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In October 1962, during the Missile Crisis,

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the United States decreed the total suspension of flights with Cuba

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and many of those children were left without connection

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for years - even their entire lives -with their families from the island,

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who had erroneously trusted in the imminent fall of the Revolution.

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The sweetened version from Miami, praises the Peter Pan "winners"

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like the singer Willy Chirino,

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while had silenced those victims who denounced that as a dark operation

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and dedicated their lives to building bridges between Cuba and the United States.

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One of them, Carlos Muñiz Varela, was shot to death for organizing trips to the island.

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But EFE prefers to disseminate the unique version of those who, like Ileana Fuentes,

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have dedicated their lives to the opposite: to defend the economic blockade

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and total war against the country in which they were born.

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Let us remember that the Spanish agency EFE has a collaboration agreement

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with the city of Miami, which commits it to carry out –we can read-

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“portraits and reports that reflect the realization of the American dream” in that city 

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Is that the Willy Chirino's American dream or the Carlos Muñiz's murderous nightmare?

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Translated and subtituled by Laura V. Mor.