Jeff Sheldon on Operación Pedro Pan: A Case Study of One Young Immigrant’s Journey and Acculturation

Introduction

This biographical piece is particularly salient considering the United States’ reemerging relationship with Cuba and the more recent immigration quagmire perpetrated by the Trump administration (actually, a 30ish alt-right political operative and his dark overlords). Therefore, I wanted to get this piece out to you in hopes it will inform your thinking on migration theory, specifically the differences between immigrants and refugees, tell you an interesting story about immigration and the role education has in positive acculturation. That said, unless you’re a Cuban of a certain age you’ve probably never heard of Operación Pedro Pan so I think you’ll find this forgotten, nay, overlooked bit of history interesting as told through the voice of someone who experienced it directly during his formative years. Unlike my modus operandi of providing publications in series, I’m submitting this in its entirety as it was told to me, changing the name of my subject for the sake of anonymity. As always, references are provided if you’re interested in the source material. Thanks for reading this very long piece and please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

Migration Theory in Brief: Kunz's Kinetic Model of the Refugee in Flight

According to Kunz’s 1973 Kinetic Model of the Refugee in Flight, most refugees are not poor people. They have not failed within their homeland; almost all are functional and independent, a great many successful, prominent, well-integrated individuals who flee because of a fear of persecution. The key to Kunz's model is the idea of push and pull. In the language of migration theory, it is common to think of the immigrant as pulled to his new land - attracted by opportunity and a new life. The refugee is not pulled out; he is pushed out. Given the choice, he would stay. In 1951, the United Nations defined a refugee as a person who, owing to a well-rounded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of that country. The significant fact about refugees is that they break ties with their home state and seek protection from a host state through migration (Grambs, 1981; Hein, 1993). Grambs further states that an immigrant is different from a refugee in that he or she is someone who made the decision to relocate to a new land, to establish a new and permanent home elsewhere. Kunz (1981) sees the flight and settlement pattern of most refugees as conforming to two kinetic types - anticipatory refugee movements as in Operación Pedro Pan and acute refugee movements as in the Indochinese refugee migration beginning in 1975. The anticipatory refugee senses the danger early, before a crisis makes orderly departure impossible. Superficially, the anticipatory refugee resembles the voluntary migrant. The difference between the immigrant and the refugee comes in the unhappy vindication given the refugee's anticipatory move by later events. Another difference is that any destination will do for the refugee while the immigrant has a preferred destination. The anticipatory refugee wants to leave and will leave as soon as she finds a country willing to take her. The pattern is push-permit. Anticipatory refugees are normally educated, well to do, and alert. Acute refugee movements result from an overwhelming push. War, political crisis, or government policy places the emphasis on immediate escape. The acute movement may be a mass flight which includes many who actually have little to fear, but who flee because of the atmosphere of panic or hysteria. If, however, escape is restricted only small groups or individuals may get out. In an acute movement the refugees leave their homeland on a moment's notice. They have not planned or prepared for the journey; they are not looking at their future; they are simply trying to get out of harm's way.

Children as Refugees: Psychology of Immigrant Youth

In 1962, along with 14,047 other children, nine year old Raul Valdes was part of one of the greatest mass migrations of political refugees in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the largest involving “unaccompanied minors” as they were defined at the time by the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Bender, 1973; Thomas, 1967). As Bhabha (2004) notes, children have always constituted a significant proportion of the international refugee population, approximately two percent of whom are unaccompanied refugee minors. While significant, when put into context this migration constituted part of a larger exodus of 757,187 Cuban political refugees between 1960 and 1976 (Pedraza-Bailey, 1985; Pedraza, 1995). Notably, these children were mostly from the middle and upper classes so were not suffering the same privations and hardships as other immigrant groups such as today’s Syrians, Sudanese, and Somalians (Huyck & Fields, 1981). However, Huyck and Fields (1981) hypothesized there are mental health risks for children age six to 11 from uprooting and transition, and boys at that age are more vulnerable than girls due to having less facility in the articulation of problems. Likewise, Eisenbruch (1988) suggests that uprooted children may experience powerful grief, not only in response to personal loss of loved ones, but also to loss of their culture. They further postulate that personal bereavement and cultural bereavement are complementary, which can be an important factor in a refugee child’s adjustment. It is unknown if, or the extent to which Raul experienced adjustment problems as a result of his immigration experience as he was reticent to discuss such issues. Even if he was able to recall whether he suffered from adjustment problems, his story below presents a case study in how one young boy overcame what could be seen as a traumatic immigration experience to exemplify the characteristics associated with healthy adjustment including: resilience; positive self-identity and esteem; a dual frame of reference; invulnerability; optimism; and biculturalism. More importantly it is these characteristics that provided the agency for Raul to be both highly engaged with his academics and be a high academic achiever. As Portes (1999) points out, academic achievement often points to the role of specific psycho-cultural factors as manifested by the characteristics of students, their communities, as well as a variety of historically determined contextual variables. Many aspects including parent and student beliefs, attitudes, goals, and routines along with family and societal factors seem to interact in determining the compatibility between a student’s native culture and that of the dominant culture with respect to adaptation to school.   

Operación Pedro Pan: Push and Pull

Known colloquially as Operación Pedro Pan, a phrase coined by the media privy to the events of the day, the operation was by definition an anticipatory refugee program coordinated by the United States government, Catholic Charities, and Cuban dissidents (e.g., Kunz, 1973; Thomas, 1967; Triay, 1998, p. 32; Walsh, 1971). Taking place between 26 December 1960 and 23 October 1962, the operation was designed to transport children of parents who opposed the Communist government’s usurpation of parental authority, but was later expanded to include children of parents concerned by rumors their children would be shipped to Soviet work camps (Thomas, 1967; Walsh, 1971). Through Operación Pedro Pan, Cuban parents exercised one of the most fundamental of human rights: the right to choose how and where their children would be educated. Many middle class parents believed, as did Raul’s mother, that an American education was the ideal, would ultimately yield greater opportunities, and therefore was something highly desirable. The literature points out that in making decisions about sending their children parents are actively engaged in the process of developing their children toward the goals and values they hold for them (Orellana, Thorne, Chee & Lam, 2001). Cubans who traveled back and forth between Cuba and the United States prior to the Castro revolution had first-hand knowledge of the American education system and passed this knowledge along to others. As a result, parents were, as Raul said, willing to make the “greatest of all sacrifices” by sending their children into the unknown by a chance of their getting a better education and life in the United States. It, wasn’t, however, all for Raul’s sake. Orellana, et al. continues that in seeking opportunities for the future of their children, families are also strategizing to improve their collective conditions. Thus, the high potential for government repression pushed parents to risk sending their children out of Cuba as the promise of a better education, to a lesser extent, pulled them towards the United States (e.g., Lee, 1966; Pedraza, 1996; Pedraza-Bailey, 1985; Stein, 1981). As noted, the literature argues that immigrants are pulled while refugees are pushed. Regardless of whether he was pushed or pulled, as Raul’s claimed, “my mother saw what was happening and she had the vision to foresee that I would not be there, and that I shouldn’t be there.”  

High Expectations

While Raul’s experience is not necessarily unique among the children of Operación Pedro Pan, it is unique when compared to the immigration experiences of other Latino groups, especially those who do not have refugee status. The story of his immigration, and ultimately, the story of his education in the United States, actually begins in Cuba with values and expectations imbued by his mother. In brief, Raul was raised in a single-parent, middle-class Havana household. Having only acquired a high school education herself, Raul’s mother wanted more him because he “exhibited both ability and intelligence.” Raul elaborated: “my mom was a very, very driven person. She had high expectations of me. I remember my mom would sit with me and go over the times tables until I knew them backwards and forwards. She would sit with me and we’d go over, and over, and over until I could just recite them at the snap of a finger. She was very involved in my education, very involved.  I was educated by the Marists and had very good grades. I was always in the top two of my class; it was just expected to happen. At nine years old, you have to understand those are formative years, and that’s where whatever happens to you, the seeds are planted in those first nine years. Fortunately I had a good foundation and that was continued by a rather strict upbringing in the United States. Raul chuckled before continuing, “because of my nature I needed that as well.”

Preparing to Leave Home

The literature suggests it is not unusual for one member of a family to leave ahead of the rest of the family, get settled, and then arrange for their immigration. Likewise, it’s not unusual for a child to be the one sent ahead, as in Raul’s case. He provided rare insight into how a parent tries to adequately prepare a child for his or her unaccompanied immigration experience. As the departure date neared, “she would talk to me, that I was taking a trip, and that it would be better because I’d have more opportunities. She always wanted me to have an education there in the U. S. anyway just for a better life altogether, for the freedom, and for the opportunity. She told me I wouldn’t have to be in the military because at nine-years old we were getting close to the military age of twelve. Between the ages of 12 and 16 you had to serve x number of months in the military. All I remember was that she said it was going to be a temporary situation. That’s all it was, that I was going on a trip and then she would follow and we would be reunited, and I was nine years old so I more or less took my mom’s word for, you know, as gospel.” 

Leaving Home: Flight from Cuba

Even though his mother did what she could to prepare him for his trip, Raul’s actual departure from Havana was, as it was for most other Pedro Pan children very traumatic, especially for a nine-year old boy leaving home for the first time unaccompanied by his mother or anyone familiar. Raul explained why he had to leave alone: “my mother tried to come out, she tried to be able to leave with me, but they were, on purpose, not allowing families to leave as a whole so they would break up the family unit. That’s what they did, which I interpreted as a deterrent to leave. If you really wanted to go and were willing to pay the price, you could go that route. The government wanted to find out what price you were willing to pay. It was up to the government of Cuba if you left, or your parents left, or who left with whom so they could say ‘you’re leaving, but your mom is not’ like they said in my case.” When he got to the airport, in no way could his mother’s best efforts have prepared him psychologically and emotionally for what would happen next. “You get to the airport and they called it the fish bowl, ‘la pesera,’ it looked like a fish bowl, it was a glass divider that they could see in and you could see out. On the inside were the people that were leaving, as if they were going through customs. Once you were on the other side of that glass divider all of a sudden it changed because you could see that you weren’t going to be able to go back, so that was a mental turning point. All they allowed me to take was three sets of everything - three underwear, three t-shirts, three pants, and three pairs of shoes - that’s it. I had jewelry and they said ‘you’re not going to need all this jewelry in the United states,’ so they took all my jewelry, I had my grandfather’s ring and they took that too, they took everything of value because they said ‘you’re not going to need this, it’s for the people, the people of Cuba that’s what we’re going to do with it.’ You were stripped of all that was valuable and as a nine year old student it was an incredible experience. I mean what else could I do, this was a grown man telling me what to do, I didn’t have my mother next to me, I was at their mercy so I had to give it to them. Psychologically it was to the extent that I had no other recourse, what was I going to do, call my mom?” The flight from Havana to Tampa took less than 45 minutes, but those ninety miles were a world away from the known and familiar. Not only was he unaccompanied by a familiar adult, he knew no other children on the plane. He recalled, “I was so scared. I had not had chocolate for probably two or three years and they gave me a chocolate candy bar and I didn’t even touch it I was so scared. You’ve probably seen, when you’ve traveled, unaccompanied minors escorted by the stewardesses, that’s a psychologically and emotionally passive situation because they know they’re being picked up on the other end by a family member, a friend, or a relative. At the other end I didn’t know who was going to pick me up so I was going on blind faith.”

Welcome to America

At the time of Operación Pedro Pan the climate in the United States was quite favorable for receiving and accepting refugees from Cuba because it was supported by the federal government. In Raul’s words, “I came to escape a communistic regime so that is a major difference, and the fact that the United States viewed it as a different situation allowed us to receive benefits, a lot of benefits. Being a political refugee is a totally different way of being accepted by the American culture, by America as a whole. And I felt that that always made a big difference, that’s the equalizer, the U. S. looks at you different when you’re a refugee.” Against that backdrop, when the children arrived by plane from Havana, fewer than half were met by relatives and friends at the airport and the rest were met by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Raul, in the latter group, picked up the story from his arrival experience through the beginning of his first three months in the United States, although he claimed “some of this stuff is very fuzzy, the first week, the first month…” He recalled “we landed in Tampa and they escorted us to a van. We went to a location and there it was, a square block, fenced in, where they would have Cuban adults taking care of you in different houses, there would be cots, bunk beds, there would be a cafeteria, so there would be everything. Asked how he was received on the first night Raul said the Cuban couple with whom he stayed “were nice, they told me go ahead and take a bath, change, and go to bed and they gave me a bunk bed.” Further elaborating on what conditions were like in what could be considered a refugee camp, Raul said “I guess you could call it a mini-Cuba in that square mile, it was a mini-Cuba because everyone was Cuban there, but at the same time you were completely out of your environment. Each house probably had four to six kids and I know there were a lot of kids in the camp. Basically there was a Cuban couple in the home in which I stayed that would take care of you, and you would follow a certain routine, since you were in a new location and didn’t know anybody you just followed the program.” 

Psycho-emotional Distress

During his stay in Tampa Raul’s mother was unable to call him. This situation was somewhat tempered by “one or two” visits from his mother’s cousin “so at least I saw one person that I knew about.” The letters he received from his mother didn’t alleviate any of the emotional distress he was feeling at the time: “you could read them, but still it just made you more homesick.” Thankfully, Raul’s life at that moment wasn’t complete misery. He remembered that “there was ‘event night’ where kids would get together, they would have skits, they would act, and the like. It was like a boy’s and girl’s camp or maybe YMCA camp that type of situation. There wasn’t a lot of structure, but at the same time you knew that people were watching you and they had the best interest in you. They were taking care of you, but there wasn’t a familial feeling that went along with it. You weren’t out running around in Tampa, Florida, at the same time though all of your familial support system had gone, completely gone.” Perhaps mirroring the culture of positive receptivity for these refugee children, the Catholic Welfare Bureau was not completely insensitive to the psychological and emotional needs of its young charges. “There were a lot of support people to talk to you and they tried to keep you busy as much as possible doing sports and doing this and doing that.” Yet even with good those intentions, the support he received couldn’t completely assuage Raul’s feelings of loss and homesickness. As he told it, “eventually, in the evening, I remember crying myself to sleep every night while I was there. So, psychologically, it takes its toll on you.” Although this type of situation could have had lasting, deleterious emotional and psychological consequences, for Raul it became an opportunity to develop and build resiliency skills. What kept him going, and what seemed to be a recurring theme in his positive adjustment to life in the United States prior to his mother joining him, was the faith he had in his reunification with his mother. In his words, “you just go on faith you’re going to be reunited with your mom again sometime down the road. Once I left I realized I would have to just go on the fact that my mom told me we’ll meet you sometime.”

Education in America: Part I

Raul was in the third grade when he left Cuba in March of 1962 and during his time in Tampa, along with the other Pedro Pan children received, at least, rudimentary education. Because he had been a high academic achiever and enjoyed school in Cuba, this beginning to his education in the United States was rather inauspicious as, for him it was mostly a review of what he already knew with a smattering of English language learning thrown in. Yet, for Raul being in class and learning was familiar so provided him some comfort and helped in his transition. Raul captured his first educational experience in the U. S. accordingly: “at that time there was schooling taking place, they gave us regular education, we had classes and everything in various areas divided by age and by sex. This wasn’t a formal educational system that you and I know of, it was just something they put together because they didn’t expect this many kids to come out. When the whole thing started there was only 20 to 30, but then the demand was so great that after it was all said and done there was over 14,000 of them. It was very, very impromptu education that we got; it wasn’t meant to be on a long term basis. Basically, it was just people there getting together and going over math and English, stuff like that. I was in the third grade so it was just a review. I don’t know if they were really teachers or not, they were just trying to do the best to help us out and bide our time until you got the quote unquote scholarship to go somewhere in the U. S. Basically you would be waiting there until someone from the Catholic Charities would accept you, they would accept a young boy anywhere from age nine to thirteen or whatever.”

Home is where the Heartland Is

As a proposal of Operación Pedro Pan, children were to be joined by their parents within a matter of months, but it would be approximately four and a half years before Raul would be reunified with his mother. The delay was exacerbated by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during which the United States government cancelled flights between the two countries. This had a dramatic effect on the operation, reportedly leaving up to eight thousand children in Tampa awaiting their parents, including Raul. When it became obvious that parents would not soon be coming to the United States, the Catholic groups collected the children from Tampa and dispersed them among orphanages and foster families in 30 states throughout the country. Raul received his ‘scholarship’ in June of 1962 to go to Indianapolis, Indiana and recounts how he was chosen by what would become his foster family, his departure and flight from Tampa, and his arrival in Indianapolis. “How I got there was that there was a meeting at the Catholic Church, St. Lawrence, and at the end of the mass or somewhere along the line they said ‘we have these children that need to be adopted for a temporary basis through Catholic Charities. Later on I found out that there was a stipend, maybe 30, 40 or 50 bucks a month, but that’s nothing really and if anyone was interested to let them know and they would arrange it. So that’s how the process was arranged from the Indianapolis, Indiana side. They communicated with Catholic Charities in Tampa and somehow had my name drawn out of a hat, completely random, and off I went. I had no idea where Indianapolis, Indiana was so the day came, they put me on the plane along with my belongings and that’s when the real stewardess took care of me until I got to Indiana. So I get to Indiana. Then, this couple picks me up. I don’t speak English and they don’t speak Spanish, but somehow the hand-off was made and the unaccompanied minor was delivered! And I’ll never forget it, they put me in their station wagon, it was late, so on the way home we got lost. We finally end up getting to what was going to be my home for the next four years plus and then they showed me my room. I was going to be sharing it with another one of their children who was male; they had three girls and one boy and I was the oldest. It was a bunk bed situation again, so at least I was familiar with bunk beds by now, in Cuba there were no bunk beds.”

Those Good Old Fashion German Values

Starting from the first day with his new family, Raul went on to describe his life in Indiana in terms of his transition, adaptation, acculturation, overcoming homesickness, beginning school, and learning English. What he talked about seemed atypical from most immigrant experiences, but in many ways it could be expected given the context in which he was placed. He recalled “I got up the first morning and nobody spoke Spanish, everybody spoke English and German. It was June, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t going to school. It was summer break so I spent June, July and August just hanging out just having you know interaction with the family etc. They would give me breakfast and that’s how I learned to eat cereal. It was the normal mid-western American family, you know the whole thing - Hoosiers, green fields, big yards, woods, Lawrence County, Indiana. So you just got to understand that in the morning there was breakfast, at mid-day there was lunch, and in the late afternoon there was dinner. I remember a lot of the food was German because they were German. I was used to eating black beans, rice, and fried bananas. German food was a staple at home and if you were given something to eat on the plate you had to finish that portion on the plate or you couldn’t get up from the table. That was the beginning of a very strict German upbringing. They had their grandmother living with them so German was spoken at home. I had no idea about the difference between English and German so I didn’t know what they were talking about anyway, they could have been talking French. So it didn’t matter to me. Kids from the neighborhood would come over and they would meet and talk to me. I had no idea what they were saying, but you know we would play and I don’t know what we were playing, we were just walking, we were kids being kids. It was very middle class and you could walk down the street and go play over at somebody’s house and come back without any problems,, it was the 60’s, not like it is now. Their home was the last home on the track, and it was a very safe environment. Summer was just fun, summer was just playing and I was in a new play land so of course you play, and you play, and you get tired, and then you come home and go to sleep.” As with his experience in Tampa, lots of play and activity were unable to completely mitigate feelings of loss and homesickness. ”That was the most difficult part, then you remember, you’re not playing anymore, and then things come back to you.”

Just One of the Kids

For many immigrants the transition to a new life in another country is made more difficult by a difference in cultural values. Asked if there was anything that aided him in his transition and acculturation to life in the heartland Raul discussed the parallel between the values he was raised with in Cuba and the values of the Schmidt family with whom he lived, a tacit understanding about communism, and his acceptance into a loving family. “You have to understand two things that made my transition relatively easy. First, the Cuban middle class is very similar to the American middle class in terms of values. I was middle class in Cuba and they were middle class so the transition was middle class to middle class. Second, the values from Cuba to the values of the German family in Indiana were similar. The German family in Indiana had their parents killed in a concentration camp in Siberia so we didn’t have to have a conversation about communism, it was understood. It wasn’t a big deal, whether was communism good, was it bad, it was just understood. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have put themselves in a situation to take on another child, so there were factors that drove them to make that decision. They said ‘we wanted to help somebody,’ but there were a lot of parallels between them and us even where one was in Europe and the other one between the Americas. There were a lot of parallels that made it an easy transition for me. There wasn’t a thing as to ‘oh my god why did this mother send her son over here, what kind of a mother is this?’ It was just understood.  Third, I was so embraced, welcomed, and nurtured and accepted in a family atmosphere. It really was great for me, it made a big difference and the fact that there were parallels of communism. You’re walking into a situation and that comes across to a child, I think that’s important that understanding comes across because you can care for somebody, but if you don’t understand what their life is about then it’s a little bit shallower; it’s a deeper level of empathy. “The good thing was that they treated me as if I was one of their own, it wasn’t four anymore it was five so I was treated just like everybody else was.” Asked if this presented any emotional dissonance or other psychological challenges, knowing he still had a mother and family back in Cuba, Raul recalled, “I just accepted the fact that I was in a home and I was being taken care of. As a child when people are nice to you and you have a setting that is safe, and nurturing, and comforting you’re more likely to blend in. I understood, I always understood it was temporary. I could live in that time, but it wasn’t going to be forever and that one day my mom was going to come and we were going to be reunited. After that I didn’t know what was going to happen, but as a child you accept the mother figure, you accept the father figure because you need that. You just accept it, you don’t push it away. Maybe others would if they were the rebellious type, but I didn’t rebel, I embraced it because it was a family setting, it was so family-oriented.” 

A Decided Lack of Prejudice and Racism

Another aspect of his positive immigration experience, with the exception of his experience at the airport in Havana, was a lack of prejudicial behavior displayed towards or ethnophaulisms directed at him by those in his new community and school. As the only Latino in the area, and likely a rarity in the community, it would not have been an unusual occurrence for him to have met with some form of racism. There is, however, a very plausible explanation for this condition, which is unlike what many immigrants who are culturally distant from the majority experience. Raul offered this explanation: “because of my French ancestry I’m very fair and at that time I had blond hair almost so I fit right in. The only thing is, I couldn’t speak the language. I was the perfect cross-over because I didn’t stand out. Like other Latinos, I didn’t have dark hair or dark skin. As a matter of fact the kids in the family told the mom the first night when they came to my bed to see me while I was sleeping - it was a big deal you know, they were going to have a foster brother - ‘listen you made a mistake you picked the wrong kid, this is not the kid, he looks American you’ve got to return him.’ So my ability to cross-over made the process a lot easier. Also being with Germans and knowing they weren’t Americans made me feel at home, so that’s another aspect you never think of. If I would have been in an American home I might have felt different, but they weren’t Americans either, we both weren’t Americans, and that was ok, if they were o.k. with that then I’m o.k. with that too.”

Adaptation and Acculturation

Even though his transition, adaptation, and acculturation were made easier than they might otherwise have been given his was placement in a context with similar values, tacit understandings of his situation, being warmly embraced, and a lack of prejudice and racism, Raul still had to complete certain of these tasks by himself without anyone to teach him how. Speaking about his emerging resilience when asked how he thought it happened he said “you learn in your mind to picture the end result and see how it would be; you visualize the end, which to me was being reunited with my mom, being happy, and having a brand new life. So you always picture that, you have a picture in your mind of what it was going to be like and that virtually was the picture of you meeting your mom sometime in an unknown place and you’re happy so that visualization is what got me through.” Beyond his emerging resilience Raul believed that the key to his successful adaptation and acculturation was his living situation and school. “To me they were a survival mechanism. I was in a Catholic home, I was in a good home, I was with people who cared about me, I was with people who treated me like one of their sons so for me it was just learn the language, get along in school, and wait until my mom came.” Given that the Cuban government had its own, unspecified time-table for reuniting families Raul had no idea how long he was going to have to wait. During his time in Indiana Raul did receive calls from his mother, but her ability to call was limited at best. “All I knew was that I was o.k., I was being taken care of, but I didn’t have my relatives, I didn’t have my home so I was a fish out of the water until slowly you learn the language or you’re able to learn the language and then you slowly, you begin to get involved in the educational system - it’s an acculturation process.” 

Asked how long he thinks it took him to become acculturated and whether in the process he lost his Cuban self-identity Raul replied, “I think it was probably a couple of years when I was able to begin to communicate in English, but I always thought of myself as a Cuban boy, I always maintained that self-identity that I was Cuban and I was in the U. S, but I was still a Cuban. I would think of my being Cuban was what I lived with and it was always missed. I was just fortunate enough to be in the United States and not having to be in Cuba, but the whole idea of my mom coming over that was something I had no control over. That’s where you learn just to focus everything out and to do what you have to do until night time comes and then you can unwind and let it go.” 

Education in America: Part II

Raul’s real American education and English language learning began in earnest in September 1962 when his foster parents enrolled him in a private, Catholic elementary school. “They put me in a first grade class and it was taught by nuns, Catholic nuns, and that’s how I learned English, they would teach me as they would teach a first grader. When you talk about bilingual education it didn’t exist so it was me being in a first grade classroom. I was a student and I could pick up what I could pick up and that’s how it went. It was total, 150 percent sink or swim immersion. So you learn the alphabet in the first grade, you learn at nine years old what a six year old knows.” Asked if any special accommodations were made for him to learn English he chuckled, “the word didn’t exist, accommodations, modifications, translations, any of the vocabularies you’re talking about today was not envisioned. There was no newcomer bilingual education English language development. So I was getting everything from a first grade curriculum content. Math I could do because math was not a problem. They also had handwriting which was the Palmer Method at that time.” Starting Raul out in the first grade, where many children begin their language acquisition anyway, made complete sense for the time and context. As he said, bilingual education had not yet been envisioned so the school, out of necessity simply created its own program through its existing resources. Although he might disagree, that is a prime example of an accommodation, the rest of course, was up to Raul. 

Being in school also helped Raul continue the transition, adaptations and acculturation process as did making friends, although he’s not quite sure how he actually did so. “Slowly you go and meet your other friends and you make friendships because you’re a kid and you have things in common. How did I do it, I don’t know to be honest with you, I don’t know. It was just a skill, I don’t think it’s an inborn skill, I think it’s a survival skill. You just have to learn how to get along with people, you get along with people, and if you don’t understand you watch the hand signals, and you watch people, and if they get in line you get in line, and if they motion you to come over, you go. I went to the same school my foster brother and sisters did so I just went along with them and did what they did, they grabbed me by the hand and they put me on the bus and they made sure after school I got on the bus and went home with them.”

B’s Aren’t All Bad, Considering…

 “It was maybe after a year or two that you feel comfortable, that you make friends, that you begin to understand what people are saying and you begin to have mini-successes and that’s where I learned about building things up in mini-successes. I would be successful at this, I would be successful at that. It builds your self-esteem and you’re no longer out in the middle of nowhere, now you’re accomplishing something.” In this last statement Raul was referring to the rapid progress he made getting to grade level after starting in the first grade. He attributes his rapid progress to his emerging English language skills, but more so to the expectations for achievement that were instilled in him, both by his mother and his foster family. In his words, “I got accelerated through. When they saw that my English was getting better and better they just kept moving me up. You feel good because you’re doing something and now you can speak the language. But, it took a certain amount of time out of my life because I had to play catch-up. But, I caught up, so I did catch up.” Asked specifically about his academic achievement in elementary school Raul claimed “B’s, B plusses, I wasn’t outstanding.” Elaborating Raul said “I think it was the whole change and maybe, I don’t know if it was more difficult I don’t necessarily think so, but I had good grades, it wasn’t excellent, I wasn’t straight A’s but I think a lot of it had to do with my mental being so that I was always thinking about maybe something else and that effects you.”   

In discussing how he was able to do what so many immigrants are unable to do in terms of academic achievement – starting in the first grade with few, if any, English language skills and ending up in the eighth grade in a four year span, Raul had two thoughts, one about having mother and father figures and the other about high expectations from others and himself. “I think that you have to have at least one parent figure, one, it may not be a mother or father, it could be an uncle or an aunt, somebody who becomes a father or mother figure that you become attached to, bonded to and that plays a great importance in your life. My teachers at school and the mother and father in Indiana were those figures for me and I embraced them because I embraced the safety, the well-being, the being comforted you know and being wanted. Everybody wants to be wanted and to be accepted and once you have that those are your basic needs that are met. You’ve got food, shelter, you’ve got home and you’ve got caring people around you so life is bearable which sets you up for academic success.” In talking about high expectations, “you understand it was a German family, they had very high expectations so if you were not getting B plusses or A’s you know you were in trouble. For example, I tried out for the football team and I remember that my grades dropped because I was going to practice so I wasn’t allowed to play football anymore. That’s it your grades are your priority, school was priority.” Queried further about what it was that made him succeed where others in his situation might not have he stated “I think it was the drive that my mom had, that was high expectation, but at the same time it was just don’t worry you’ll be fine, you’ll do it, it’s not even going to be a problem so the mentality was not, ‘well just do your best and see what happens,’ it was more, you’ll do fine don’t worry, you just have to apply yourself and work hard and it will happen. I always expected to do well and I always had a good relationship with teachers, I always got along well, I was always very headstrong, but I always got along well because I guess I took that driven part of my mom that was part of me so I was always driven. I was always a very competitive young boy. I think if she didn’t have that and if I didn’t have that I think it would have been a totally different situation in my life because it makes you do things you don’t think you’re capable of, but it’s just in your mind.”

Language Lost, Mother Found

Not unlike other immigrants, as Raul acquired English as his primary language he started to forget Spanish. For him “it got to a point that my mom couldn’t call me anymore on the phone because I couldn’t talk to her. I mean I would hear her and I could understand her, but by the tine the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade came around I couldn’t speak Spanish anymore. It became more like broken Spanish, like kids speak broken English, mine was broken Spanish.” Asked if this in any way had an emotional impact on him in that he felt he was losing his Cuban identity as he was losing the language he grew up with, his answer was, “no, I just couldn’t speak Spanish anymore.” Even though he received a monthly visit from the Catholic Charities and regular calls from his mother, Spanish simply wasn’t the predominant language in Indiana. Likewise, there were no other Cuban or Latino students in the schools he attended. When Raul and his mother were reunited in 1966 it required someone to translate for them. Raul explained “my cousin, Pedro López-Fernández translated for me with my mother, he brought her to the airport and he would translate because I couldn’t carry a conversation with her.” When asked what she thought about his inability to speak Spanish he said, “I don’t remember her saying anything, but it seemed like it wasn’t a big deal.” Musing a moment longer on the idea that losing his ability to speak Spanish was an indication that he’d become Americanized as his mother had hoped he would be, Raul stated, “I don’t know if it was Americanization, but I think it was more the realization of getting an education in the U.S.” 

The Promised Land, Transition, and Mixed Emotions

His mother’s arrival presented yet another transition for Raul and induced a mixture of strong, conflicting emotions. While experiencing great happiness and joy at being reunited with his mother these emotions were tempered by feelings of loss and heartache at the prospect of leaving his American foster family. In his words “the expectations, what you’ve been waiting for four, five years almost, are now weighed against leaving. You don’t know where you’re going, but the expectation of being united with your mom all over again far outweighs that, and that’s what’s gotten you through, that picture of that reunion, those two people being together is what drove you to go through everything and one day that would happen and so of course it happened it had to happen.” Yet, “it was separation all over again because you’re getting used to a situation, you’ve basically been there for five years. So it was challenging in the fact that you were leaving a family, but at the same time what you had been waiting for was occurring, so there were very mixed feelings.” As Raul further explains, “it was difficult to leave they were my family, my brothers and sisters - Martin, Elizabeth, Maryanne and Dorothy. You go through things, you’re part of the family, you did everything as a family, you were part of that family so you were treated as a family, you lived as a family so all those events bond you as a family. 

The literature suggests that parent – child reunification after lengthy separation offers the potential for discord and dissolution of what perhaps was a formerly strong relationship. In the case of Raul and his mother this did not occur. “I didn’t have any tension. When my mom came to the U. S., I almost had $4,000 dollars saved for her. I went to construction sites and got bottles and turned them in for money, I mowed lawns, I shoveled snow, I cleaned out garages, I baby-sat, I did all that and I saved every penny so that when my mom came here she had something. I was such a happy kid that I was willing to give up, and you have to understand that I had a home, I shared my room with my foster brother I had a bunk bed and I’m coming to Los Angeles to live in a one bedroom apartment at 3421 Bellevue Avenue with four people close to downtown L. A. Socially and living standard-wise I went to the bottom, we were on welfare, we had food stamps. I didn’t understand what it was. To me you went to the store and you paid with little three by five things, there was no money paid, but I didn’t understand that. That whole part of being on welfare is only a little bit of my life. So socially wise it was a drop, but emotionally wise to be reunited with your mother and be able to be with her far outweighed everything else.” 

Another aspect of reunification with his mother was re-learning Spanish so he could converse with his mother and extended family. Asked how he did so Raul said, “I learned Spanish again by listening to the novéllas and my mother only speaking Spanish at home.” His relearning Spanish was also made easier by the fact that for his first nine years it was his primary language: “you do have it inside of you it just has to be sparked.” By listening to the novéllas in combination with his mother speaking only Spanish at home his language skills eventually improved. “Slowly you go back and your brain finds those things and begins to bring them out again so it’s like a fishing expedition inside your brain. You go fishing for those things and slowly you remember them.” As he became more bilingual, out of necessity, Raul assumed the role of translator for his mother. He recalls, “I ended up being proficient in Spanish, not really written, but I could translate and I would translate for my mom when she would go to the doctor, she would go here, she would go there, and slowly I began to translate for her.” While some immigrant youth look at having to translate as a burden, Raul did not. In part this is likely explained by certain facts and conjecture: it was just him and his mother, he knew English and she didn’t, and he’d been separated from her for over four years so was likely more willing than not to undertake this role in hopes of re-establishing the parent-child bond. Being a translator is not in and of itself unusual as many immigrant children who become English proficient translate for their parents. Raul further explained, “I just took it as something that needed to be done and it was done. I’m the communicator, I’m the transition, I’m the messenger, I’m the one that’s able to cross for her.” Asked if this detracted from his education he replied “no, I don’t remember if that ever happen, I don’t remember being taken out of school for that.”

Education in America: Part III

Raul and his mother arrived in Los Angeles after the completion of his eighth grade year. He recounted how he ended up in a private, Catholic high school and the day that he was enrolled: “somebody in Miami told my mother that Cathedral High School, run by the Christian Brothers, was a very good school and upon that single reference I ended up at Cathedral High School. I remember on the day I was enrolled taking the MTA and they dropped us off on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and the entrance to Dodger Stadium. Cathedral High School is almost two miles away from there so my mom and I had to walk all that way, and I still remember to this day she wore high heels that first day; those are the things you never forget. So she enrolled me then never set foot in school again because she was working, she worked in the garment industry and it was just not possible so I learned to take two buses and go to high school.” By the time Raul got to high school he was already fluent in English, his Spanish skills were re-emerging, and he would continue to do well academically. As he recalled, “when I got to ninth grade I had the number one position for ninth graders for standardized tests that they took to get you into Cathedral High School. I ranked number one.” On achieving the number one rank, “I never even went to the dance to pick up my medal because I was so shy in ninth grade I wouldn’t appear at a dance, I was very shy.” It is an unusual situation when the life issues of immigrant youth don’t have deleterious consequences on their educational outcomes. Yet, for Raul, his focus on academics in L. A. as was his focus on academics in Indiana allowed him to tune out much of what was going on around him. Whether it provided comfort because of its familiarity, was tied to his competitive nature and high expectations, or was a coping mechanism, his academic achievement is all the more remarkable given that he had less than four full years in the American education system and began his tenure without knowing any English. In his words: “education was always the thread, that’s why I say education, I think, was the thread that kept me going, the mini-successes.” The fact that his mother continued to impress upon him the importance of his education certainly played a role in his academic achievement. 

This is not so say that there weren’t some difficult years during high school. As he says, “I wanted to be like everyone else around me and I knew that I wasn’t so that was always the dilemma because I always saw myself as being slightly different. I knew who I was and I wasn’t them and my identity always told me ‘this is who you are and you’re not them’ and I’ve always been one to try to fit in, to belong and that got me into trouble in high school, not with my mom, but the kids in the neighborhood; you start getting into things, so I was always glad to leave that area. Gangs and all that stuff were becoming prevalent but I never got involved with that I always had that foundation I was on the periphery of that”

Epilogue: College Graduate, Educator, Member of the Cuban Diaspora

As a result of his hard work during high school Raul earned a full scholarship to a noted Jesuit university in Los Angeles where he majored in Biology and minored in Spanish. “Fortunately because of me being on welfare and because of my mom working in sewing factories in downtown Los Angeles our income was very meager so I received a scholarship. It was a rough transition the first year, but once again you always come back to that, that you know you can succeed, you succeeded in the past so all you have to do is find what it is that you have to do and work at it and that’s it.” His leaving Los Angeles at the end of high school and going to a nearby city for his postsecondary education was a really important part of his life. As he explained it “I was able to get away from that area and everything that it had because if I would have stayed there I don’t know what I would have ended up.” 

After graduation from university he ended up back at Cathedral High School as a teacher. His first stint in education lasted just three years, but the second has lasted 22. Asked why he got into education in the first place Raul said “I think that as a result of the Marist Brothers and their influence, I think that’s where deep inside me that whole education system came about, there’s that drive, and that magnet towards the profession. I think that’s probably the thread along the way - education was always important in Cuba, it was important in Indiana, it was important in Los Angeles.” Career-wise, Raul has served in schools with very high percentage of immigrant youth as an assistant principal at a large, inner-city high school, as an assistant principal at an inner-city middle school, and again as an assistant principal at an even larger, inner-city high school. Raul sees a lot of kids who are in some ways like he was and has a different sensibility about them than non-immigrant students. He explains: “I see myself in them, I see myself in them a lot because I see their looks, I see their thoughts.” However, he also recognizes some fundamental differences between this generation of immigrant youth and his own experiences; his observations echo much of what the literature says about today’s immigrant youth. “This is another world when we’re talking about the sixties to now. Without a doubt if you don’t have a strong parent figure that is a challenge because there is a gap between the parent from the Latin culture and a teenager in the American culture who wants acceptance from the American peers, which is totally different than what the Latin parent is used to. So there is a sea of difference between the two. Today’s generation in the U. S. is not anything like what their parents have lived through or what their parents can understand.” Asked to explain what happens to immigrant youth who don’t have strong mentoring influences like he had, Raul averred, “if you don’t have that, your one mentor, one parent like-figure to always be there for you and nudge you on and keep you going from point to point then you look for other organizations, groups, etc… to replace your current family. You don’t go looking for a gang if you have a good home life or if you’re happy; maybe it does happen, but I haven’t seen that.” He went on to point out that not all immigrant youth fall prey to gangs or groups outside of their families. Asked what he thinks it takes for immigrant youth to succeed today Raul replied, “The schools I’ve worked in are large points of entry for the economically challenged. But you do see students who are able to block everything else out and concentrate on what they have to concentrate on because, they know that maybe home life isn’t the best, but they have that capability of just focusing. Beyond the ability to focus, he sees the keys to success for immigrant youth as having adults with high expectations of them and being brought up with positive values regardless of socioeconomic level. “I believe that it’s all values and expectations and love around you rather than social economics. The difference is the value system and the capability of that family to stay united, and to talk and to communicate through all the changes they go through, and to make a commitment to that. I really feel that some of the challenges that are faced by the inner-city kids who want to do well are the other city kids that don’t have those advantages.”    

When asked to identify himself now he says he’s a “first generation Cuban-American.” Without saying specifically that he is bi-cultural, Raul, in many ways is still that Cuban boy, but has, over the past 55 years acquired a dual-frame of reference. One of the ways he maintains links to Cuba and his Cuban heritage is through continual affiliation with the Cuban Diaspora in Los Angeles. He elaborates further on why he sees this link as important: “This group of Cubans in Los Angeles always stayed together and if you look at the cultures that are successful they have that trait, they understand where they came from, this is their background and their history; you need that psychologically, you need that cushion. The Cuban community has always been a close-knit community so that’s helped us. We know where we came from and at the same time we’re still integrating in the U. S. culture. Our transition as Cubans has been easier than other groups because we always looked up to the U. S.” Raul segued into a discussion about his involvement with the Operación Pedro Pan Charter Group in the Los Angeles area. “Operación Pedro Pan is a well kept secret, it’s not something most U. S. residents know about, because it never made it to the collective consciousness, it never hit that level. There are charter groups of these Peter Pan groups that meet on a regular basis and keep together. They don’t relive, but share. I think the sharing is important. You always want to talk to people that have similar experiences with you and then that brings you closer together to them and it helps you psychologically. Overall, this is a very successful group that gets together at least four times a year.  I’m not sure what characteristics makes it a successful immigrant group, I guess it’s like the frontier and we were children pioneers in the sense that we were expected by our parents to do well, the expectations were high. You learned to survive, you learned to expect certain things, you learned to work and you learned to work hard. As we get together and we talk as members of this group we share these experiences and I think that the fact that we had such a solid childhood even though it was an interrupted childhood is important.” When queried about why they think of their childhoods as being interrupted Raul said it was because “you really are not a child when you’re on your own, you’re still part of a family, but there’s a gap there in the normal childhood. I really think there is a plus coming as an immigrant because you have nothing to lose, you can’t go any lower; the only way you can go is up. That’s why you have these immigrant stories. They were willing to take the risk; if you want something you’ll take the risk.

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