Escape from Cuba

Nelson Figueras describes his childhood in Cuba during the 1950s. The son of a revolutionary, Nelson describes living under Castro’s oppressive regime and his father’s eventual execution for crimes against the state. This horrific event was the catalyst for Nelson and his younger brother to be sent without their parents to the US in 1962 in Operation Pedro Pan.

Nelson Figueras describes the loving Mexican American family who in Washington State fostered him and his brother after they’d been sent to the US from Cuba as Pedro Pan children. Despite being with the family for less than a year, Nelson has thought of the couple and their kindness often for the past 50 years. He yearns to find his long-lost foster parents to thank them.

Juan meets fisherman George Gardner, a colleague of Captain Hooper, the skipper who brought him to safety in 1980 during the Mariel Boat lift from Cuba.

Join Ann Curry as two men search for the people who helped them settle in the U.S. when they fled Castro’s Cuba. One hopes to find the family who took him in as a boy while another looks for the shrimp boat skipper who brought him to safety.