DENVER — When Marta Welch flips through the pages of her old Cuban passport, it’s a reminder of what she left behind, and what she gained, by fleeing the island to live in the United States.
“I was so excited to be in America and to leave a country that was so oppressive,” Welch said.
It was 1962, and Welch was one of more than 14,000 children who left the island through a secret operation known as "Pedro Pan," or Peter Pan, in English. It was likely the largest exodus of unaccompanied children in history.
The secretive plan, hatched by religious groups like Catholic Charities in collaboration with the U.S. government, aimed to remove children from Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba, and later reunite them with their families.
“I didn't realize I was going to have to come alone,” Welch said. She would wait two years before finally reuniting with her mother and starting a new life in Colorado.
“It's tough leaving a country that's Communist because they're really watching you like a hawk,” Welch said. “I remember we had a secret meeting,” she said. Her family spoke in whispers and asked if she was willing to go.
“I was excited,” she said.
Welch, like the other Pedro Pan children, flew into Miami.
“When I came to Florida… everything was very well organized,” she said. She stayed at an apartment complex set up for the child refugees.
Roughly half of the Pedro Pan kids went to stay with family members in the United States. The others were sent to foster homes, boarding schools and orphanages across the country. At least a few hundred Cuban refugees came to Colorado, including some Pedro Pan girls who lived at the Queen of Heaven orphanage in Denver.
For Welch, Catholic Charities found her “a foster home in Toledo, Ohio, of all places, where no one spoke Spanish at all.”
The trauma of being separated from family for years hit hard for many Pedro Pan children. Although Welch looks back on her time in the foster home with fond memories.
“The foster mother was lovely,” she said. “She sat down with me every day and read Dr. Seuss books with me and taught me how to read in English.”
Within a few months, Welch was speaking fluently in English. Her foster family took her on summer vacations and had a piano in their home she enjoyed playing.
Still, Welch knows not all Pedro Pan kids had a good experience.
“It was pretty tragic,” she said. “Some people had to really struggle to find a home and to feel safe and secure.”
Thinking back on the experience, Welch still gets teary-eyed about how much she missed her family, the food and the music back on the island.
“I was very close to my family,” she said.
Finally, after two years in a foster home and a short stint at an orphanage, she reunited with her mother.
“We ended up in Denver simply because we had friends from Cuba that ended up here,” Welch said.
“There used to be a Cuban circle,” Welch remembers. “Playing dominoes and having parties for the holidays and doing the traditional Cuban meals.”
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Welch stays connected to her roots through cooking. “I like to make paella, arroz con pollo, picadillo and flan,” she said. Recipes learned from her mother.
“I love my culture, but I love Colorado too,” she said.
Welch is proud of the contributions Cuban immigrants have made in Colorado.
“They're very hard workers. My mother immediately went to work,” as a housekeeper, Welch said. “As soon as I graduated from high school, I went to work for the phone company, which used to be called Mountain Bell, now Lumens,” she said.
Now, she uses her Spanish language skills to help others with interpretation and translations.
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Welch was “thrilled” when another Peter Pan child grew up to become Denver’s first foreign-born mayor. Guillermo Vidal came to the United States in 1961 as part of the secret operation. For more than three years, he lived in a Catholic orphanage in Pueblo, Colorado.
Vidal went on to become a civil engineer and contribute to major infrastructure projects through decades of work with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), including five years as its executive director.
During John Hickenlooper’s time as Denver mayor, Vidal served as deputy mayor and public works manager. Then, when Hickenlooper was elected as Colorado governor, Vidal stepped in as mayor for six months.
“He was a good politician,” Welch said.
Looking back on the experiences of Peter Pan children like her, Welch said it’s a lesson for today.
“They struggled just to get here. It's not like they really wanted to leave their country, it's that they had to,” she said. “Coming to America is a huge, huge step towards freedom.”
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