University of Puget Sound student uncovers the history of Cuban refugees in the Pacific Northwest

Students

Bella Rodriguez ’24 researches the legacy of Operation Pedro Pan in Portland, Ore.

Growing up in Portland, Ore., Bella Rodriguez ’24 was struck by the absence of Latino stories in the narrative of the city’s history. It wasn’t until she started studying history, environmental policy and decision making, and Latina/o studies at University of Puget Sound that she started to ask questions about the history of Latinos in Portland. That curiosity led her to dig deep into the city’s complicated racial history and uncover the story of the Cuban refugee community which sprang up overnight in the 1960s.

“My family is Dominican, but there's a lot of shared community in Portland between Dominicans and Cubans,” Rodriguez says. “I knew I wanted to research the history of the area, and my dad told me that there used to be a lot more Cubans here when he was growing up. That’s when I first heard about Operation Pedro Pan.”

For her summer research project, Bella Rodriguez '24 uncovered a forgotten chapter of her hometown's history—an influx of Cuban children who arrived after Castro's rise to power.

Following Fidel Castro’s rise to power in the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cubans who opposed the new communist regime started to look for ways to get their families off the island. A group of Catholic charities organized Operation Pedro Pan in response—a massive effort to evacuate children to the United States with the tacit approval of the U.S. government.

“A lot of families were afraid that their children would be indoctrinated. When the government started shutting down religious schools, they were desperate to get their kids out of Cuba. That kicked off the largest exodus of children traveling from a foreign country to the United States in history,” Rodriguez says.

Between 1960 and 1962, more than 14,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Florida from Cuba. Some went to stay with relatives in the United States, but the rest were sent to foster homes around the country until they could be reunited with their families. Eventually, many of them ended up in Portland, where they formed a tight-knit Cuban American community in a predominantly white city.

Bella Rodriguez ’24

"The history of the Pacific Northwest is very centered on white people, but there have always been other groups here."

To learn more about this chapter in Portland’s history, Rodriguez interviewed the now-grown unaccompanied minors, known as Pedro Pans, still living in the area, relying on referrals within the community to find her subjects. With help from her summer research advisor, Assistant Professor of History Andrew Gomez, Rodriguez developed questions and a research framework to write an oral history of the Pedro Pan program.

“It’s important to capture these stories while we still can. Many of the people who were there have passed away or don’t live in the area anymore,” Rodriguez says. “So, I ask them about their childhood in Cuba, what they remember about their trip to the United States, and how they ended up in Portland.”

Stack of books, with "Operation Pan Pedro" on top

As part of her research, Rodriguez interviewed some of the now-grown unaccompanied minors, known as Pedro Pans, who arrived in Portland between 1960 and 1962.

Over the course of her research, Rodriguez has found other snippets of the story of Portland’s Cuban community, including a news article from 1967 profiling a Cuban refugee who was crowned queen of the city’s annual rose festival, and a business license for a Cuban social club that has since closed. These records, combined with Rodriguez’s oral history project, help to paint a fuller picture of the brief period when Portland’s Cuban American community flourished. Even though the community shrank as people died or moved away over the years, Rodriguez still sees its mark on the fabric of her hometown.

“The history of the Pacific Northwest is very centered on white people, but there have always been other groups here. When my family came to Portland in the ’60s, the majority of Latino people that they met were Cuban. They laid the foundation for the Latino community in the Pacific Northwest today.”

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