The Red Umbrella and the Pedro Pan Children

I read a lot of youth novels, often because I volunteer at Scholastic Book warehouse sales, which I did just last month. They pay you in books. One of the books I picked up was The Red Umbrella, by Christina Gonzalez. It’s a look back in time to 1961, during Fidel Castro’s communist takeover of Cuba.

The story is told from the point of view of a 14-year-old Cuban girl, Lucía Álvarez, in an upper-middle-class family. Her father is a banker. She’s concerned with fashion, beginning to be interested in boys, and is planning her quinceañera ahead of her next birthday. She reads Seventeen magazine—in English, which she was required to study in school but doesn’t yet speak well. And she listens to Elvis records. She lives a happy life with her parents and 7-year-old brother.

Quite suddenly her life changes. And that change is a story our young people today need to hear.

Let’s start with the meaning of the umbrella. It’s bright. It’s noticeable in a crowd. Plus, it’s not very fashionable. Lucía tells her mother, “Just because you’ve had that umbrella forever doesn’t mean it’s the only one you can use, you know.” 

Her mother answers, “I like my umbrella. It’s the only one I’ve ever found that’s big enough to protect all of us from the rain.”

“But red is the color of the revolution.” I hoped this would make her reconsider.

Mamá stopped walking to look at me. “No, Lucía. The revolution may have taken over a lot of things, but it doesn’t own a color. For me, red is the symbol of strength, and that’s all it will ever represent.”

Strength and protection. Makes for a good symbol.

OK, now for the story.

Schools have been closed—private schools permanently, and government-run schools temporarily. It’s early summer. Some of Lucía’s friends are being recruited to join the brigades, and leave their homes for months at a time to “go teach and live in the mountains.” Since nothing exciting is happening around home, Lucía has been asking her parents if she can go on that adventure. She tries to convince them. “Thousands of kids my age and younger have joined the brigades. Their parents trust them.”

Her father vehemently says no:

“You think your mother and I enjoy saying no to you? We only want the best for you, to protect you. They don’t care about breaking up families. It’s actually what they want. To destroy the family so the only thing left is the revolution, just like Karl Marx suggested.”

At this point, the revolution seems distant, only an idea that people who are in tune to what’s up to date are doing. She can’t understand why her parents are so against it. Her parents are careful not to come out publicly against the revolution; they know that isn’t safe. But they do only whatever minimum is required. Her father identifies their CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) former friends as “glorified neighborhood spies,” which means they need to be careful around certain neighbors. Lucía is thinking,

I couldn’t believe how judgmental Papá was being. I’d read the newspapers and knew how much the revolution wanted to help people. It said that the factories had been closed because the owners were giving all their profits to foreigners and that the churches had been infiltrated by American sympathizers. Castro had no choice but to have the government take over many of the businesses so that there wouldn’t be so much corruption.

Lucía has a friend, Ivette, who goes to the “Jóvenes” (youth) meetings:

She said it was like walking into a kitchen after something had burned. At first, the odor almost knocks you over, but after a while, you forget there was ever a bad smell.

The government has started confiscating wealth. Her father brings some things home from the bank one day, from their safe-deposit box, and hides them, along with her mother’s jewelry, in a hole under a loose tile in the floor:

“Your mother’s ring, my father’s watch, everything.” Papá shook his head. “The idea is that all the wealth should be spread out. So they’re taking from those who have worked their entire lives, like us, keeping some of the money for themselves and then supposedly giving the rest to the poor. Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve worked since I was fifteen just so I can be as poor as the bum who never worked a day in his life. Welcome to Castro’s revolution!”

Lucía is beginning to wonder.

I’d read how the revolution wanted the working class to save their money. It was only the lazy rich who had to share with those who had less. So why was Papá so worried? We certainly weren’t rich. Plus, Papá had worked hard every day of his life, and although he wasn’t a fan of the revolution, he most definitely wasn’t an anti-revolutionary. No one could really fault him for trying to protect what was ours. Could they?

It’s notable how much indoctrination Lucía had already received from school and newspaper propaganda.

Shortly after this, Lucía is sent on an errand to the pharmacy because her little brother is sick with a fever. Doc Machado is late coming in that day, but his sister, Señora Garra, takes care of Lucía’s needs—including a bottle of nail polish that her mother was letting her buy in preparation of her first dance that coming Friday. On the way home, a girl from school warns her away from Central Avenue, because there were soldiers, and something was happening over there. “Just be careful.” But Lucía wasn’t paying attention, dreaming about the dance, and suddenly realizes she’d been walking down Central Avenue, her usually route home.

There weren’t solders. There wasn’t anyone. Something was wrong. She plans to cut through the city park up ahead and cross over to another street. But at the entrance to the park, she faces a horror.

There, from the oak tree on the corner, hung the body of Doc Machado!

This was a turning point. She had known Doc Machado. He was not a threat to anyone; he was a good man. She was now worried about her parents. They, in turn, were worried about the children.

More bad things happen. Police come and find the hiding place under the floor and confiscate all their wealth. The bank manager is removed, and Lucía’s father is given the position for a while—on the assumption that he will provide them with any information they want on people’s private accounts, which he won’t do. There’s more pressure to take all children from their families. Some children have even been sent to Russia.

Lucía’s parents start working to find a way to get the kids out of the country. The kids take it as they must, but it’s frightening. Lucía worries that America might be “a place full of hate and race riots like the Cuban newspapers described.” That isn’t what they encounter, of course.

Most of the book tells the story of their separation. The first destination is a camp in Miami, but girls and boys are in separate camps, across the road from each other, and her younger brother keeps sneaking out to be with her. A good supervisor there—who had known Lucía’s father—arranges for them to go together to a Catholic foster family, the Baxters, in Nebraska. They’re a kindly couple whose son is grown and living in Boston. They live modestly, on a farm in a relatively small town.

The children had to leave Cuba with very few possessions—a single bag each. And they aren’t equipped for winter. So the parishioners do a collection. Lucía tries not to be ungrateful, but,

I was going to be wearing hand-me-downs. Used clothing. I’d never had to do that before. We always bought the very latest fashions. Ivette would be mortified to see me wearing these clothes.

They are able to save up and make occasional phonecalls to their parents, and send letters, which are always subject to scrutiny by the Cuban government, so they can’t speak openly about conditions. Papá loses his job. He works doing odd jobs to provide an income, and Mamá also finds domestic work. Then Papá falls off a roof and is sent to a hospital, so there is much worry.

Near spring, about ten months after the family was separated, the parents tell the children that they have been able to get an exit visa—but for only the mother. Mamá insists she won’t leave, but the opportunity is not likely to come again, so the rest of them talk her into it.

The red umbrella comes up again at the reunion.

I’ve probably given too many spoilers already, but it’s a book worth reading—and worth getting young people to read.

It’s actually not very political. There’s only the young girl’s view of what she experienced—the change from freedom and prosperity to the loss of all that in her home country, and the eventual acceptance of her new home. She observes what happens to good people in Cuba. And she observes the changes in people who are essentially brainwashed by the revolutionaries—as she corresponds with her friend Yvette, who loses her former self completely. 

When Lucia realizes her childhood friendship with Yvette is over, she thinks,

My heart ached. I had wanted to go back to Cuba. To my parents. To my best friend. But that didn’t seem possible anymore. That Cuba, that friend, simply didn’t exist.

Operation Pedro Pan children, hoping
to immigrate to the US from Cuba
image from Wikipedia

Lucía has lost her old life in Cuba, the beautiful island nation that she loved. But at least she remembers the good life it had been. Yvette and others who give in to the revolution no longer remember the good; they’ve been taught to believe it was all bad.

In a time when young people don’t have the memories and experience to understand what Marxism does to a country—even with the example of Venezuela before our eyes—this child’s-eye-view might be enlightening.

Unlike many youth novels, most of the people in this story are kind and well-meaning. The Baxters aren’t secretly deviant, don’t have ulterior motives. Friends at school are accepting and genuine—and recognize the few mean people for what they are, as in any high school. The parents are neither domineering nor saccharine perfect. There’s a bonus glossary of Spanish terms at the back of the book, in case you didn’t understand any phrases through context.

The story is fiction, but it’s based on the experiences similar to the author’s family. Her grandparents had to make the heartbreaking decision to send their children alone to the US—which means her parents experienced being “Pedro Pan” children, as did her mother-in-law. As she says in the acknowledgments, “Because of their foresight, our family has become part of the American dream.”

Fifty-nine years have passed since that time, and Cuba still suffers. But it’s clear why Cuban Americans, especially, cherish the freedoms we’re guaranteed in our Constitution.