Torres states that the loss of patria potestad was rumored but never happened.
She is wrong. She has blinded herself to the reality of life for children who remained in Cuba by covering humanitarian motives with political ones. My parents' firsthand accounts of the time between 1961 and 1966, before they finally left Cuba, tell of children put into ideological indoctrination at age 11. The first group of 800 children was sent to Minas de Frio en la Sierra Maestra in Cuba on March 27, 1960. They were removed from their parents and their family values to be indoctrinated in the values of the revolution for 45 to 60 days at a time.