Aldo Martinez

The Unspoken Gift: How an Immigrant Cuban Child Fulfilled His American Dream Aldo Martinez

In 1961 the world changes for eleven-year-old Aldo Martinez. Until that time he had lived the average life of a middle-class Cuban boy: playing with friends, enjoying birthday parties and Christmas celebrations; the only cloud in his life, the divorce of his parents. Then comes the revolution. Gunfire in the streets, the Cuban exiles' invasion at the Bay of Pigs, his father missing for days, Fidel Castro's soldiers take over his school and desecrate the chapel. His parents, often at odds over even the minor details of life due to their divorce, come together to see that Aldo escapes the revolution for a chance at a life of freedom. "The Unspoken Gift" is the story of Aldo's journey to America as one of 14,000 children sent out of Cuba without their parents through Operation Pedro Pan. It is the story of his life in America, the lessons learned in an orphanage, the American family who first taught him about the American Dream, and the hope of being reunited with his father and mother. But much more than that, it is the inspiring story of a family uniting to give their child the hardest but greatest gift - the unspoken gift of a love. A gift so great they were willing to take the chance of never seeing their son again to give him the opportunity to grow up in freedom.