Right now there is no talk of anything other than Jeff Bezos’ space flight into space aboard the ‘New Shepard’ ship. He will do it accompanied by three other crew members: his brother, Wally Funk (an 82-year-old woman) and Oliver Daeman (an 18-year-old Dutch student). Miguel Ángel Bezos , his father, has a lot to do with the success of Jeff Bezos. When the former CEO of Amazon introduced him, he said this: “My dad is my real dad, not my biological dad. His name is Mike. He is a Cuban immigrant. He came here as part of Operation Pedro Pan » .
Miguel Ángel Bezos was born in Santiago de Cuba into a very large family . His father was a businessman and his mother had a textile store. When Fidel Castro came to power, his life took a 180 degree turn. The government expropriated his father’s sawmill and he had to leave the school.
The journalist Luis Fajardo, in a documentary that he made on the recent history of Cuba for the ‘BBC’, explained that after the Revolution all kinds of rumors were created about the communist government . Some said that he wanted to take custody of the minors to send them to the USSR for indoctrination. This led to the creation of a kind of clandestine network of contacts between families to send their children to the United States.
At the Statue of Liberty, where my dad’s being honored with a Liberty Star as part of the new museum’s opening. When he came here from Cuba at 16, not only was he all alone, but he only spoke Spanish. His grit, determination, and optimism are inspiring. #StatueofLibertyMuseum pic.twitter.com/DFhR3Dbf7p
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 16, 2019
Miguel Ángel Bezos came to the United States when he was only 16 years old and without knowing a single word of English . He did so as part of the so-called Operation Peter Pan. 14,000 children were sent from Cuba to the US between December 1960 and October 1962.
Upon arrival, he was transferred to a refugee camp in Florida . Soon after, he was awarded a scholarship for Cuban refugees and was sent to high school in Delaware. Then he got a scholarship to enter the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico, where he met Jeff Bezos’s mother, Jackie.
They both got married and Miguel Ángel Bezos decided to adopt his son . He graduated with a degree in mathematics and began working for Exxon Mobil, one of the largest US oil companies, in Texas. During the subsequent three decades, he held different management and engineering positions both in the United States and abroad.
