It is said that all Cubans, no matter how long they have lived outside the country and regardless of where they now reside, always return to the island. Silvia Wilhelm left Cuba in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan, a CIA orchestrated campaign to convince parents that the State was about to take away their children and indoctrinate them and therefore they should be sent off to Miami. Some 14,000 children were sent away, unaccompanied by their parents. Wilhelm first returned in 1994 and since then has visited the island several times a year. In Miami, she became a leading activist for normalizing relations between the two countries. Cristina Escobar interviews Wilhelm about her life, prospects for US-Cuban relations, and her work promoting US tourism on the island. teleSUR