Those of you who are blessed with having kids know that your lives from the day they are born are nothing but sacrifice to give those kids a better life. To keep them safe, well cared for. To provide for them. To raise them into thinking, feeling, responsible and independent adults.

You want them to have that toy you never had as a child. You want them to eat what you perhaps never got to eat when you were a child. You want them to have that education that perhaps you werent able to get. You want them to have more of everything that you had and some of somethings that you didnt have.

If you were born and raised in Cuba and are a parent of your own child now, what do you think would be the most coveted thing you could give your son or daughter? Something you didnt have as a child, you didnt have as a teaanger and you dont have as an adult?

Yes, freedom.

Having been raised without it, you will do anything to afford your child the one thing you have lacked all your life. The ability to think freely. To believe in what you want to belive in. To be an individual and not part of a collective. Free from indoctrination. Free from imposed hatred. Free to be whomever and whatever they want to be.

In the sixties, some Cuban parents made the ultimate sacrifice for their kids: They sent their children, through Pedro Pan, to the United States by themselves. These parents risked never seeing their children again in order to afford them the opportunity to be free.

Unfortunately, there are no Pedro Pan flights from Cuba today. La Revolucion begins and ends with the children of Cuba. It's much much easier to foment hatred, to mold thought, to indoctrinate a child than it is to control an adult. Without the indoctrination of children, there is no next generation of Revolucionarios.

And Cuban parents understand this all too well. They lived that indoctrination themselves. They know they wasted years of their lives following an inept ideology. They have lived a lie.

So what do some of these parents do? The same thing the parents of Pedro Pan kids did: try to get their children to a place where their children will be free.

They will risk both their lives and that of their kids'. Because it's worth it. Freedom is worth it. Truth is worth it. Love for their children compels them to do whatever it takes to give them a real life.

So they take to makeshift rafts. And they take to a smuggler's boats, under the cover of darkness, children in arms to reach a place where their children will be guaranteed a life unkown to these parents. A life of freedom.

But in castro's Cuba, to sacrifice for the future of your child is a crime:

Cuban moms charged for escape attempt

Monday, April 17, 2006; Posted: 5:57 p.m. EDT (21:57 GMT)

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Seven women whose attempt to leave the island with their children was frustrated when Cuban coast guard officials opened fire on their alleged smugglers will be tried in court for endangering their children's lives, state media reported Monday.

The Communist Party daily Granma said the seven children, ages 1 to 14, had to walk through swampy terrain plagued with mosquitoes and were without water or food for two days before April 5, when they were to be picked up by migrant smugglers in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

"Once again it has been exposed how irresponsible and unscrupulous people put the lives of their children in twice as much danger: to drown during their voyage or get sick because of the bad environment chosen by the smugglers," Granma said.

The newspaper offered no details on the specific charges against the women or when they would be tried.

The women and children were part of a group with 25 other adults who were to be ferried out of the country on a 40-foot (12-meter) speedboat.

Cuban coast guard officials opened fire on the three-man crew operating the vessel after they did not obey an order to stop, killing one and wounding the other two.

Authorities temporarily took the would-be-migrants into custody for questioning.

Paxety has more.