Miguel Bezos and the roots of an American dream

Miguel Bezos was a Cuban immigrant who chased the American dream, imparting his determination and works ethic to his adoptive son Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

Mike came to the United States alone at the age of 16, speaking no English. He was sent by his parents to seek a better life in the wake of Fidel Castro’s rise to power and was among thousands of other teenage refugees from Cuba, part of what became known as Operation Peter Pan.

After spending time in a refugee camp in Florida, Mike was sent to Wilmington, Delaware to attend high school. He learned the language very quickly when he immersed himself in it. He could see the grades improving semester by semester. All of that was due to being able to speak and understand the language.

He ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico, where he had originally planned to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering, leveraging his skill and affinity for maths and physics. It was sometime around this period that Miguel met the woman he would marry, Jackie, who also had a son at the time: Jeff Bezos.

“It is truly unbelievable. I look back on my life and I had lived the American Dream 30 years ago,” Mike Bezos says. “It is really just out of this world.”

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