HIALEAH GARDENS, Fla. — Sylvia G. Iriondo, a survivor of the Cuban Air Force shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, stood before reporters on Thursday in Hialeah Gardens.
Iriondo, 81, said she was in one of the “three small defenseless, unarmed little” Cessna 337 Skymasters, which she said “look and feel like motorcycles.”
Iriondo was among the eight volunteers who departed the Opa Locka Executive Airport at about 3:20 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996, and among the four who returned.
Iriondo’s mission “en route to the Straits of Florida, to international airspace,” she said, was “to try to find that little spot in the ocean that would tell Brothers to the Rescue that there was a life, there was a man, a woman, children, trying to escape the communist island in search of freedom. That was the purpose of that flight.”
Air-to-air missiles fired from Cuban Air Force MiG-29 fighter jets killed Carlos Costa and Pablo Morales, who were in the Cessna 337C, registered in the U.S. as N2456S, and Mario De La Peña and Armando Alejandre, who were in the Cessna 337B, registered in the U.S. as N5485S, records show.
“Both Cessna aircraft broke up in the air from the explosions of the missiles, the wreckage impacted the sea and sank,” according to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Iriondo, a real estate agent known in South Florida for her community service and activism, remembered the four killed as heroes.
“The most noble work of humanity is that of saving lives ... Carlos, Armando, Mario, and Pablo could have been that Saturday anywhere, on the beach, you know, having fun,” Iriondo said. “But no, they were on a humanitarian mission to save lives.”
Alejandre, 45; Costa, 29; and De la Peña, 24, were U.S. citizens. Iriondo said Morales, 29, a U.S. resident, had been saved before by Brothers to the Rescue.
The three other 1996 survivors were Iriondo’s husband, Andres Iriondo-Olazabal; Arnaldo Iglesias; and José Basulto, who founded Brothers To The Rescue for search and rescue missions at sea after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Throughout the missions and the flights of Brothers to the Rescue, more than 5,000 lives were saved in more than 2,000 flights to the Straits of Florida in international airspace,” Iriondo said.
The rafters crisis peaked in 1994, when Iriondo co-founded Mothers and Women Against Repression, a nonprofit organization in Miami that focused on human rights violations in Cuba.
Iriondo, who is also active with the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, said Raúl Castro, 94, needs to be punished.
“There were two that ordered the shootdown: Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro,” Iriondo said. “Fidel Castro passed away, and nothing was done ... but now we have an opportunity ... justice needs to be done for the families, for the community, and for humankind.”
The 30th anniversary of the shootdowns is on Tuesday.
“There were a lot of statements made. President Clinton promised the families that justice would be done, and we are here today, and justice still hasn’t been done,” Iriondo said. “There can be no peace unless there is justice.”
Related document: Iriondo’s biography (.PDF)
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