From: rravelo@asturias.acs.uci.edu (Ray Ravelo)
Subject: Re: Cuban pilot
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 21 Dec 92 20:17:08 GMT
Distribution: soc

In article <20501@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> ez000281@othello.ucdavis.edu writes:
>Ray,
>

>rescatar a su familia de Cuba.  El ex-militar se habia exiliado en los EEUU
>desde hace un an~o.  A traves de una amiga mexicana le dijo a su esposa que
>estuviera con su hijo en una autopista que hay en la habana a cierta hora y que
>vistiera de anaranjado.  El coronel sabia que el radar cubano no lo podria
>detectar si viajaba con su avioneta a muy baja altura y se arriesgo a volar
>a Cuba casi tocando las olas.  A la ora indicada aterrizo sobre las autopista,
>y recogio a su familia.  Es interesante que bajo las narices de Castro
>pudiera hacer todo esto.  Me imagino que si una avioneta lo puede hacer,
>que sera un "stealth" fighter!!  Deberian proclamar a este sen~or un heroe
>nacional.

 Si eso lo hubiera hecho un aleman o un ruso lo hubieran puesto en todos
 los canales de television aqui, pero como lo hizo un cubano ....

 Bueno, por lo menos el L. A. Times tiene un articulo en la pagina A44
 de hoy lunes, 12/21/92, dice el articulo:
 
 Cuban defector frees his family with daring flight.
 Excape: Ex-military pilot secretly leaves Florida and lands on crowded road
         to pick up his wife and two sons.
 
 Miami - Orestes Lorenzo, the dashing Cuban military pilot who defected last
         year in a Soviet- built Mig, said Sunday he was either going to
 return to Cuba and free his wife and two young sons, or die trying.
 
 Lorenzo did not die. Instead, the Cuban major, who is considered a traitor
 by the government of Fidel Castro, flew an aging six-passenger Cessna 310
 on Saturday from Marathon in the Florida keys to Matanzas in Cuba, where he
 landed on a crowded road, picked up his wife and sons and returned to the US.
 Total time on Cuban soil? About a minute.
 
 "I came in very low, very low, about 10 feet from the waves, and I saw the
 bridge near Matanzas. I banked hard. I saw a car, a truck and bus on the
 road." Lorenzo, 36, said Sunday, his eyes red from almost three days without
 sleep. 

 "There was a concrete barricade. A street sign. I banked again and landed hard,
 fast. I had one chance to land. One chance. That was it."
 
Lorenzo's wife, Victoria, 35, and their two sons, Reyniel, 11, and Alejandro,
6, ran to the aircraft. His youngest son was still without shoes Sunday
morning. He had lost them running to the plane.
 
The family had been waiting. Through coded phone calls and with letters and
diagrams delivered by friends, Lorenzo's wife and sons knew to be by the side
of the Matanzas road Saturday, about an hour before sunset.
 
After Lorenzo defected, his family, although they had visas, were forbidden to
leave Cuba.
 
Victoria Lorenzo said Sunday that Cuban officials told her she would never
leave Cuba and that she should forget her husband, who they told her, at 
various times, was a traitor, a homosexual or planning to marry another woman.
"I never believed them," she said.

After the dramatic takeoff from the same road, the family returned to Marathon,
where a handful of friends and supporters met them.
 
Lorenzo, who now lives in Virginia and was scheduled to return home with his
family Sunday night, said he had no assistance from the U.S. government. The
pilot said he flew into and out of the US without being challenged by US
authorities.
 
If Lorenzo had been captured, he said he almost surely would have been
imprisoned of executed.
 
end of LA Times article by William Booth of the Washington Post.
 
Saludos,
--
Ray I. Ravelo                "We're your opposition, Mr. Castro, we 10 million
Office of Academic Computing. Cubans who look around us in terror"
UC, Irvine.                 from the open letter to Castro by M.E. Cruz-Varela