One man was chloroformed by the hijackers and had to be hospitalized when the plane landed. The co-pilot was taken off the plane in handcuffs by U.S. police. The hijackers were released that night, home free. The five who wanted to return to Cuba did so. I spent ten days in Cuba in late November.
Times are hard in Cuba now.
After years of improving living standards, the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc has been one of turmoil in Cuba's economy. Clothing, pharmaceuticals, machinery, cars were largely imported as was all the oil. Cuba has imported hundreds of thousands of Chinese bicycles and is busily building more, to ease the transportation gap. An enforced McDougall diet is not what Cubans want. In such a setting, the black market flourishes and people think longingly of all the material goods just ninety miles away in Florida.