PILOT SHOT DOWN BY CUBAN GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE MEMORIALIZED IN HIS NATIVE NORTH HUDSON

By Rolando Alum

I rush to complete my 14th and final Op-Ed for our Jersey Journal inasmuch as --regrettably-- it ceases publication next month. Allow let me to take this opportunity to honor the memory of Mario Manuel de la Peña (1971-1996), who was born at the old Weehawken’s North Hudson Hospital (now Palisades Medical Center in the nearby municipality of North Bergen).

We continuously hear about the downing of non-military aircraft by rogue bellicose countries. I particularly recall the monstrous shooting-down of a Korean passenger plane by the then Soviet Union in September 1983. But years later, and closer to home, we had the February 1996 downing by “Socialist” Cuba’s military airplanes of two U.S.-based, small civilian planes, one of which was piloted by our own Hudson native, Mario de la Peña.

Only 24 years young, Mario was a volunteer with the Florida-based “Brothers to the Rescue” [BTTR] organization that air-patrolled the Florida Straits searching for Cuban seafaring escapees. These pilots routinely alerted the U.S. Coast Guard so as to save refugees’ lives. Sometimes the pilots would also drop fliers with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights printed in Spanish, many of which --with favorable winds-- would fall on Cuban land, thus informing ordinary Cubans of such ideal rights deprived to them by their Marxist-oriented government.

On that Saturday afternoon of February 24, 1996 Cuban military aircraft shot down two BTTR planes, killing, aside from Mario, three other airmen. As the investigations by international organizations (e.g., the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) concluded:

1--The BTTR planes were unarmed.

2--They were scandalously attacked in international airspace, far away from Cuba.

3--A third BTTR plane, whose pilots witnessed the criminal attacks, managed to return to

south Florida.

4--As duly reported, the Cuban state’s military aircrafts never implemented any warning or interception methods (such as a forced landing), as is the international protocol.

5--In fact, the U.S.-monitored recording of the verbal communications between the Communist Cuban pilots with their Havana superiors prove that orders were given to mercilessly “destroy the BTTR planes,” evocative of the Korean airliner’s Soviet attack recordings.

As we approach the 29th anniversary of Mario’s untimely death, and given that he resided as a child with his family in Union City and West New York, I herewith suggest to the elected Hudson County commissioners and the apropos municipalities’ officials to consider resolutions memorializing Mario’s legacy and even a street or corner naming with a corresponding plaque honoring the martyrdom of this idealistic humanitarian, freedom fighter Hudsonite.

*===BYLINE: Prof. Roland Armando Alum, a West New York (N.J.) resident for most of his life, is a retired Anthropology college professor and former State and Federal governments official, currently a University of Pittsburgh external research associate in Latin-American studies and vice-chair of the Trenton-based New Jersey Center for Hispanic Policy, Research & Development