Sylvia Iriondo was born in Cuba, and like millions of Cubans whose lives coincided with the triumph and establishment of the socialist Revolution, she had to find a new homeland.

Shortly after Castro seized power, she went into exile with her family and arrived in the United States. From a young age, she became involved in helping refugees from the island with the International Rescue Committee and the Cuban Refugee Aid Program. Later, she worked with Brothers to the Rescue (HAR), an experience that would change her life forever.

HAR flew small planes over the Florida Straits, searching for Cubans leaving in small boats or homemade rafts made from almost any floating material, and alerting the United States Coast Guard to rescue them. On February 24, 1996, Iriondo was one of eight HAR activists who departed in three small planes on a routine mission from Florida. They were unaware that, simultaneously, two Soviet MiG fighter jets were taking off from the island with orders to assassinate them. In international airspace, air-to-air missiles struck two HAR Cessna 337s, instantly killing Mario Manuel de la Peña (24 years old), Carlos Costa (29), Pablo Morales (29), and Armando Alejandre (45 years old), three of whom were American citizens.

The third plane was targeted by the MiG piloted by Luis Raúl González-Pardo. Iriondo was on board with her husband, Andrés, José Basulto, and Arnaldo Iglesias. Hidden among the few clouds that day, it reached U.S. airspace and landed in Opa-Locka. Surviving that dark day marked a turning point for Iriondo and the Cuban exile community in the United States. She continued her activism for democracy on the island, leading the Mothers and Women Against Repression (MAR). Alongside the families and friends of those killed, she commemorated the bombing of the Brothers to the Rescue (HAR) planes year after year.

Then, in 2024, some news broke her routine: pilot González-Pardo was in the United States.

The mobilization of Cuban-American politicians, media, and organizations translated the exile community’s outrage into the arrest of the former military officer on charges of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his ties to the regime. Approaching the 30th anniversary of the massacre, while González-Pardo awaits trial, Iriondo reflected on her own survival and on the lives cut short between the clouds and the sea on February 24, 1996.

When and how did you become involved with Brothers to the Rescue (HAR)? What kind of actions did the organization undertake?

HAR was founded by Cuban exile José Basulto in 1991. It had pilots of various nationalities and volunteers who were part of the crew, crossing the Florida Straits to find Cuban men, women, and children desperately trying to escape the island prison in rafts and other floating objects in search of freedom. Many of them perished in the attempt.

Since its founding, the organization carried out around 2,000 humanitarian flights that saved more than 5,000 lives. For a time, MAR, the organization founded in 1994 by several exiled women to denounce human rights violations on the island, had been assisting HAR by providing humanitarian aid and basic supplies to Cuban refugees.

Cubans attempting to escape the island prison in search of freedom were frequently intercepted in Bahamian waters. They ended up interned at the Carmichael Detention Center in Nassau. Their needs were great; they were desperate. MAR volunteers took turns accompanying HAR on the weekly humanitarian flights.

Basulto, speaking before the United Nations, emphasized that the small planes were routinely identified by Cuban radar. But, “While flying in international waters, two of the aircraft were shot down by Cuban MiGs (…) a brutal murder committed without warning and in broad daylight.”

What do you remember of that day?

The three small planes took off, one after the other, from the HAR hangar in Opa-Locka, Florida, between 1:15 and 1:30 in the afternoon. I was with my husband. That was my first humanitarian search and rescue flight. I was excited by the possibility of helping to save a life. I was focused on scanning the sea, hoping to locate that tiny mark on the water that could be a fragile raft with Cubans in a dangerous situation, in need of help.

On the horizon, I saw familiar silhouettes of the island of Cuba, those that had once been the landscape of my life. I had seen them two years earlier, when several exiles and I participated in the Democracy Movement’s flotilla of boats, protesting the Castro regime’s massacre of the March 13th Tugboat, which claimed dozens of lives, including those of 10 children and a baby.

February 24, 1996, was a beautiful day. The sea was a clear blue and calm. There were few clouds in the sky, and the sun shone brightly.

Suddenly, I saw a shadow pass in front of our small plane at breakneck speed. Then another. I saw what appeared to be a flare and a small trail of smoke in the distance. Basulto said, “They’re going to shoot us down!” To which I replied incredulously, “They’re going to shoot us down?”

We immediately lost communication with the small plane piloted by Carlos Costa, with Pablo Morales on board. Mario Manuel de la Peña and Basulto, piloting the other two small planes, tried to establish contact, without success. It was 3:21 p.m.

Then I saw a second plume of smoke, this time wider, and what appeared to be flames. It was 3:27 p.m. We lost communication with the plane piloted by Mario Manuel, with Armando Alejandre on board.

Despite repeated attempts by Basulto and Arnaldo Iglesias to establish communication, there was no response. Absolute silence.

While I searched for my rosary in my purse, I took my husband’s hand, beside me, and began to pray. In what must have been seconds or minutes, my life flashed before me. In my mind, I said goodbye to my mother, my children, my family, my loved ones. I said goodbye to everyone. The silence was deafening. I remember thinking that maybe it was the silence of death, and that we were probably already dead.

Then I understood that the silence was because the headphones we were using in the small plane had been turned off. It all happened so fast!

Were there any psychological repercussions for you or your husband after experiencing that aerial pursuit?

From that day on, my husband (until his death on August 16, 2009) and I relive the harrowing events of that Saturday in 1996 a thousand times. I have seen smoke billowing in the distance on the horizon, where the sky and the sea meet, countless times. It’s like a painful embrace.

The agonizing silence, the prayer of my soul as I sensed imminent death. I remember all of that. And I have even longed for a different outcome.

Almost 30 years have passed (the anniversary is next year), and I can still hear the voices of Carlos, Armando, Mario Manuel, and Pablo, sharing their joy as pilots and HAR volunteers in the noble mission of saving lives, minutes before being pulverized in the air.

“We got them, damn it!” That was the jubilant cry of the Castro regime pilots when they shot down the two HAR planes. Have you ever heard that audio? What comes to mind?

Contempt for human life. That’s what I think when I hear those rude exclamations, the jubilant voices of the Castro regime Air Force pilots as they shot down, under orders from Fidel and Raúl Castro, defenseless, civilian, and unarmed planes.

The men of HAR had the sole mission of saving the lives of Cubans desperately escaping the prison island.

How do you remember each of them, on a human level?

Pablo served as a volunteer crew member, scouring the sea, searching for disoriented, sunburned, dehydrated Cubans, at the mercy of bad weather, stalked by sharks on the high seas. I met him that same February 24th. He told me in the hangar how proud his mother, Eva Barbas, was in Cuba that he was part of the organization. He himself had been a rafter rescued by HAR! He told me that, while at sea, he thought he would die, but HAR spotted the raft, notified the Coast Guard, and got water and food to him and other crew members. Pablito said a prayer and promised God that, if he reached the land of freedom alive, he would do for other Cubans what HAR had done for him. He died fulfilling his promise to God.

Carlos and Mario Manuel were an intrinsic part of HAR as volunteer pilots. They had hundreds of rescue and lifesaving flights under their belts. Carlos never rested; he went back and forth in the organization’s hangar, reviewing all the necessary details for the flights. Mario Manuel was a young man full of ideals and a desire to serve others. Armando was on his first volunteer rescue flight in the Florida Straits, rescuing rafters. He and I had previously flown with HAR to Carmichael Air Force Base in Nassau to deliver essential supplies to Cubans intercepted at sea. Armando was a great friend. He was a patriot who, he often said, dreamed day and night of Cuba’s freedom. He served two volunteer tours in the U.S. Army in Vietnam.

All four of them loved the United States. Three of them were U.S. citizens; one was a permanent resident. Yes, Castro killed U.S. citizens.

It was a crime against humanity. They were young men full of dreams and ideals, representing the best of their generations. Their lives were taken by the hatred and evil of Castroism. Their families suffer the pain of their absence and still wait for justice.

How did you feel upon learning that one of the pilots involved in the operation against HAR, who targeted the small plane N2506 in which you and your husband were flying in 1996, Lieutenant Colonel González-Pardo, was in the United States?

It is a slap in the face to the memory of the victims of the February 24th massacre and their families, who, approaching the 30th anniversary of the massacre, still cry out for justice.

At the same time, as part of a Cuban-American community that has personally experienced the criminal nature of the Castro tyranny, I am deeply concerned about the weak vetting process that allowed González-Pardo to enter this country.

As we denounced at the time, although González-Pardo did not pull the trigger, he played a key role in the Castro regime’s operation that resulted in the massacre of three American citizens and one legal resident.

In September 2024, you and two survivors alerted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in a letter, about the former pilot’s presence in the United States. “It is likely that, when interviewed in Cuba, González-Pardo omitted key details about his participation in the attack or provided false information,” you wrote. Did the Biden administration respond?

Never.

On the other hand, several South Florida politicians, such as Congressmen Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez, applauded González-Pardo’s arrest under the Trump administration last November. What are your expectations regarding the upcoming trial?

Simply, that justice will prevail; a justice that has long eluded the victims and rewarded the perpetrators.