Revisiting the courageous flight by Orestes Lorenzo Pérez to save his wife and children

"If Lorenzo had the balls to leave with one of my MiGs," he said, "maybe he has the balls to come and get his family." - Raul Castro

Orestes Lorenzo campaigning for his families release.

Abridged version taken from CubaBrief.

Thirty years ago, on December 19, 1992, Cuban Air Force Major Orestes Lorenzo Pérez flew back to Cuba and rescued his family. One year and nine months after defecting to the United States in a MiG-23 and months of petitioning the Cuban government to allow his family to leave the island without success, Orestes flew to Cuba in a civilian plane and picked up his wife and two sons.

Today marks the 30 anniversary of that decisive flight that brought my family to freedom. Our eternal gratitude to this nation for adopting us as its children🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/yBBpt92LxN

— Orestes Lorenzo (@OrestesLorenzo) December 19, 2022

Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost rejected by Castro left a deep impact on the Cuban military. Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, who had studied in the Soviet Union, and had close ties there  was arrested on June 12, 1989, subjected to a political show trial and executed by firing squad on July 13, 1989. This was seen as sending a message to Cuban officials sympathetic to Glasnost and Perestroika.

Major Orestes Lorenzo Pérez, who had fought in Angola, then gone for further training in the Soviet Union, was also deeply affected by the glasnost of Mikhail Gorbachev. He realized that the history that he had been taught in Cuba was a lie, and that he was being manipulated.

This is why he defected on March 20, 1991.The Cuban Air Force Major would spend the next 22 months trying to get his family out of Cuba.  Gigi Anders in her February 14, 1993 article published in The Washington Post, titled THE MOST ROMANTIC STORY IN THE WORLD highlighted some of the actions taken, and people successfully petitioned.

"People of great sensitivities responded positively and tried their best to help liberate my family," he says. "Coretta Scott King, President Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, more than 50 senators and congressmen, the Valladares Foundation {a Virginia-based human rights organization} ... they all wrote to Fidel Castro." He pleaded his case before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Diplomacy was failing. In the summer of 1992, Orestes participated in a week-long hunger strike in Madrid, where Castro was attending the Iberian-American Summit. There was plenty of publicity for seven days. And then the conference ended.

Raul Castro sent a challenging response to the request for family reunification: "If Lorenzo had the pants to leave with one of my MiGs," he said, "maybe he has the pants to come and get his family." Inside Cuba, Raul Castro's assistant explained to Vicky Lorenzo that she and her children would never be reunited with her husband and their father. When she asked why, she was told, "Because you are scum."

On December 19, 1992 flying low in a 1961 Cessna 310, Orestes Lorenzo returned to Cuba to pick up his family. He had one minute to land, pick them up, and take off back for Florida.

"I came in very low, very low, about 10 feet above 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 this morning, 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 says he will never forget the look of shock on the face of the truck driver on the road, who stared at the pilot as he turned his plane about 30 feet away. Lorenzo's wife, Victoria, 35, and their two sons, Reyniel, 11, and Alejandro, 6, ran to the aircraft. His younger son was still without shoes this morning. He had lost them running to the plane." ... "After a dramatic takeoff from the same road, the family returned to Marathon, where they were met by a handful of friends and supporters, including Kristina Arriaga, executive director of the Valladares Foundation in Alexandria, Va., a Cuban-exile group headed by Armando Valladares, a former political prisoner in Cuba."

Orestes Lorenzo Pérez has a presence on Youtube, and has demonstrated over the past thirty years his dedication to nonviolence, and speaking truth to power. Today he is also a loving grandfather. You can learn the details of what happened thirty years ago in the book "Wings of the Morning: The Flights of Orestes Lorenzo" by Orestes Lorenzo Pérez on Amazon.