The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC) on Monday announced a vigil in Miami, Florida, to demand the criminal prosecution of Cuba’s nonagenarian communist dictator Raúl Castro for his role in the killing of four Americans in February 1996.
Tuesday, February 24, will mark the 30th anniversary of the Castro regime’s killing of four Americans who were members of Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based anti-communist charity organization. During the 1990s, Brothers to the Rescue began conducting humanitarian airplane missions to rescue Cuban citizens who found themselves adrift at sea while attempting to flee from communism and reach America during that decade’s balsero (“rafter”) migrant crisis.
On February 24, 1996, the organization sent three planes over international waters. The Cuban regime shot two of the planes down, killing American citizens Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. The third plane, following an intense chase by Cuban planes, managed to safely escape.
In a video statement shared with the outlet Cubanet on Monday, ARC coordinator and Breitbart News contributor Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat called for Rául Castro’s prosecution for his leadership in the many crimes against humanity that have been committed by the Cuban Communist Party and the “consistent pattern of massacres committed against the population to keep the regime in power.” Gutiérrez-Boronat stressed that the Castro regime’s February 1996 massacre of the four Americans is a crime codified under U.S. law and as such, “it is possible to prosecute Raúl Castro for his leading role in this crime, which he has not hidden.”
“This year marks the 30th anniversary of the massacre of Brothers to the Rescue, when these four idealistic young men were in international airspace trying to save the lives of Cubans like you and me, who were fleeing the hell that the regime has turned our country into,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said in the video.
“These young men dedicated their free time, their flying hours, to rescuing those Cubans and saving them from death in the ocean,” he continued. “What did the communist regime in Cuba do? It massacred them in international airspace; it murdered them.”
Gutiérrez-Boronat called for Cubans to participate in an upcoming vigil on February 23, the eve of the 30th anniversary of the killing of the four Brothers to the Rescue Americans, to peacefully call for the prosecution of Raúl Castro. Gutiérrez-Boronat also extended an invitation to Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and all other communities in South Florida to join the event “because neither the Castro family nor the Communist Party of Cuba have a place in the future of our homeland, which is when we have been closest to achieving its freedom.”
“For these martyrs, for young people like these who gave their lives so that Cuba could be free. We must save Cuba,” Gutiérrez-Boronat concluded.
The Cuban regime, nominally led by figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel but in practice led by 94-year-old Raúl Castro, is facing an extremely complex situation after 67 years of continued communist mismanagement pushed the country to the brink of complete ruin. For years, the Castro regime relied on constant supplies of virtually free subsidized from the Venezuelan socialist regime to sustain itself. Venezuela’s oil shipments to Cuba were cut off in January following the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the still-ruling socialists opting to cooperate with the United States to sell the oil at a profit.
“Cuba is, right now, a failed nation. They don’t even have jet fuel to get airplanes to take off, they’re clogging up their runway,” President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One this week. “We’re talking to Cuba right now. I have Marco Rubio talking to Cuba right now, and they should absolutely make a deal because it’s really a humanitarian threat.”
At press time, at least one Cuban man known for his alleged involvement in the 1996 killing of the four Brothers to the Rescue members has attempted to hide his communist past and deceive authorities to live in U.S. territory. Last year, Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a Cuban pilot linked to the 1996 massacre, was charged with immigration fraud by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida after prosecutors found that he sought to deceive U.S. immigration authorities by concealing his past affiliation with the Cuban regime and membership in the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense force.
González-Pardo reportedly entered the United States in 2024 thanks to the Biden administration’s “humanitarian parole,” program, a fraud-riddled initiative that allowed up to 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan nationals to enter the United States and “legally” reside and work for a period of “up to two years.” The Trump administration terminated the “parole” program in 2025.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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