Word: domaniewicz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...inside our four-seater Cessna Skymaster is both hot and stale as pilot Eduardo Domaniewicz patrols the sea off Key West. The aquamarine water of the Straits of Florida, so beautiful at first, becomes monotonous after three hours of scanning. Cuba lies just 38 miles to the south, but the horizon here is flat and featureless. The only sound is the lulling drone of the Cessna's engines. In fact, it is so boring and so suffocating in the cabin that two of our spotters are nodding off. Then, abruptly, the radio comes alive: "Stand by for a surprise!" yells...
...this group of 24 pilots flies out of Miami (usually four planes to a sortie) in order to search for balseros -- rafters -- who are risking their lives to make the 90- mile crossing from Cuba. Each of the Brothers' planes is decorated, bomber- style, with stickers representing rafts saved -- Domaniewicz's alone boasts 32. The Brothers, founded in 1991 by two Cuban-American veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, have rescued a total of 1,286 men, women and children; the oldest was 77, the youngest a five-day-old infant. Last year, as economic conditions worsened in Cuba...
...days, they rowed and drifted in the Gulf Stream without food or water. On the second day, shortly before the rescue, they spotted another group of balseros. Odalis Peres Lopez, a 27-year-old housewife, was on that second raft. She recalls yelling and crying with joy as Domaniewicz circled above. "When we saw that plane," she says, "we knew we were in the land of freedom." In tribute to same, Castro plans to drop the "Fidel" from his name...
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