Brothers to the Rescue Hero Honored in New Jersey
By Eric Samuel Alejandro
HAVANA TIMES – The month of May is routinely considered “Cuban Month” in the municipality of Union City, given that May 20th is the anniversary of the instauration of the Cuban Republic in 1902 after the US occupation that in turn had followed Cuba’s War of Independence from the Spanish Empire. Union City, in the northeastern corner of New Jersey’s Hudson County, is informally known as “The Miami of the North,” given its high concentration of Cuban-Americans.
As part of the Cuban Month’s observances this year, the city council approved naming the corner of Park Ave and 43rd St. “Mario de la Peña Way” upon the suggestion of Professor Roland Alum, a member of the Cuban Academy of History in Exile and vice-chairman of the Trenton-based New Jersey State Hispanic Center.
The late Mario de la Peña (1972-1996) was one of the four victims piloting airplanes with the Miami-based “Brothers to the Rescue” team when their two un-armed small civil aircrafts were unjustifiably and mercilessly shot down by Cuban military jets on February 24, 1996.
Brothers to the Rescue planes routinely patrolled the Florida Straits searching from the air for seafaring escapees from Communist Cuba, so as to alert the US Coast Guard to save their lives.
Only 24 years old, Mario was born in the then North Hudson Hospital, which building is now a senior citizens complex on the 4300 block of Park Avenue, while the hospital relocated years later to a nearby town. When Mario was still a teenager, he and his Cuban-born parents moved to Miami, where he joined Brothers to the Rescue upon receiving his longed-for pilot’s license.
The Union City leadership deemed it appropriate to honor the memory of young Mario de la Peña as the North Hudson and also the New Jersey martyr with a ceremony that took place at noon, on Tuesday, May 27, 2005, at the corner of 43rd St. and Park Avenue, that is now named Mario de la Peña Way.