June 2008         

A JULY 4th TRIBUTE: PROFILE OF AN ENTREPRENUER AND LOVER OF LIBERTY

By Tony Mulkern

              Orestes Peña, is CEO of Peña Grading & Demolition of Sun Valley, California, one of the five largest demolition companies in the state and in the top 25 nationwide.  The story of his three daring escape attempts from Cuba and his great love for his adopted country, the United States, are eagerly shared with all who come to know him. His vivid saga seems an appropriate reminder of all that we have to celebrate and be thankful for on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  In a recent conversation, Orestes related the details surrounding his immigration, including the shooting deaths of two friends by Cuban authorities and the imprisonment of many others.  His account is summarized below. 

              In the mid-sixties, Orestes found himself alone as a youth in Communist Cuba after his parents took advantage of the opportunity to emigrate legally to the U.S., due to his father’s medical condition.  All young men were required to serve in the military.  After completing three years in the Cuban armed forces and sharing his father’s disdain for the Castro regime, Orestes engaged in the first disastrous attempt to escape. 

FIRST ATTEMPT

              A friend supplied the boat, and money from Orestes’ father in the U.S. made it possible to obtain the engine.  The plan was for him and four friends to meet at the assigned spot at 11 p.m., row out quietly to a distance where the engine noise would not alert the Cuban Coast Guard, and head to Florida.  That evening, the bus Orestes planned to take from Havana to the beach broke down, and he did  not arrive until midnight.  Upon his arrival, he saw from a distance that the authorities had his four friends in custody, all of whom served five years in prison.  Evidently, they had left without him and had started the engine too soon.

SECOND ATTEMPT

              The second attempt resulted in the death of two of the attempted escapees.  Seventeen men, including Orestes, arranged with a fisherman to take them the 90 miles to Florida for $500.00 each, payable upon their arrival by family members in the U.S.  The surrounding circumstances read like an adventure drama.

              The fisherman was divorced with a nine year-old son, and when he and his ex-wife fought he would sometimes threaten to flee with the boy on his boat to the U.S.  The day of the planned escape, he told his wife that he wanted to test the boat and take the boy for a ride.  When he had not returned by 6 p.m., fearing he was carrying out his oft-repeated threat, she called the police, who began the search.

              The alerted Cuban Coast Guard spotted the boat on the way to Piedra Alta, a rocky, cliffy shore some 35 miles east of Havana and the assigned meeting place. They followed him stealthily at a distance, while notifying authorities on land, who were also now tracking him on the road which lay close by the coastline. 

              Since there was no beach at which to moor, the plan was for each intended escapee to reach the boat in an inner tube, tied to a rope held by the next man on shore.  After each person swam to the boat and climbed in, the tube would be pulled back and the process repeated.

              At 10 p.m., Orestes heard the engine and saw the silhouette of the fisherman’s boat.  Quickly, he jumped into the water wearing the inner tube and began to swim.  As he grabbed the side of the boat, the Coast Guard opened fire and ordered everyone to freeze.  Troops on the shore began rounding up the 16 others still waiting.  Two attempted to run away and were shot and killed.

              Orestes immediately let go of the boat and inner tube.  Using snorkeling equipment he was carrying, he swam about five miles west, as the Coast Guard circled in search of him.  Altogether, he spent more than seven hours that night in waters where sharks hunt, until it was safe to come ashore at a remote spot around sunrise.  Some friendly strangers gave him bread with sugar, and he told them the current had carried him out to sea the night before.

THIRD ATTEMPT: SUCCESS

              The third and final escape attempt was one of meticulous planning, resourcefulness, and hard work, in addition to courage and good luck.  As a member of a championship spear-fishing team, Orestes had a great deal of training in arduous rowing and the means to obtain fish. Both facts would be critical to his success this time.

              A friend proposed to Orestes that they build their own boat according to plans he had found in Popular Mechanics.  It could be built in 14 separate parts in their apartment and assembled at the point of departure.  They agreed to proceed, if they could obtain the needed materials, access to which was tightly controlled by the government.

              Orestes convinced a friend at a carpentry shop that he needed plywood to build chicken coops.  His friend agreed to throw scraps of wood over the fence at night after the shop closed.  Another contact had access to screws, which he traded for the freshly speared fish that Orestes supplied.  To avoid raising suspicions, Orestes and his friend sawed and assembled the wood in their second-floor apartment only when they were sure their first-floor neighbor was out.  When the 14 parts were packaged and ready to move, another friend helped transport them to a Mangrove lagoon near the sea by means which Orestes wishes to remain vague because he is still in Cuba. 

              It took five hours for four men to assemble the boat, as tightly as they could, for they had made no provision for sealant.  Orestes served as look-out.  Several times they feared detection, first by hunters and then by wood cutters. As nightfall approached, the ocean developed swells of five to seven feet.  On top of that, on the very occasion they needed cover of deepest darkness, there was a full moon!  Knowing from prior stakeouts that the earliest a patrol guard and his dog would appear was 8:15 p.m., they had one hour after assembly to launch.  The combination of foreboding events led one of the five to choose to stay behind.

              Loaded with three inner tubes, five gallons of water in a gasoline container, brown sugar, bread, a clock, a bailing can, and a bottle of Bacardi rum, the boat was pulled through the mud and sand until Orestes was free to row, “very fast and strong.”  One mile from shore, Orestes and his friends could see the Coast Guard on the shore shooting flares to signal that an attempted escape was in progress.  They also opened fire, but with no effect.  Fortunately, the Coast Guard did not pursue. Orestes guesses that they believed the boat had no chance of surviving the rough seas that night.

              At 3:30 a.m., 30 miles out, while catching their last view of the lighthouse at Santa Cruz, Orestes finally took a break.  He had been rowing hard for seven and one-half hours.  He rested only 20 minutes, during which he massaged his arms with the Bacardi.  His less skilled friends nearly capsized the boat when they tried to row, and so Orestes rowed all the next day, until 4:30 p.m. 

              When they first spotted the unrecognizable object on the horizon, they feared the worst.  Earlier, a Soviet freighter had passed within a distance of “five blocks,” apparently unaware of the fugitives in the water below. And so they began to row away to evade the possible threat, not yet sure whether it was a ship.  But this time they had been detected.  Suddenly, “out of nowhere” a jet fighter swooped down, apparently to examine them.  As it rapidly passed and pulled up, Orestes recovered sufficiently from his shock to recognize the U.S. markings.  Within 40 minutes, alongside the badly leaking, little boat and its exhausted refugees was the United States Coast Guard Cutter Munro 724, a ship whose name is burned into Orestes’ memory with the deepest gratitude. 

              Orestes and his friends were treated as honored guests on the Munro and later transferred to a PT boat for the trip to Florida.  He will never forget their thrill at the first sight of the lights of Miami, for them the lights of liberty and opportunity, at long last.  This was 1971.

SUCCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

              Over the next dozen years or so, Orestes struggled financially in a number of jobs. In 1973 he bought his first truck and in 1984 his first caterpillar.  Today he owns 14 tractor-trailer trucks, plus trailers, and 52 pieces of heavy equipment, the land and buildings in Sun Valley on which Peña Grading & Demolition is located, as well as a crushing plant for recycling the products of demolition into road paving base.  His company has worked on many of the major construction projects in the area.  As a next step, Orestes is in the market to buy land for the nearby crushing company as well.  Among his proudest achievements is the family he has built with his wife Irma, whom he met in the U.S.  In characteristic humility, he credits Irma’s business sense for much of his success.  Both he and Irma also credit a great deal of “good luck.”

LESSONS

              It seems clear to this writer, however, that his ordeal of escape from Cuba provided Orestes with many lessons which have contributed to his entrepreneurial success.  Among them are:

CONCLUSION

              Orestes speaks effusively about what a “beautiful and wonderful country” he has found the United States to be.  He is right, that is what he found.  I would respectfully add: and now, because this good and courageous man is here, it is even better.

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Copyright, Mulkern Associates, 2008