Brothers to the Rescue

Brothers to the Rescue (Spanish: Hermanos al Rescate) is a Miami-based activist nonprofit right wing organization headed by José Basulto. Formed by Cuban exiles, the group is widely known for its opposition to the Cuban government and its former leader Fidel Castro. The group describes itself as a humanitarian organization aiming to assist and rescue raft refugees emigrating from Cuba and to "support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active non-violence". Brothers to the Rescue, Inc., was founded in May 1991 "after several pilots were touched by the death of" fifteen-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, who "fleeing Castro's Cuba on a raft, perished of severe dehydration in the hands of U.S. Coast Guard officers who were attempting to save his life.".

The Cuban government accuses them of involvement in terrorist acts, and infiltrated the group (see Juan Pablo Roque and the Wasp Network).

In 1996, after deliberately violating the Cuban airspace, two Brothers to the Rescue planes were downed by the Cuban Air Force. The two aircraft failed to respond the several attempts to contact by the Cuban pilots. The incident has been condemned by the US and its allies, but the Cubans considered it as a deliberate provocation, in order to discredit Fidel Castro's Government, to justify the embargo and to finally implement the regime change plan, desperately wanted by the US.

In its early years, the group actively rescued rafters from Cuba and claims to have saved thousands of Cubans, who were emigrating from the country. Eventually, the group's focus shifted after changes in US immigration policy meant that rafters would be sent back to Cuba.

The group's founder has stated that after August 1995, it stopped seeing rafters in the water. Heavily dependent on funding for rafting activities, the group's funding rapidly dropped to $320,455 in 1995, down from $1.5 million the year before. As a result, the group focused more on civil disobedience against the Cuban government. At least once, the group's founder dropped leaflets on Cuba.

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