The day will come again

Turns out there was a big Cuban history of private aviation before Castro decided it was a bad thing:
"Cubans had embraced aviation with a passion from the beginning, when in May 1910 a French aviator, Andre Bellot, astonished Havana residents by flying his 60-horsepower Voisin biplane over a grassy plain in the city. Three years later, two Cuban pilots—Domingo Rosillo (with a naval escort) and then Agustin Parla (with only a compass)—made the 90-mile flight from Key West, Florida, to Cuba and were hailed as heroes. In 1919, the Compania Aerea Cubana set up the first flying school in Cuba, using Farman F-40s. The following year brought the first Cuban airline service and the first airmail flight. Charles Lindbergh stopped by on his goodwill tour of the Caribbean, landing the Spirit of St. Louis in Havana on February 8, 1928."
"An annual celebration in Havana called The Day of the Aviator. The festival, which had begun in 1953, was held every May to commemorate the Florida-to-Cuba flights of Domingo Rosillo and Agustin Parla. As part of the festivities, private aircraft landed on public streets, then taxied parade-like down the capital’s coastal boulevard, the Malecon. Hundreds of people lined the sea wall, and pilots would wave at the admiring crowds like princesses on May Day floats."
Luis Palacios, 67, who soloed in a Piper J-3 Cub when he was 19, remembers the heart-stopping landings the pilots had to make. “You had to land the plane directly on the street,” he says. “Sometimes it was tricky with the crosswinds coming off the water. The planes were mostly tail-draggers. Then all the planes would taxi the length of the Malecon with people hanging onto the wings, helping guide the plane through the crowds. It was spectacular. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world.”
“In those days, Americans and Cubans traveled back and forth from Cuba and Miami the way we do now between Miami and Fort Lauderdale,” Palacios says. “Cuba was only an hour or so away from the States by plane. There were all the flight schools in Miami. There was the Pan Am base in Miami. Many pilots trained in flight schools in Miami, bought planes there, and flew them back to the island.”
Finally, in early 1961, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Castro’s government. Commercial flights between the two countries—including airmail—ceased. Airplanes, private and commercial, were being hijacked at gunpoint all over Cuba by pilots or passengers desperate to leave. At least 19 aircraft were hijacked from early 1959 to the spring of 1961, according to Rodriguez. Those who made it to the United States were officially welcomed and given asylum.