Amid the remarkable outpouring of earthquake aid to Venezuela from the South Florida diaspora, one expat who’s flying that help into the battered country has become an inspiration.
The pilot’s name is Eduardo. (He asked WLRN not to use his last name to protect his identity.) He’s lived in Doral for two decades, but still has close family and friends in Venezuela — especially in the central coast state of La Guaira, the place hardest hit by last week’s powerful twin earthquakes that killed at least 2,000 people, perhaps tens of thousands more.
"I have an uncle who was working in Maiquetía," Eduardo said, referring to the Simón Bolívar International Airport in La Guaira, itself heavily damaged in the temblors.
"I hadn't been able to get in touch with him since the earthquakes occurred last Wednesday."
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Last Sunday Eduardo found out why, when he landed in La Guaira at the controls of a 737 freighter jet filled with earthquake relief aid donated to the nonprofit Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) in Doral.
Asking for his uncle at the airport, Eduardo learned that he — and numerous other of his loved ones in La Guaira — had perished.
“As soon as I arrived," Eduardo said, "I started hearing about the deaths of uncles and aunts, cousins, childhood friends and former pilot colleagues who were like brothers to me."
Spencer Taylor, a GEM director who'd accompanied Eduardo on the flight into La Guaira, said just seeing the destruction there as the plane approached visibly affected the pilot.
"You could see he was struggling, processing a lot of hard emotions," Taylor said on Wednesday from Caracas.
"But through it he still landed that plane, I think, because he knew what was on it — some of the first humanitarian aid to make it into Venezuela."
Still, Eduardo said, the fatalities he was apprised of after landing "was too much loss to bear.”
But he did bear it — and said he became even more determined to keep piloting aid flights into Venezuela.
“It made me realize how urgently I still have to help the friends and family of Venezuelans who didn’t die,” he told WLRN on Wednesday morning just before taking off on his third aid flight from Miami International Airport.
That grit has made Eduardo a focus of even further motivation for the Venezuelan expats who've been volunteering in droves at GEM's vast headquarter warehouse in Doral, which Eduardo visited earlier this week.
"Gracias por lo que has hecho, pana! Estamos contigo" — "Thank you for what you've done, bro'! We're with you" — many aid donation volunteers shouted.
Venezuelan-born Doral City Councilman Rafael Pineyro, who spoke with Eduardo about his troubles contacting those relatives in La Guaira before the Sunday flight left Miami, said many if not most of those workers identify with Eduardo's tragedy.
"They've come out not just to help," Pineyro, said, "but to relieve their frustration and emotions because they themselves are still waiting to hear from a friend or a relative."
The South Florida diaspora, he added, has also donated relief goods at a volume GEM has rarely seen in response to a natural disaster.
And they're all too aware of how important Eduardo's GEM aid deliveries are, given how unprepared and ineffective the disaster response has been from Venezuela's corrupt and authoritarian regime — which in recent days has been condemned by Venezuelans and the international community for obstructing the U.S. and foreign aid effort.
Meanwhile, Eduardo said his aid missions to La Guaira keep showing him how awful the destruction there is and how much time and effort will be required to mend it.
"As I contemplate the deaths of my family members there between flights," he said, "I see families made homeless, living in the streets, many without clothing.
"Without the response of the U.S., the international community and the Venezuelan diaspora, I don't even want to think of how much worse it could be."
All he knows, he said, is that every time he lands at La Guaira now, he thinks about "how the grain of sand I represent in this effort" can at least make it better.
