14ymedio, Havana, December 27, 2023 — With two strokes, a poorly shaved beard and a nervous wreck, no one would say that the patient Basilio José Mazor, awaiting death in the municipality of Artemisa, is the same young Argentinean who, on 4 July 1973, hijacked a Boeing 737 and forced its landing in Havana. Now, after spending his entire life in the country whose regime he revered, the impossibility of a decent old age has motivated his son to demand Mazor’s return to his native country.
Mazor starred in the “most forgotten air hijacking in Argentina,” the digital Infobae recalled this Tuesday, along with some photographs that show the deplorable state of the former “air pirate.” A sympathizer, although not a member, of the People’s Revolutionary Army – the military arm of the Marxist-oriented Revolutionary Workers Party – he boarded the Aerolíneas Argentinas plane that took him to Cuba at the age of 24 with a shotgun under his poncho.
He had a son in 1972, whom he named Basilio, and who now – after several decades of separation – he is the one who requests his return to Argentina
He was born in 1949 in the town of Pergamino, not far from Buenos Aires. He had a son in 1972, whom he named Basilio, and who now – after several decades of separation – is the one asking for his return to Argentina. The boy had to live with his grandparents from the time Mazor bought the ticket and boarded Aerolíneas Argentinas flight 558, from the capital to Jujuy, on the border with Chile.
The hijacking was covered down to the last detail, since a journalist and a photojournalist from Siete Días magazine were also traveling on the plane. Mazor, with his strange clothing (a 16-gauge double-barreled shotgun, a cartridge belt across his chest and a poncho with Inca motifs) and an attack of nerves, claimed when asked why he was shaking that it was the first time he had flown in his life.
At noon, Mazor got up from his seat and went to the captain’s cabin, displayed his shotgun and said: “I am from the People’s Revolution
