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 News from Around the Americas | June 2005 
Taxi! Cubans Set Sail for Florida in Vintage Cab
 Reuters
| | A video grab shows Cuban refugees in a vintage blue floating taxicab being intercepted off the Florida Keys by the U.S. Coast Guard. A group of 13 Cubans set sail for the United States in a vintage blue taxi converted into an unwieldy but seaworthy vessel. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters) |
Miami - A group of 13 Cubans set sail for the United States in a vintage blue taxicab converted into an unwieldy vessel, Miami television station NBC 6 reported.
But the makeshift boat, with a prow jutting out of the front and a taxi sign on the roof, was intercepted on Tuesday evening by the U.S. Coast Guard about 20 miles (32 km) off Key West on the southern tip of Florida.
The television station showed images of Coast Guard launches circling the vessel and the occupants rolling up the windows, presumably to try to avoid being caught.
Coast Guard officials were not immediately available to comment.
Generally, Cubans intercepted trying to make the 90-mile (140-km) crossing from Cuba to Florida are sent home to the Communist-ruled island, while those who make it to U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay.
The taxi passengers, riding in what NBC 6 said was a 1949 Mercury, were not the first to make the journey in a converted vintage vehicle.
First there were the "truck-boaters," a group who caught the public eye with their attempt to sail over in a 1951 Chevy truck kept afloat with oil drums in 2003. Another group tried the journey in an elegant 1959 Buick-turned-boat in February 2004.
NBC 6 said one of the people on Tuesday's vessel was 40-year-old Rafael Diaz. His father, a resident of Miami, told the station the family knew earlier in the day that Diaz was trying to leave. Diaz's father told the station he was worried and sad about the failed journey.
The television station said Diaz was traveling with his wife and two children and had tried to leave Cuba before, once on one of the previous converted vehicles.
While their transport is eye-catching -- and the previous attempts have inspired considerable public sympathy -- the Cuban migrants traveling in vehicle-boats are just a fraction of the hundreds of Cubans who cross the Florida Straits every year, often ferried over in smugglers' vessels.
According to Coast Guard statistics, some 1,406 Cubans have been intercepted so far in fiscal year 2005, which began in October, compared with 1,225 intercepted in fiscal year 2004. |
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