Dream Machine

Dream Machine
Two innovative Cuban refugees who now are legally in the United States
are re-creating their first escape vessel.

By Liz Balmaseda
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 11, 2006

MIAMI — The brand-new cars and trucks gleam beneath the Miami sun in the
string of dealerships that line Northwest 12th Street. There they are,
the dream machines, America's favorite declaration of independence.
Start your engines. Hit the highway. Ride like the wind. Freedom.


TIMELINE

July 17, 2003: The Coast Guard intercepts 12 Cubans in a boat made by
Luis Grass and Marcial Basanta from a 1951 2-ton Chevy flatbed truck.

Feb. 3, 2004: Grass, Basanta and nine others are intercepted again, this
time in a converted 1959 Buick.

Late 2004: The Grass family is granted residency in Costa Rica but
immigrates to the U.S., intent on reaching their original goal.

December 2005: Basanta and his family are granted U.S. visas and arrive
in Miami.


Seven months later, they tried again in an amphibious 1959 fin-tailed
Buick. Rejected once more, the childhood buddies from Havana resorted to
more established ways of reaching the United States: Grass and his
family slipped across the border from Mexico; Basanta and his clan flew
here on hard-fought legal visas.

These days, you'll find the Grass-Basanta mechanic team at work in one
of those Miami car lots, Maroone Chevrolet. In a garage tucked behind
the service department, in a realm apart from the universe of shiny rims
and new-car smell, the men labor over a 1953 Chevy truck, almost
identical to the 1951 model they rebuilt in Havana. This truck hasn't
hit its top speed — or any speed — in ages, but it still stands proudly.

Like the dream machines out front, this one also exudes promises of
freedom. In fact, that's the Chevy's name: Libertad.

With the backing of the dealership's general manager, Raul de la Milera,
the refugee mechanics are recreating their original work of art. After
more than 11 months of painstaking work, they're getting close to the
Libertad's debut. Before the New Year dawns, they plan to ease the
truck-boat into the bay waters behind the shrine to Our Lady of Charity
in Coconut Grove and sail it around Biscayne Bay.

A symbolic voyage to nowhere, Grass says.

"We want to show our gratitude to a country that doesn't suppress your
dreams,'' he says.

A surreal vision on the Florida Straits, the original truck-boat
captured the fancy of refugee advocates and automobile aficionados
alike. The 2-ton flatbed truck took on monumental dimensions as news
wires flashed its image across the globe.

Powered by improvised propellers attached to the rear axle and the drive
shaft, it floated on a pontoon of six 55-gallon oil drums. It appeared
comical even, as if its voyage should be accompanied by a dialogue
bubble exclaiming, ''Dude, where's my exit?''

For Basanta, Grass and the 10 other Cubans aboard, however, there was
nothing funny about watching the U.S. Coast Guard spray their beloved
truck with 25mm machine gun fire as it bobbed defiantly and finally sank
to the bottom of the sea.

Frustration inspired escape plan

For nearly three years, the sinking of the craft stood as a frustrating
parallel for their own dashed hopes. Their path to life in this country
brought them dead ends, detours and layovers.

It is a path that began in their Havana neighborhood of San Miguel del
Padron. Grass, a mechanical engineer, struggled to support his wife,
Isora, and their son, Angel Luis, now 7. He scavenged for odd jobs in
his beat-up green truck, the doomed Chevrolet. Likewise, his friend
Basanta, a former tae kwon do champion, used his own truck to haul
passengers and bulky loads for nominal fees to feed his family, wife
Mirlena and their two young children.

But one day, the government impounded Grass' truck over some botched
paperwork. Desperate and disgruntled, he approached his childhood friend
and offered an escape plan.

"We were at the beach one day and Luis tells me, 'Why don't we seal up
my truck and sail it to Miami?' I said, 'Are you drunk?' " recalls
Basanta. ''But the next day, he showed up with the plans at my house.
And we built it right there in my shop.''

Having bought the truck from a neighbor years earlier, Grass reasoned
that he, not the government, owned the Chevy. So he took his spare key
and drove it away.

"I guess you could say I stole my own truck,'' Grass says.

Like the rafters who flee Cuba each year, they would escape by sea. But
unlike typical boat refugees, their vessel would be adaptable. Without
the prow and the pontoon, the old truck would be perfectly inconspicuous
on an island crawling with vintage American cars and trucks. And it
would be perfectly conspicuous to American eyes at sea. They figured
Americans would be impressed by their ingenuity.

Together with some close neighbors, they went to work on their plan at
Basanta's house. They sold possessions to buy scrap metal and other
black market supplies. They used welded sheet metal to seal the truck's
bottom. They constructed a small prow that would be fastened to the
front bumper. Years later, Car and Driver magazine would describe the
mechanical intricacies of their masterpiece this way in an August 2006
feature:

"Another section of hull was lashed behind the truck to balance the
vehicle relative to its height and width. Power came from the truck's
ancient 236-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine (rated at 92 horsepower when
it was new, before a half-century's seasoning in Cuban agriculture) with
a transfer case behind the transmission feeding a second drive shaft and
ultimately a 16-inch propeller Grass had scavenged. Cables attached to
the tie-rod ends ran back to a fabricated rudder so that turning the
truck's steering wheel moved it appropriately (there was also a tiller,
should the cables fail).''

If at first you don't succeed ...

The intrepid truckonauts — nine men, two women and one young boy — set
sail from a Havana beach on July 16, 2003. They were picked up by the
U.S. Coast Guard the next day and repatriated.

If life in Cuba was difficult before their escape attempt, it became
unbearable upon their return. State security agents harassed them,
raided their homes, confiscating whatever they deemed suspicious, even
yanking out Basanta's telephone line. Shortly after they arrived, the
mechanics joined their neighbor, Rafael Diaz, to convert his 1959
seafoam-green Buick into a seaworthy craft. Diaz had attempted a
similar, failed escape aboard an older model car one decade earlier.

The Buick, carrying 11 refugees — Grass, his wife and son, Basanta, his
wife and two children, and neighbor Diaz, his wife and two children —
left Guanabo beach on Feb. 2, 2004. Hours later, the Coast Guard
intercepted them. The Basantas and the Diazes were sent back to Cuba,
where they joined other deportees from the truck adventure in lobbying
officials at the U.S. interests section in Havana for visas.

Meanwhile, the Grass family was transported to the U.S. Naval Base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They languished at the base for 10 months before
being granted residency in Costa Rica. Intent on reaching their original
goal — a life in South Florida — Grass schemed once again. This time, he
planned a trip by land with his wife and child. He trekked through five
countries for more than three weeks by car, bus and foot.

"That was a million times worse than crossing by sea,'' he says.

The Grasses crossed the border at Matamoros, Mexico, into Brownsville,
Texas, on March 12, 2005. Just days later, they were sipping
Cuban-American coffee in Hialeah, at Grass' brother-in-law's home.

The Basantas had to wait a few months longer. They were granted U.S.
visas and arrived in Miami in December 2005.

As for the neighbor, Diaz, he and his family sailed to Florida aboard a
re-engineered, aqua 1948 Mercury taxi in June 2005. Most of the 13
refugees aboard that vessel were sent back, but Diaz and his family were
processed at Guantanamo. Two weeks later, they were transported to South
Florida because they had been granted U.S. visas in Havana. The Cuban
government had blocked their exit.

The Buick met the same fate as the Chevy truck. The Coast Guard deemed
both vessels to be hazardous.

But now the original truckonauts vow to create a machine that is not
only seaworthy but also properly registered.

Honored owner donates truck

The Chevy has come a long way from the day last year when Grass spied
the beat-up truck in someone's back yard in northwest Miami-Dade. He
offered to buy it, but the owner was so honored to meet the famous
truckonaut that he handed him the title free of charge.

Grass' boss, who was equally moved when he met the mechanic at a local
cable TV current affairs show, had told him to go hunt for a replica of
the original truck. Grass couldn't believe he found its virtual twin.

After they've completed the electrical work and finishing touches, the
mechanics say they will obtain permits for the Libertad's debut. There
is no date set for that maiden voyage.

"Isn't it a work of art?'' says fellow mechanic Rolando Gonzalez on a
recent morning, beholding the truck-boat in progress. He arrived from
Cuba two years ago and now works at the dealership with his 21-year-old
son, who is studying computer technology.

Gonzalez says he heard about the original truck-boat contraption from
friends in Cuba. The truckonauts were famous, he says. Now he ducks into
the garage every so often to check on his new friends.

"We're a family here. We're all proud 'worms' living in the country of
the future,'' says Gonzalez, age 60, referencing the term Fidel Castro
uses to describe his opponents.

In the country of the future, the truck mechanics have their eyes set on
what comes next. They have been working with a film crew to document
their story. But they have even bigger dreams: perhaps a TV program to
showcase their inventions, à la American Chopper on the Discovery Channel.

They would take a detour, of course, for a certain news bulletin.

"When Castro dies and Cuba is free, we'll sail this truck to Havana for
a visit,'' Grass says.

Basanta chimes in: ''That's a given.''

There they'd be, just a couple of dreamers and their dream machine.

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