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He will become the first member of Florida's congressional delegation to visit the communist-run country.
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 25, 2003
MIAMI -- After voting several times in Congress on U.S.-Cuba policy, U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa wants to see the island.
The Democrat will begin a five-day trip to Cuba on Friday and become the first member of Florida's congressional delegation to visit the communist-run country.
"In the community I represent people are taking more and more interest in Cuba and its relationship to Florida and the United States," Davis said Monday. "I decided to spend more time understanding the issue myself."
Davis will be traveling with U.S. Rep Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., on a trip organized by the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think-tank that specializes in Latin America policy.
The pair hope to meet with senior government officials as well as pro-democracy activists, religious leaders and ordinary residents. They are not scheduled to meet with Fidel Castro.
"My main interest is meeting the next generation of leadership in Cuba," Davis said. "I have heard there are some very talented people, forward-looking officials in the mid-level of government there."
He also wants to learn more about economic conditions in Cuba and ways in which the United States can help the Cuban people directly. "It's the most compelling story I hear from people who come back from Cuba," he said.
The representatives are the latest in an increasingly long line of U.S. legislators who have made fact-finding visits to Cuba. Most have come away supporting change in U.S. policy, and the 43-year-old embargo against the island.
Davis has a mixed record on Cuba, supporting recent amendments to lift restrictions on the sale of food and medicines while opposing lifting other embargo measures.
Tampa Mayor Dick Greco led a local delegation to Cuba last July without first publicly announcing the trip. Davis has reached out to potential critics beforehand.
"He's not being sneaky about it at all," said Tampa lawyer Ralph Fernandez, who strongly opposes Davis' trip and called it "morally offensive" and "un-American" as the United States prepares for war.
Fernandez, who arrived from Cuba when he was 9 years old, is a childhood friend of Davis' family. He said he met several times with Davis to urge him not to make the trip.
"There is no need to fact-find in Cuba," Fernandez said. "There's no need to legitimate a modern-day dictator and terrorist. Castro has left a trail of death behind him."
Other Cuban exile groups, including the influential Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, were not as harsh as Fernandez.
"We object to people who go to Cuba simply to find excuses to lift the embargo," said the foundation's executive director, Joe Garcia. "But Jim Davis has been a good friend of the Cuba issue for many years, and if he says he's going on a fact-finding trip, we take him at his word."
Garcia said Davis met with foundation members in Tampa, and the group was helping organize his trip. The trip will include a meeting with former political prisoners on Thursday night in Miami.
The director of Cuba Programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, Dan Erikson, said the two representatives would be offered "a 360-degree tour of Cuba's economic and political landscape."
The Inter-American Dialogue is critical of U.S. policy toward Cuba, he said, but opposes unconditional lifting of the embargo. "We have a long-standing position of encouraging engagement with Cuba and reducing hostility," he said.
Davis and Kolbe are also expected to visit a Cuban school and medical clinic to examine the island's much-vaunted education and health systems.