Ryan Nicol
State Rep. David Richardson kicked off a two-day listening tour in Cuba’s capital today as he continues to campaign in the race for Florida’s 27th Congressional District.
The Richardson campaign says the focus of the Havana tour is “to learn more about economic and societal developments in the wake of changes in U.S. relations with Cuba.”
Richardson currently represents House District 113, which includes Miami-Dade County’s Little Havana. CD 27 also covers Miami Beach and Kendall.
“A half-century of isolation did not achieve progress for the everyday Cuban, so I fully support a position of engagement with Cuban civil society,” said Richardson of his overall vision on U.S. policy toward Cuba.
“Despite President Donald Trump‘s attempts at reversing his predecessor’s progress on foreign policy, I am going to see firsthand how rolling back travel and trade restrictions has changed the lives of the Cuban people, helped private Cuban entrepreneurs, and strengthened the connection between the residents of Little Havana and Havana.”
On Richardson’s schedule is a meeting with film director Rafael Ramos, owner and manager of Café Madrigal, a popular spot among the LGBTQ community. Richardson is one of two first openly gay members of the Florida legislature.
“The two will discuss the status of the LGBTQ community within Cuban society and how it has changed since the opening of relations with the U.S.,” according to Richardson’s campaign.
Richardson is also seeking to meet with Cubans regarding the state of the small business community. He has also scheduled a tour of the Lizt Alfonso Academy, a prominent women-led dance company that enrolls local youth.
Five Democrats, including Richardson, are competing for the party’s nomination in CD 27. Also running are former Knight Foundation Program Director Matt Haggman, former University of Miami academic Advisor Michael A. Hepburn, Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, and former UM President Donna Shalala.
The race will be open as incumbent U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring. The CD 27 primary will take place Aug. 28.
One comment
Gualterio Nunez Estrada
July 17, 2018 at 5:09 am
Four months ago, I travel to Santiago de Cuba with my wife for two weeks to visit her family and I see a lot of private bussines in the city and so many merchans from Santiago and Guantanamo flyng everyday to Guyana (where cuban merchants build up and industry of tourist and trade), Haiti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Russia to to buy resale items. I was talking to many of them and they told me “to wait for american tourist to make more bussines and grow up because canadian and european tourism does not spread the money like american ussualy do where they landing”. The city, which is the second in Cuba, is currently a hotbed of house-to-house business and transactions with different foreign currencies parallel to the government’s exchange houses. The trips of the merchants have increased more because many have the Spanish passport or the citizenship of a foreign spouse who lives there plus those who arrive continuously with merchandise from more than one hundred countries with which Cuba has cooperation. This phenomenon of high commercial activity is observed in a predominantly black community – Santiago and Guantanamo – with no relatives in the United States, nor a significant remittance and disconnected from the Cuban-American community in Miami where there are few relatives with whom they have virtually no communication, it is a process completely outside the Cuban-American community whose members are regarded as “foreigners” in those areas.I believe that the representative David Richardson will not have an objective vision of Cuba traveling for a day to Havana because the nature of Cuba’s internal economy is currently not determined only by relatives who receive remittances from Miami in Havana but they have other sources and it is varied according to the province in question. For example, Miami clothing does not sell in Santiago and Guantanamo because there young people follow the fashion of Haiti and Guyana of French influence, this to cite a kind of merchandise. When visiting Cuba in 2009, there was no such situation in Santiago de Cuba, the trade did not exist literally. Gualterio Nunez Estrada, [email protected], Sarasota, Florida. Former professional science tematic writer Universidad de Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Former collaborator Dr. Jhon Money, Jhons Hopskin, Maryland (KINSEY). Collaborator for Sarasota, Florida of The National Science Foundation. Ensayos sobre la poesía de Víctor Villegas (Book, 2000) http://www.worldcat.org/title/ensayos-sobre-la-poesia-de-victor-villegas/oclc/45456386 Ref.: [PDF] STEMreportFinal Nov7 – NSF http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsb07114/nsb07114.pdf nsb-07-114 a national action plan for addressing the critical needs of the u.s. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education system
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