Oswaldo Payá: For the right to have rights
As a tribute to Oswaldo Payá, I am starting my first blog post inspired by his democratic ideals and legacy. On July 22, 2020, I take great pride in joining Cubans, human rights defenders, freedom lovers, Christians, and goodwill human beings worldwide remembering the ideas and values of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, one of the founding members of the Human Rights Movement in Cuba, a Sakharov Prize laureate, a W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award recipient, a Peace Prize nominee and a hero in the peaceful struggle for democracy and justice in Cuba.
What follows is an analysis of some of Oswaldo Paya’s ideas and their relevance today. I argue that Oswaldo Payá´s ideas advocating inclusion, tolerance, democracy and national reconciliation stand in sharp contrast with the ideology of hate, exclusion, and criminalization of ideas promoted by the Castro regime in the past 61 years.
I offer insight on how Oswaldo Payá´s ideas serve to counter some of the Castro regime’s most prevailing myths and how his legacy as a pro-democracy leader and activist lives on as an inspiration and a blueprint for present and future generations of Cubans pursuing change.
THE VARELA PROJECT AND LACK OF DEMOCRACY IN CUBA
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement and was best known for the Varela Project citizen initiative which based on article 88g of the 1992 constitution, it aimed to call on a referendum to turn into laws certain rights such as freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to start businesses for Cuban citizens, amnesty for political prisoners, and a comprehensive reform to the electoral law.
The project—submitted to the National Assembly on May 10, 2002—initially gathered 11,020 signatures but it was met with harsh government repression during the 2003 Black Spring crackdown in which 75 democracy activists from numerous organizations across the island were arrested in massive raids and convicted to long prison sentences. The regime then proceeded to incorporate into the constitution the irrevocable character of socialism closing all legal and constitutional avenues for democratic change, making it impossible for any individual, institution, or even the National Assembly to propose economic, political, or social changes to the system in Cuba.
The repressive response of the regime to the Varela Project showed the world that in Cuba there is no democracy and no possibility to change the system through legal means.
UNEXPLAINED DEATH/STATE CRIME
Oswaldo died in an alleged car accident under unexplained circumstances on July 22, 2012 along with Harold Cepero, a National Coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement and one of the most promising young figures in the movement. A report published by the Human Rights Foundation in 2015 pointed to evidence suggesting to the possibility that the Cuban regime might have killed Payá. However, in my view, there is also a broader context to consider: five pro-democracy activists died in a two-year period prior to the death of Payá.
It started on Feb 23, 2010 with the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo who went on a hunger strike but for 18 days he was denied water and was subjected to brutal beatings. His death was followed on May 8, 2011 when Juan Wilfredo Soto died of acute pancreatitis in a hospital after being subjected to brutal police beating. On October 15, 2011, Laura Pollán the founder and leader of the Ladies in White died of an alleged respiratory emergency a few days after being admitted to the Calixto García Hospital in Habana. On January 20, 2012. Wilmar Villar Mendoza died after being subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment during a hunger strike in prison.
All of these dissident deaths, either due to police beatings, deliberate denial of medical attention during a hunger strike, water deprivation, cruel, degrading and inhuman prison conditions and unexplained circumstances leads one to believe that there exists the possibility of a program of state assassinations intended to eliminate key democracy activists in Cuba, including two of their key figures: Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá.
LIBERATION MEANS TO RID CUBANS OF HATRED. CASTROISM MEANS TO INSTILL CUBANS WITH HATRED
“The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” This is the liberation which we are proclaiming.”
“Hatred as the main factor in the struggle, unrelenting hatred of the enemy that pushes human beings beyond natural limitations to become an effective, selective, and cold killing machine. Our soldiers should be like this. A people without hatred cannot triumph over a brutal enemy.”
In sharp contrast to the anachronistic ideology of exclusion and hatred promoted by the Castro regime, Oswaldo Paya’s ideas are a moral reference for the future in Cuba. Unlike the style of Fidel Castro´s speeches, known for the use of diatribes and dehumanizing remarks on those who think different, Oswaldo communicated his ideas and platform in a calm, open, inclusive, reconciling, humble and rational approach, the hallmarks of the leader needed in a democratic Cuba.
Paya’s Christian-democratic platform stands as an absolute opposite to the totalitarian ideology promoted by the human rights predators clinging to power in Cuba; the oppressive dictatorship that persecuted him is a prime suspect in his death. Oswaldo believed power resided in the people and in their right to hold free and democratic elections to decide their destiny and the political, economic, and social future of their nation.
He opposed the model of a single-party state; he considered it only led to dictatorship by a single ruler. He was first and foremost a firm believer in peaceful struggle for change and rejected outright all forms of violent struggle as he considered “it led to new forms of oppression and injustice.” He never called anyone to take up arms, assault a military headquarters, plant bombs, kidnap planes or individuals, for which the 26 of July Movement led by Fidel Castro was responsible during the struggle against the Batista dictatorship.
Unlike Ernesto Guevara, who was driven by “unrelenting hatred of its enemies” or Fidel Castro who established an oppressive system based on criminalization of ideas, exclusion, persecution, imprisonment, killings, forced exile, and dehumanization of those who think different, Oswaldo was a democratic leader of hope and values, who brought out the best in every Cuban and advocated inclusion and respect for opposing ideas. To his fellow compatriots who criticized the Varela Project, his response was to democratically listen to their criticism and stand up for their right to be heard.
DISPELLING CASTROIST MYTHS: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND CIVIL RIGHTS, NOT ONE OR THE OTHER.
In Oswaldo Payá’s ideas one finds key counter-arguments to dispel some of the Castro regime’s most prevailing myths used for the past 6 decades in Cuba to justify a lack of political freedom.
For example, Payá contended that individual liberties, sovereignty and self-determination were harmonious and not opposing concepts as the regime has advocated. To back up his argument he cited father Felix Varela when he said ¨independence and national sovereignty are inseparable from the exercise of fundamental rights. ¨
He also asserted that social justice agendas are not a justification for dictatorship as he argued that a society can both guarantee political and civil rights while working to establish social justice and development.
Both of these arguments put together in the broader context of a world in which democracy and social justice work in harmony in numerous nations from Canada to Spain should help Cubans to broaden their horizons and stand up to the regime that for decades has offered a fraudulent social contract in which individual and political liberties are sacrificed in the name of an alleged social agenda.
This should also help to educate both Latin Americans and people around the world who contemplate supporting so-called populist regimes: the advancement of social agendas is never a valid justification for the persecution, imprisonment, marginalization, or forced exile of those who hold views that oppose the regime.
WHY OSWALDO PAYÁ INSPIRES: THE POWER OF ONE TO ENACT CHANGE
Oswaldo Payá was a living example of the power of one individual to liberate himself from fear, act on his ideals, and actively work to establish and articulate a movement for democratic change under the very nose of one of the longest-lasting and most brutal dictatorships in the world. Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, at a time when being a dissident in Cuba was almost unheard of and most dissidents were either imprisoned or forced into exile, Oswaldo made the impossible possible. Beginning alone as a single individual, he joined forces with other Cubans across the island to establish what became at one point the largest dissident movement in Cuba, collecting tens thousands of signatures of Cubans who supported his call for democratic change. Regardless of what anyone might think about the Varela Project and its outcome, Oswaldo’s main legacy is to show future generations that the path toward democracy in Cuba starts by mobilizing ordinary Cubans to demand their fundamental rights.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Amnesty International. Cuban authorities 'responsible' for activist's death on hunger strike: January 20, 2012.
CADAL. Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas y el Proyecto Varela: La lucha pacifica por la apertura democrática en Cuba: Fundación CADAL, 2003,
Cuban Exile Quarter, Remembering some of the victims of communism: Oswaldo Payá: November 11, 2017,
http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2017/11/remembering-some-of-victims-of-cuban_11.html
Human Rights Foundation, Press Release – HRF on Oswaldo Paya’s death; Evidence suggests government might have killed him: June 22, 2015,
Montaner, Carlos Alberto, Las Cosas que Hacen Los “Progres:” Cuadernos de Pensamiento Político, Jan – Mar, 2008, pp. 177-194.
Movimiento Cristiano Liberación, Discurso de Pat Cox and Oswaldo Payá en el Parlamento Europeo, December 17, 2002,
Payá, Oswaldo. La Noche No Será Eterna: Hypermedia, July 9, 2018.