Kriti Mehrotra
It was in 2012 when the entire world turned upside down for the Payá family as political activist Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas lost his life under extremely mysterious circumstances. After all, as explored in HBO’s ‘Night is Not Eternal,’ we get a deep insight into the way he spent his life opposing the one-party rule in his homeland, a legacy that his daughter has continued. However, despite all that he did for his nation, his daughter Rosa María Payá is now a better-known activist owing to her international reach and aggressive ways of utilizing social media for their cause.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas Has Always Been Against Communist
As the fifth of seven children in a Roman Catholic household in Cerro, Havana, Oswaldo admittedly grew up in severe property and learned from an early age he needed to assert himself if he wanted to be heard. However, no one could have ever imagined this would give him the courage to refuse to join the Communist League following the Cuban Revolution at a very early age. The only thing he realized his nation needed from the get-go was a right to freedom as well as elections, so he soon began working towards ideas to make such a democracy possible.
Unfortunately, though, Oswaldo’s plans did get distributed in the middle as he was sentenced to three years of hard labor on Isla de Pinos in 1969 for refusing to transport political prisoners during his mandatory military service. Nevertheless, he didn’t let it hold him back for long – in the hopes of garnering further education and sparking a change, he enrolled at the University of Havana as a physics major not long after attaining his freedom. He was expelled from school when it came to light that he was a practicing Christian, but again, he attended night school and graduated with a degree in telecommunications.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas Could Have Left Cuba, But He Deliberately Didn’t
It was roughly 1986 when Oswaldo tied the knot with the love of his life, Ofelia Acevedo, mere months after knowing her, only for them to soon settle down in Little Havana for good. That’s where they also welcomed three beautiful children into their lives – Oswaldo José Jr., Rosa María, as well as Reinaldo Isaías – all the while building a name for himself as an engineer and activist. Thus came the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), a movement he founded in 1987 as a call for non-violent civil disobedience against the rule of the Cuban Communist Party and for the freedom of political prisoners across the globe.
Oswaldo was thus offered several opportunities to leave Cuba alongside his family, yet he always refused as he didn’t want to be an exile from his own homeland and knew the fight was worth it. His primary focus was just his family and his work, especially the Varela Project, which he believed could be the key that would lead to constitutional and parliamentary changes, but to no avail. That’s because this project is essentially a petition drive that called for freedom of speech and assembly, allowing private business ownership and ending one-party rule. He got over 30,000 signatures when only 10,000 were needed, but it still didn’t make a difference.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas Death in 2012 Was a Targeted Killing
Since a lot of Oswaldo’s efforts were loud and proud, he created a massive difference not only for his nation but also for the lives of all those who met or shared his experiences. It thus comes as no surprise he was recognized by the European Parliament with the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought award, all the while being recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize committee too. He actually continued to criticize the Cuban government even as Castro Fidel’s alleged rule was transferred to his brother Raul, but he sadly didn’t win any awards.
But alas, on July 22, 2012, the 60-year-old died in a car crash at around 1:50 pm near Bayamo in eastern Granma province, not far from an intersecting road. There were several other people in the vehicle with him, too, and a youth league named Harold Cepero also sadly passed away in the crash, with a Swedish politician and a Spanish politician both surviving. As per their alleged narratives, their car was rammed by another vehicle with Cuban government license plates right at the intersection, causing the fatal crash. Since he had received numerous death threats over the years, this was honestly not very hard to imagine for the Payas, but the Cuban government stated the driver had lost control of the vehicle and collided with a tree.
In the end, Oswaldo Jose Paya passed away at the age of 60 on that fateful day, with records asserting he died on impact owing to some severe injuries across his body. In the aftermath, the truth is his wife, as well as kids, did flee Cuba and settle down in Miami, Florida, as per his own instructions because he knew just how dangerous his homeland could be – they were allegedly being followed at every step of the way. 2023 did bring closure to the Payas, though, at least in some sense, as an investigation by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) resulted in the ruling that the Cuban state was indeed responsible for the murder of the activist.
Read More: Oswaldo “Ozzy” Conde’s Murder: How Did He Die? Who Killed Him?
