MADRID, Spain.- Cuban activist Sayli Navarro, member of the Ladies in White movement and promoter of the Cuba Decide campaign, was recognized with the 2025 “Oswaldo Payá: Freedom and Life” International Award.
The award is awarded by the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy (JuventudLAC), the Foundation for Pan American Democracy (FDP) and Ofelia Acevedo, widow of Cuban opposition figure Oswaldo Payá.
Along with Navarro, former Venezuelan political prisoners María Oropeza and Jesús Armas were also honored, both released this Sunday, February 8, and recognized for their participation in initiatives to defend democracy and human rights in Venezuela.
In an official publication, JuventudLAC pointed out that the award “not only recognizes careers,” but also seeks to make situations of injustice visible and accompany those who exercise civic participation in contexts of political persecution. The organization stressed that the distinction aims to reaffirm that civic, peaceful and democratic struggle should not be criminalized.
After the announcement of the award, Rosa María Payá, daughter of Oswaldo Payá, referred to Navarro on social networks. “I have known Saylí for more than 20 years. The same years she has been fighting for the freedom of all Cubans. For almost four years she has been locked up in a terrible prison for the crime of defending our rights, for daring to be free, the freest woman who has ever lived in communist Cuba,” she wrote.
Navarro is the daughter of the Cuban opposition figure Félix Navarro Rodríguez, promoter of Cuba Decide and president of the “Pedro Luis Boitel” Party for Democracy. Both were arrested in Perico, province of Matanzas, in the context of the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021 (11J).
At the beginning of this year, Amnesty International demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the activist, whom it considers a prisoner of conscience for her imprisonment after the 9/11 protests and her eight-year prison sentence. In a publication released by Amnesty International Americas, the organization highlighted that Navarro is a co-founder of the opposition movement Ladies in White, made up of mothers, wives and daughters of the 75 dissidents arrested during the 2003 repressive wave known as the Black Spring.
This year’s “Oswaldo Payá: Freedom and Life” International Award focuses on young activists deprived of liberty for political reasons in the region, whom it describes as part of “a generation criminalized for not accepting authoritarianism” in their countries.
Established in 2016, the award honors the memory of the Cuban opposition leader assassinated by the Castro regime in 2012 and is presented annually to people and organizations that defend democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms in Latin America.
Previously, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), and the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, have received this recognition.
