MIAMI, United States. – It has been 10 years since Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were assassinated in Cuba. It was July 22, 2012. We’ll get to that later. The Spanish Ángel Carromero and the Swedish Aron Modig were, more or less, witnesses to the crime. Carromero was a delegate of New Generations, the youth organization of the Spanish Popular Party, while Modig was the president of the Youth of the Swedish Christian Democracy.
A few days ago I received an excellent book by David E. Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize winner and editorialist for Washington Post: Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba. The Pulitzer Prize is a guarantee that Hoffman knows how to investigate. He cannot be given a pig in a poke.
For those unfamiliar with American history, “Give me liberty” is a famous speech Patrick Henry delivered at St John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775, as the American Revolution was brewing. His words, which electrified the audience, ended with a well-known phrase in the country: “Give me liberty… or give me death.”
The work, very well researched, especially based on the history of Payá, was sent to me by John Suárez, the replacement for Frank Calzón, the founder and soul of the Center for a Free Cuba, a think tank dedicated exclusively to the freedom of Cubans. Perhaps the only one of its kind in a city where “think tanks” abound.
What I was going for: Give Me Liberty served to convince me of what Ofelia (the widow of Payá) and Rosa María (the eldest daughter and founder of Cuba decides, a formidable collaborator in her father’s work): that the regime assassinated Oswaldo and Harold, although it was not what Raúl Castro intended to do. He wanted to scare them, not kill them, but he condoned the action as soon as it was done. For Fidel and Raúl it was obvious where their loyalties lay. Hence the brutal cover-up, as always happens: the episodes of the sunken ships with their cargo of innocent children, the “March 13” and the Canímar, and the executions of General Arnaldo Ochoa and Colonel Tony de la Guardia. et alare the best known, but not the only ones.
The Cuban secret services, organized and trained by the Stasi of communist Germany in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, have ostensible and invisible ways of mounting the persecution of any objective present on the Island. They wanted to give a lesson to the “arrogant Europeans”, present in Cuba to train Cubans in the ups and downs of the transition, so that “Security” chose the “ostensible” formula.
An obvious vehicle, typical of the fearsome Cuban State Security: a red Lada, which followed them for a good part of the journey, even colliding with them from behind, causing the accident that would result in the two Cuban deaths (what a coincidence!).
It was not the first time that Oswaldo Payá had been followed ostensibly. A Payá collaborator declared that days before the assassination of the opposition leader, together with Harold Cepero, they used the same procedure to try to instill fear in Payá, only that on that occasion they overturned his vehicle and the car was left with the tires facing up.
That is why State Security (the Cuban political police) has an erratic posture. On the one hand, they have done what they have always done, what internally they felt authorized to do: terrorize dissidents. But in this case both people have been killed. If they died on the spot, or if they were killed a posteriori, in both cases there is cover-up and very suspicious behavior. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a great expert on Cuban affairs, published an article on April 7, 2013 at The Wall Street Journal an article that assumes he was murdered.
Why do they deny the family the opportunity to examine the body and perform an autopsy? Why don’t they respond to the accusations made by the lawyers from Human Rights Watch? What is the point of refusing to share the evidence with supporters and opponents if they have it at hand and it is a golden opportunity to shut up the opponents of the Cuban Revolution for a good number of years?
No one believes the story of “revolutionary arrogance.” When necessary they have lowered their heads and swallowed their pride. Both are already dead and can be counted. Fraga Iribarne told Fidel Castro that they were going to hang him by the testicles if he did not change his behavior. Fidel left Galicia that morning, but he did not reply to Fraga. He ate the response from him.
Today, and since the Chavista charity ended, the situation in the country is getting worse; has become a pigsty due to the lack of everything basic (electricity, medicines, drinking water, food), to which is added the presence of dengue, COVID-19 and other similar misfortunes, as if the seven plagues of Egypt will affect Cuba.
Ultimately, what Oswaldo Payá proposed with the Varela Project is extraordinarily valid. In 2003, 19 years ago, he proposed going “from the law to the law”, taking advantage of a space left by current legislation to ask the country if it insisted on communism or if it evolved towards other more intelligent and sensible ways of organizing the coexistence. At that time Fidel Castro was still alive, instead of taking advantage of the opportunity that his opponent gave him to rectify, he came out with a pachotada and accused him of being “the CIA by other means.”
Not only did he not give him freedom. He gave him death.
OPINION ARTICLE
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