A bipartisan group South Florida lawmakers want the street in front of the Cuban government’s embassy in Washington renamed after a prominent Cuban dissident killed 13 years ago this month in a mysterious car crash in Cuba.
Oswaldo Payá died in 2012 when his car crashed into a tree in eastern Cuba in what the government deemed an accident caused by driver error. However, a survivor said the vehicle had been rammed from behind by a red Lada with government plates, a claim in line with findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that state security agents likely participated in the activist’s death.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston re-introduced a bill Monday that would rename the street as "Oswaldo Payá Way” to honor Cuba's slain pro-democracy activist and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement. Read the text of the bill here.
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Other co-sponsors include Rep. María Elvira Salazar, D-Miami, Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens and Rep Carlos A. Giménez, R-Miami. A Senate version was also re-introduced by several lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
“Renaming the street in front of the embassy in D.C. for Payá will honor those lost while ensuring that their legacy in the struggle for a free Cuba endures,” said Díaz-Balart in a statement.
“Confronted by decades of violence, threats and and intimidation, Oswaldo Payá demanded that Cuba allow more freedom to its people,” said Wasserman Schultz. “I proudly join my colleagues in honoring this human rights hero by making his presence permanent, right in front of the Cuban Embassy, as a constant reminder of his work to bring justice to the Cuban people.”
In a social media post on X, Rosa María Payá, Oswaldo's daughter, expressed gratitude to the lawmakers for honoring her "father’s memory and his fight for freedom." She was recently elected to serve on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Thank you to the bipartisan members of Congress who honor my father’s memory and his fight for freedom.
— Rosa María Payá A. (@RosaMariaPaya) July 22, 2025
Naming the street in front of the dictatorship’s embassy —soon to be the embassy of a free Cuba— as Oswaldo Payá Way is an act of justice and hope.#PayaVive
Thank U @MarioDB… pic.twitter.com/jLqD2zdPLU
At the time of his death at age 60, Payá had built a reputation as the Cuban government’s most dogged opponent, having built a grassroots network of like-minded Christians, called the Varela Project, to promote freedom of assembly and human rights on the tightly controlled island.
In February 2024, Payá’s widow, Ofelia Payá, filed a lawsuit in Miami federal court, accusing Manual Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, of being an “accomplice” to her husband’s “assassination.” Rocha was arrested in December 2023 on charges he worked as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
