He never lost faith

LITTLE ROCK — In the annals of those who fight for freedom and human dignity in the face of totalitarianism, there must be a special place for individuals who dare take the first steps when the monolith of power seems so foreboding. Oswaldo Paya took them in Cuba, showing people that they did not have to remain silent in Fidel Castro’s prison of crumbling communism.

Paya, 60, was killed Sunday evening in a car crash in Cuba’s eastern Granma province, along with another dissident. A rental car they were driving hit a tree. Two foreigners riding with them were injured. Family members have questioned the circumstances of the accident.

From the time he was a youth, Paya spoke his mind. In school, at age 17, he told friends of his support for the Prague Spring, while Castro was backing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. For his remarks, Paya was sentenced to three years in a labor camp, where he hacked sugar cane and quarried marble 10 hours a day. “It was a struggle between power and spirit,” he said. “I left with a stronger faith that things can change.”

Paya, an engineer and Catholic, never lost that faith. He stood up for religious and political freedom in the 1980s and 1990s. He came to greater prominence in 2002 with the Varela Project, named after Felix Varela, a 19th Century priest and independence activist. With help from members of other dissident groups, Paya circulated a petition seeking a national referendum to guarantee freedom of expression and association, amnesty for political prisoners and free elections. The petition drew an astonishing 10,000 signatures in Cuba, which under its constitution should have forced the National Assembly to permit a referendum.

But Castro had other ideas. In early 2003, he launched a vicious crackdown on dissidents and others who had supported the Varela Project.

Paya was undaunted despite the repressions. He sought a free society to be built by Cubans with their own hands. While his dreams have yet to be fulfilled, they will be, and when they do, it will be in no small measure because he had the courage to take those first steps.