A bipartisan group of South Florida lawmakers want the street in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C, renamed after a prominent Cuban dissident killed 13 years ago this month in a mysterious car crash.
Oswaldo Payá died in 2012 when his car struck 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, a Russian-built car, with government plates. The claim was in line with findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that state security agents likely participated in the 60-year-old activist's death.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston reintroduced a bill Monday that would rename the street as "Oswaldo Payá Way" to honor the pro-democracy activist and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement.
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 reintroduced by several lawmakers, including Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott.
The current address of the embassy is 2630 16th St. N.W., in the capital's Meridian Hill neighborhood.
"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," Díaz-Balart said in a statement.
"Confronted by decades of violence, threats and intimidation, Oswaldo Payá demanded that Cuba allow more freedom to its people," Wasserman Schultz said. "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
Payá 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.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
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