Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. - Cicero
Today, May 15, 2025 marks a birth anniversary: Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban human rights activist turned martyr, was born in Holguin, Cuba on this day in 1967.
14 years and one week ago today human rights defender Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia following a brutal beating three days earlier by the dictatorship's political police died from his injuries on May 8, 2011 .
23 years and five days on May 10, 2002 Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas, Regis Iglesias Ramirez and Antonio Ramón Diaz Sánchez of the Christian Liberation Movement
(from left to right in above picture) turned in 11,020 signed Varela Project petitions to the Cuban authorities demanding reforms that would see human rights respected in Cuba
and fundamental freedoms restored.
Both Regis Iglesias Ramirez, Antonio Ramón Diaz
Sánchez and dozens of other activists involved in the Varela Project
were imprisoned in the March 18, 2003 crackdown known as the end of the Cuban
Spring and spent seven long years in prison and now suffer exile.
Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas was assassinated on July 22, 2012 by Cuban government agents together with Harold Cepero Escalante, the Chirsitian Liberation Movement's youth leader.
Totalitarians may terrorize and murder but those who live on have an
obligation to remember and rescue both the facts and the truth. Please
assist in this effort by spreading the word.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo
and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed for exercising their
fundamental rights as human rights defenders in Cuba.
At the same time it is important
remember that the Varela Project shook the foundations of the Castro
regime and continues to live on today as an example of the power of the powerless.
Project Varela was one of the projects Orlando Zapata Tamayo worked on, and his death impacted a Canadian rock band I.H.A.D. who wrote and sang the song "Orlando Zapata" in his memory.
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