Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia and the Varela Project: Three Important Anniversaries in May.

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.

 

10 years ago Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, father of two, died from brutal beating by police while peacefully protesting

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night 

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia murdered by police in Cuba, and children he left behind

Ten years ago today Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (age 46) who had been arrested and beaten by Castro's revolutionary police on May 5, 2011 while protesting the dictatorship died three days later on May 8th from injuries sustained. Reuters, the BBC, CNN, AP, EFE  and others reported the death of this Cuban dissident and former political prisoner. He was so badly beaten that he required hospitalization. 

Juan Wilfredo Soto left behind two children and their mom. He was a member of the Opposition Central Coalition and was known as "The Student." He was a former political prisoner who had served 12 years in prison. His mother, who suffers from a bad hip, buried her son on Mother's Day. Pictures of Juan Wilfredo Soto's family members were provided by Yoani Sanchez through twitter in 2011.

Ten years have passed and justice has not been done for Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia and his family. There have been new victims of police violence in Cuba since then, and impunity has only encouraged more abuse. 

Protesters picket the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC on May 6, 2021

This was one of the reasons why on May 6th between 4pm and 6pm we held a protest outside of the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC.

We observed the tenth anniversary of the beating death of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, and demanded justice for him, and others like him, while calling on Havana to free Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, meet his three demands, and free all of Cuba's political prisoners.

Protest at the Cuban Embassy on May 6, 2021

 We continue to remember and bear witness for the victims of Castroism, demand justice, and freedom.

We Remember: Nine years ago former political prisoner and father of two died after police beating

We Remember. History matters

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died three days after beating by political police

Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto (age 46) was beaten and arrested by the Castro regime's police on Thursday, May 5, 2011 while protesting the dictatorship and died early on Sunday May 8, 2011. 

The beating had been so bad that he required hospitalization. 

Juan Wilfredo Soto left behind two children and their mom. He was a member of the Opposition Central Coalition and was known as "The Student." He was a former political prisoner who had served 12 years in prison. His mother, who suffers from a bad hip, buried her son on Mother's Day. Pictures of Juan Wilfredo Soto's family members were provided by Yoani Sanchez through twitter.''

Children of Juan Wilfredo Soto mourn their dad

Nine years ago the headlines circled the world in English and in Spanish covered by Reuters, the BBC, CNN, AFP, AP, EFE that a Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto (age 46) had been beaten and arrested by Cuban regime police on Thursday, May 5, 2011 while protesting the dictatorship and died early on Sunday May 8, 2011. The beating had been so bad that he required hospitalization. He was buried Sunday, on Mother's Day.

According to dissidents who attended and media accounts more than 80 attended Juan Wilfredo Soto's funeral despite a heavy police presence and state security operation that blocked some activists from attending. The government agents responsible for this man's extra-judicial death must be held accountable if not by national laws then by international law.  At the funeral a Cuban pastor spoke about the life of the Cuban activist and the circumstances surrounding his death. 

 

Funeral procession for Juan Wilfredo Soto on Mother's Day

Nine years have passed and justice has not been done in this case. Nevertheless we must remember, and with this exercise of memory continue to demand justice for Juan Wilfredo and his loved ones.  

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia at dissident gathering with yellow shirt

Nonviolent Cubans beaten to death by police and there is little news about it

Providing context 

Iván Michel Ponce de León beaten up by police on April 19th and died of his injuries

Police officers in Old Havana brutally beat Cuban citizen Iván Michel Ponce de León on April 19, 2019. Iván Michel died of his injuries eight days later on April 27th.There was little coverage on this extrajudicial killing. Conservative Spanish newspaper ABC covered the story on May 1, 2019 and a couple of opposition platforms reported on it a day later.

Cuba is not the United States. In the United States of America there is an independent press, an independent judiciary, and when the police kill a citizen it is documented and the subject of public conversations and political debates.

A totalitarian government exists in Cuba. The Castro regime controls the judiciary, owns the press, and recognizes only the communist party as legal.  Independent civil society is marginal and repressed.

Police killings of civilians are systematically covered up, and accurate data is unavailable. Worse yet, when the news breaks out from the numerous hurdles presented by the Castro regime it gets limited coverage, if any, in the international press.

Alejandro Pupo Echemendía died from police beating on August 9, 2018

 Less than a year ago Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, a 46 year old Cuban national was also beaten to death by the Revolutionary National Police on August 9, 2018 while he was in their custody. Antúnez also posted the testimony of Elizama Mujica Cabrera, the wife of the victim.

Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto (age 46) was beaten and arrested by the Cuban Revolutionary Police on Thursday, May 5, 2011 while protesting the dictatorship. He died early on Sunday May 8, 2011 as a result of the injuries suffered at the hands of the police.
 

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died three days after beating by political police

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a human rights defender who was unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and was tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit.

Orlando had been the victim of numerous beatings by prison officials while in custody. 

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was repeatedly beaten by prison officials

 According to Amnesty International on October 20, 2003 Orlando Zapata Tamayo was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after he requested medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations. Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following another brutal beating it was published in April of 2004:

"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."

This is a partial accounting taken from memory.  Ivan and Alejandro were not political dissidents, but Juan Wilfredo and Orlando Zapata Tamayo were. Nevertheless all three died as a result of gross mistreatment by regime officials.

Shouldn't government officials in Cuba also be held accountable for the deaths they are responsible for?

Reflecting on Obama's Cuba Policy Legacy

"The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized." - Oswaldo Paya, December 17, 2002

The President and the dictator address their respective countries on 12/17/14

Obama Cuba policy: Abandoning containment to embrace appeasement

By John Suarez

The Obama Administration's new Cuba policy marks two years on December 17th and with just 35 days left in this Presidency this is a good moment to reflect on what The White House has achieved over the past eight years. President Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 to great fanfare but downplayed commuting the sentences of three Cuban spies, including Gerardo Hernandez who was serving a life sentence for his role in a murder conspiracy that claimed four innocent lives in 1996. 

However the change, not only in tone but in action, began not in 2014 but in 2009 first with the meeting with Hugo Chavez, second snubbing Cuban dissidents, followed by the repeated unilateral loosening of economic sanctions despite the arbitrary detention of U.S. citizen Alan Gross. Gross would go on to spend the next five years in a Cuban prison cell as a bargaining chip for the Castro regime that demanded the return of the above mentioned spies. 

President Obama shaking hands with President Hugo Chavez (2009)

Unfortunately despite President Obama's claims, the fact of the matter is that the previous Cuba policy did not fail and secondly that U.S. policy towards Cuba over the previous half century was not static. The U.S. after failing to overthrow the Castro regime in the early 1960s along with the risk of a nuclear conflagration in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis pursued a policy of containment combining economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation. This was a successful policy that raised the cost and limited the expansion of the Castro regime abroad.

Lamentably, both during the Carter (1977 - 1981) and Clinton (1993 - 2001) Administrations the policy of containment was twice weakened and partially dismantled in favor of one of engagement with the dictatorship. On both occasions this legitimized the regime, provided it with more resources that allowed it to project further internationally. This approach coincided with the rise of the Sandinista regime in 1979 in Nicaragua with the assistance of the Cuban intelligence service and the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999.  Internally human rights violations and levels of violence spiked during both periods coinciding with the Mariel mass exodus of 1980 and the rafter crisis of 1994. 

This pattern has been repeated during the Obama Administration but the third time may prove to be the worse for a number of reasons. This is not a new policy but a very old one that empowers dictators but has no apparent benefit for the United States. It also did not begin on December 17, 2014 although the drive towards embracing the Castro dictatorship was intensified after this date. 

Some of the Cubans killed by the Castro regime over the past eight years

Beginning in 2009 the Obama Administration marginalized Cuban dissidents and the Castro regime understood this and Cuban opposition leaders began dying under suspicious circumstances with their international visibility rising over time as the previous dead activist would generate some international media attention but otherwise zero consequences: Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012), and Harold Cepero (2012).

Despite Cuba under Castro continuing its pattern of outlaw behavior: smuggling tons of weapons  into North Korea in 2013 and getting hold of a U.S. Hellfire missile in 2014 that had been used in European NATO military exercises that afterward ended up in Havana, the negotiations continued.  Four months after President Obama announced this new relationship,  in Colombia another smuggled arms shipment involving Cuba was uncovered in March of 2015. On May 29, 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry, ignoring all the above, rescinded Cuba's designation as a state terror sponsor.

During the Obama Presidency the human rights situation has deteriorated with over 54,838 politically motivated arbitrary detentions in Cuba and escalating violence against activists. Currently there are three high profile cases of a doctor, lawyer and artist separately imprisoned in Cuba for their political beliefs.However the case of extrajudicial violence remains a concern.The case of dissident Sirley Avila Leon the victim of a government engineered machete attack that crippled the 57 year old with machete blows to both legs, arms and the loss of her left hand in May of 2015 is a powerful and disturbing example. Rafters and fleeing refugees continue to be attacked and in some cases shot in the back for trying to leave Cuba as was the case of Yuriniesky Martínez on April 9, 2015. Meanwhile the State Department watered down its report on human trafficking in Cuba.

On February 3, 2015, Rosa María Payá, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicted the indifference of the US government and the international community: 

On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention. The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the U.S. government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes.

Two months later Rosa María Payá, and other activists were harassed first at the airport by Panamanian officials and later at the VII Summit of the Americas because the United States, along with the democracies of the region, invited Raul Castro to the summit. Castro arrived with a huge entourage of state security agents, then proceeded to interrupt and shut down official civil society gatherings at the summit to silence dissent. Cuban pro-democracy activists were physically assaulted in a public park when they tried to lay a wreath before a bust of Jose Marti suffering broken bones and black eyes.

Throughout the past two years alone over 89,789 visaless Cubans entered the United States in a huge exodus not seen since the Carter and Clinton years with even more Cubans fleeing to South and Central America.

President Obama and General Castro attended a baseball game together in 2016

Despite all of this President Obama visited Cuba on an official state visit in March 2016 of this year elevating Raul Castro's international stature along with his 51 year old son Alejandro Castro Espin who is being groomed for a leadership role and possible generational succession in Cuba.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration's Cuba policy is having an impact internationally that is negatively impacting human rights in Cuba internally. The latest being the decision of the European Union to "open a new chapter" on relations with Cuba that drops human rights as a condition for normalization and will be the end of a European Common Position adopted in 1996. This arrangement was formalized in a signing ceremony on December 12, 2016.

Furthermore the loosening of sanctions on the Castro regime has coincided with further tightening of economic controls by General Raul Castro and the military over the Cuban economy. Despite the claims that engaging with the dictatorship would lead to more trade the facts say otherwise. Trade between Cuba and the United States has collapsed during the Obama Administration.

There is much more but for the sake of brevity will conclude with President Obama's October 14, 2016 Presidential Policy Directive on Cuba that some credit with costing Secretary Hillary Clinton the 2016 election in Florida by driving up the Cuban American vote for Donald Trump.

All should be concerned that The White House in its October policy directive instructed US intelligence agencies to share information with Castro's spy agency. This is a regime that not only engages in systematic human rights violations, but also has a long track record with international terrorism.

The new Administration should first follow the law and repeal all of Obama's Executive Orders that run afoul of the law or the US Constitution. In the case of Cuba, President Trump has an opportunity to turn a disastrous policy around and work to defend American interests and also speed up a democratic transition that would benefit the region.

Sadly the Obama legacy in Cuba will be remembered as one of appeasing and extending the life of the Castro dictatorship, while paying lip service to human rights and a missed opportunity with the death of Fidel Castro. The embargo policy is a policy of containment that protects vital U.S. interests but is not a policy that frees the Cuban people, but worse yet the Obama Cuba policy is a step in the wrong direction siding with the oppressor while marginalizing the oppressed.

Some victims of Castro regime violence since 2012

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia and the Varela Project: Three Important Anniversaries

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. - Cicero

Today, May 15, 2011 marks a double anniversary: the birth of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban human rights activist turned martyr, in Holguin, Cuba in 1967 and the one week anniversary of the extrajudicial death of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia on May 8, 2011 following a brutal beating three days earlier by political police of the dictatorship in Cuba.

Five days earlier another important anniversary in the history of the democratic opposition was observed when on May 10, 2002 Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas, Regis Iglesias Ramirez and Antonio Ramón Diaz Sánchez (from left to right in above picture) turned in 11,020 signatures on a petition demanding reforms that would see human rights respected in Cuba and fundamental freedoms restored known as the Varela Project to the Cuban regime. 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 Black Cuban Spring and spent seven long years in prison and now suffer exile in Spain.

Reports indicate that in Santiago, Cuba dissidents seeking to honor and remember Orlando Zapata Tamayo were beaten in an act of repudiation while relatives had their home surrounded and were denied the right to visit their loved one's tomb. At the same time just one week ago on the same day that he died Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia was buried. At this funeral a Cuban pastor spoke about the life of the Cuban activist and the circumstances surrounding his death.



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. Both Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia were killed for exercising their fundamental rights as human rights defenders in Cuba. At the same time remember that the Varela Project shook the foundations of the Castro regime and continues to live on today.

It is also important to remember with gratitude the solidarity of countries such as the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland who have expressed their concerns surrounding the death of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia along with their calls for an investigation.

Rewriting History: The Cuban regime's campaign to deny what was done to Juan Wilfredo Soto

Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (pictured above) died three days after being beaten by political police on May 8, 2011

There at it again. Demonstrating with their actions what a totalitarian regime is. The last major pernicious campaign began last year with the extrajudicial death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010 and the campaign to slander and destroy his good name as they had done with him physically while in prison. Now it is repeated with Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia who was beaten by police and died early on Sunday May 8, 2011. An effort to deny the circumstances surrounding his death and the dictatorship's complicity along with blunt intimidation of the family of the victim. Now is the time to search out the truth and defend it against those who have relied on lies and terror to remain in power for 52 years. Amnesty International has called for an investigation. Do not allow his death to pass in silence.

Remember what has been done to Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the campaign now underway to cover up the Cuban dictatorship's complicity in Juan Wilfredo's death. The Cuban regime's campaign to whitewash what was done to Juan Wilfredo Soto and Orlando Zapata Tamayo demonstrates the totalitarian nature of the regime and the power of nonviolent resistance to expose bad actions in a fair and impartial manner.

Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on February 23, 2010 after being tortured into a hungerstrike as a method of self defense. Officials denied him water for days contributing to his death.

Paul Hollander in a 2009 essay in The Washington Post titled "Murderous Idealism" made an important observation about this type of regime:

"The failure of Soviet communism confirms that humans motivated by lofty ideals are capable of inflicting great suffering with a clear conscience. But communism's collapse also suggests that under certain conditions people can tell the difference between right and wrong. The embrace and rejection of communism correspond to the spectrum of attitudes ranging from deluded and destructive idealism to the realization that human nature precludes utopian social arrangements and that the careful balancing of ends and means is the essential precondition of creating and preserving a decent society."

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on her tweeted yesterday that "For those who believe that Stalinism died, I recommend viewing material on Cuban official TV about death of #JWS." Sadly, the dictatorship in Cuba has a long history of applying Stalinist tactics.

What is amazing is that in today's media environment there is a lack of depth in coverage and in return alternative media needs to make up the slack. An example of this is the documentary "Why do you beat me?" by Cuban blogger Luis Felipe Rojas Luis interviews Alberto Lairo Castro on brutal beating by police that left him paralyzed: