Rosa María Payá Acevedo is a Cuban activist born in Havana on January 10, 1989.
She holds a degree in Physics from the University of Havana and graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., from the Global Competitive Leadership program and the Summer Institute on the Constitution.
She is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá, a renowned opposition leader of the Cuban government and founder of the Varela Project, which submitted a request for legislative changes to the government following a signature collection for a national referendum. His tireless work both within and outside the island to achieve a change in government earned him multiple recognitions and awards, and he was an official candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. In 2012, he died in a suspicious traffic accident.
After Oswaldo's death, Rosa María Payá focused on advocating for a clear investigation that would reveal the true circumstances surrounding her father's death and decided to resume her work as an activist in favor of democracy in Cuba. The harassment and persecution that she and her family had already grown accustomed to due to her father's efforts intensified, and Rosa María lost her job. She emigrated to Miami with her family.
He currently coordinates the international campaign "Cuba Decide," which aims to hold a referendum for free and plural elections in Cuba for the first time in 67 years.
She is the executive director of the Foundation for Pan American Democracy and chairs the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy, which is present in 23 countries in the region. She works to promote international solidarity with Cuba. Her tireless efforts as an activist have led her to meet with prominent figures such as the elected president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle; interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez; Ivanka Trump; Colombian president Iván Duque; Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro; the wife of the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó; the President of the Congress of Guatemala and also presidential candidate Álvaro Arzú, among others.
In September 2018, she traveled to Peru to present her father's posthumous book, La noche no será eterna, and was detained at the Peruvian airport by immigration authorities after being informed that Interpol @INTERPOL_Cyber had issued an international alert under her name. She wrote on her Twitter: "Either Interpol doesn't work in Argentina, Chile, or Uruguay, or the Castro regime's G2 intelligence apparatus now only controls Interpol-Peru."
Her presence is common in forums on Human Rights, such as at the recent meeting of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held in Haiti (March 2020), where Rosa María highlighted the work of Cuban activists who are prohibited from traveling by the island.
She is the president of the dissident network of the Latin American Youth for Democracy in Cuba. In May 2020, she led the "Solidarity Among Brothers" initiative launched by the Pan-American Democracy Foundation (FDP), in collaboration with the City of Miami, which raised donations for the Cuban people.
