Rosa María Payá Acevedo is a Cuban activist born in Havana on January 10, 1989.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Havana and graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, DC from the Global Competitive Leadership programs and the Summer Institute on the Constitution.
She is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá, a recognized opposition leader of the Cuban government and founder of the Varela Project, which presented a request to the government for legislative changes through a national referendum, following a signature collection campaign. His tireless efforts both inside and outside the island to achieve a change in the government earned him multiple recognitions and awards, and he was an official candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. He died in a suspicious traffic accident in 2012.
After Oswaldo's death, Rosa María Payá focused on advocating for a transparent investigation to uncover the true circumstances surrounding her father's death and decided to resume her work as an activist for democracy in Cuba. The harassment and persecution that she and her family had already become accustomed to due to her father's work intensified, and Rosa María lost her job. She emigrated to Miami with her family.
Currently, he coordinates the international campaign “Cuba Decide,” which aims to hold a plebiscite in favor of 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 presides over 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 hard work as an activist has led her to meet with personalities such as the elected president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle, Jeanine Áñez, interim president of Bolivia, Ivanka Trump, Colombian president Iván Duque, Brazilian president 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. Regarding this, she wrote on her Twitter: "Either Interpol does not function in Argentina, Chile, or Uruguay, or the Castro intelligence apparatus G2 now completely controls Interpol-Peru."
Her presence is common in forums on Human Rights, such as 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 forbidden 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.
