WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is pushing to rename the street in front of the Cuban embassy for Oswaldo Payá, a political activist who fought against one-party communist rule of the island nation.
“Every communist thug that goes to the Cuban embassy will have to look and see the street sign in front of the embassy that says Oswaldo Payá Way,” Cruz said on his podcast earlier this year.
“Every person who wants to write to the embassy will have to write Oswaldo Payá's name,” he said. “Every person who wants to go visit the embassy has to get on their phone and Google, ‘What’s the address?’ And they will see Oswaldo Payá's name.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a report in June that the Cuban government was responsible for Payá’s 2012 death in a suspicious car accident.
A decade-long independent investigation found it was a government car that struck Payá, who founded the Christian Liberation Movement that advocated for democracy.
Cruz’s street naming legislation passed the Senate last session but was never taken up by the House, which was controlled by Democrats at the time.
The Senate passed it again by unanimous consent June 13 and Cruz said he’s optimistic that the House, now under Republican control, will act this time.
Cruz has noted some might wonder why a street sign is of any consequence.
The Cuban government murdered Payá in an effort to silence him, Cruz said, so renaming the street is a way to prevent his legacy from being erased.
Cruz said he took inspiration from the Cold War-era naming of the street in front of the Soviet embassy Sakharov Plaza. That was in honor of Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who spoke out for human rights.
“Tyrannical regimes are terrified of dissidents and they try to erase them,” Cruz said. “They try to pretend they don’t exist. And there is enormous power in saying their name, shining a light.”
The Washington D.C. City Council symbolically renamed the street in front of the Russian embassy “Boris Nemtsov Plaza” in 2018 after the slain opposition leader and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is not the first time Cruz has tried to use street names in the nation’s capital to make a point.
He previously pushed a proposal through the Senate to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy after activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017.
It never became law, but Cruz said it helped pressure China to allow Xiaobo’s widow to leave the country.
In regards to the Cuban Embassy street renaming, Cruz cited his own family’s history in Cuba.
His father, Rafael Cruz, has talked about fighting as a teenager on the side of Fidel Castro to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista before being jailed and beaten by Batista soldiers.
After being released, the senior Cruz left Cuba on a student visa to study at the University of Texas. The senator has said his father became disillusioned with Castro after seeing how he instituted a communist regime.
The senator said he’s never been to the Cuban Embassy in Washington but hopes to attend a ceremony dedicating the street there for Payá after his proposal becomes law.
