Can’t dissidents have traffic accidents?
La Alborada – July 24, 2012

Cuba’s highways, unfortunately, are not among the safest: the road surface is not always maintained, especially after hurricanes strike; traffic signs are insufficient; cattle and trains may cross the roads without safety measures being in place. In addition, Cuban drivers are not exactly disciplined. To get some sense of what this means, take a look at the first page of the results of this search done on Cubadebate for reports of highway accidents:

29 May 2012 -   Dos accidentes mortales en las carreteras cubanas
26 Abr 2012 -    Más de 45 personas heridas en accidente de tráfico este jueves
2 Mar 2012 -     Cinco muertos y más de 50 lesionados en accidente en Villa Clara
11 Ene 2012 -   Accidente en Camagüey provoca seis muertes y una treintena de heridos
20 Sep 2011 -   Decrece en Cuba cifra de muertos por accidentes de tránsito
16 Ago 2011 -   En aumento la indisciplina vial en el país
18 May 2011 -   Más accidentes en Cuba en el primer trimestre del año
22 Abr 2011 -    Dos muertos en accidente de tránsito en Bayamo
5 Mar 2011 -      Aumentan fallecidos por accidente en Cuba
24 Sep 2010 -   Cuba: Accidente de tránsito deja 12 muertos en Sagua la Grande
15 Mar 2010 -    Accidente en Pinar del Río deja 7 muertos y 40 lesionados

But some people believe that dissidents don’t have accidents, not even a dissident’s foreign collaborator who is probably not used to driving on Cuba’s highways.

The moment it was announced that Osvaldo Paya had died in a car crash, it was clear that dissident hardliners would blame it on the government, and that the mass media would pass on those claims without questioning their unlikely character.

Two people died in the crash, and two others were taken to the hospital. The two survivors are a Spaniard and a Swede, both from organizations intent on overthrowing the Cuban government. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo of Monday, they are both well and have been released from the hospital.

One is from New Generations, the youth group of Spain's Popular Party, the party now in power, and the other is from Sweden's Young Christian Democrats. A report from Europa Press on Monday said that "Both wanted to make use of the trip to establish contacts with the Cuban opposition, although at the airport they said only that they were traveling for reasons of tourism, to avoid being denied entry to Cuba."

According to EFE, the Spaniard, Angel Carromero, was driving the car. He has made no statement, however, and will wait to get back to Spain for consultations before saying what happened. If he was responsible, he could have to answer for the deaths.

Paya's daughter claims that some unidentified witnesses said that the car had been hit repeatedly by another car, meaning that government agents had run the car off the road. However, Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz, a long-time dissident well known abroad, concluded otherwise, as reported by AFP:

"We asked two of our collaborators who reside in Bayamo to go to the site of the accident. They saw the tree where they crashed, and "from the damage received one can see that the impact was brutal and that there was no other vehicle involved", said Sanchez Santacruz, according to AFP.

He called what happened a "regrettable accident." The Cuban government said about the same.

Let’s assume that Cuba could consider taking such an action against a dissident, although there is no record to support the proposition. Would the Cuban government have attempted to assassinate Paya by sending agents to bump him off the road? That would mean that Cuba's experienced security agencies made such an attempt in broad daylight, with the predictable eyewitnesses present, crudely, and with no control over the results; and, further, when two foreign political activists were in the car.

The two Europeans were treated at a hospital and released, meaning that the two people best able to expose the claimed attempt, both of them unfriendly to the Cuban government, were let go, free to speak to the world media in Cuba --which they have not done-- and, soon, in Europe.

Trying to add fuel to the fire, but surely without realizing the import of his words, Paya's brother Carlos told CNN Español that for “twenty years we thought something like this could happen.” Twenty years? Why now?

Paya had been an active dissident for years. There was nothing new in his meeting with conservative European politicians, and he was among the old guard that, the US Interests Section in Havana reported, lacks traction among the population.

Even faithful readers of spy novels cannot explain why Cuba would attempt to get rid of Paya with an amateurish maneuver certain to invite a worldwide media campaign, at a time when there had been nothing in the mass media concerning dissidents for an unusually long time, and when the drummed-up and hoped-for cholera epidemic had fizzled and disappeared from the news. What's more, important meetings of the National Assembly, the Council of Ministers, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party were taking place over the weekend of the accident.

The assassination story makes no sense. No evidence to support it has been presented. Paya’s death was an accident, probably caused by the car’s driver having lost control on a difficult stretch of highway. The media will inflate this event beyond proportion, and make sure to leave the impression on readers that Cuba has murdered a dissident. When the facts become, in the end, irrefutable, they will still be denied by those who can make hay of Paya’s death. For them, Paya has become a martyr, and that’s what counts.