“I believe the conditions are right for the country to be liberated,” she says.
EFE, (via 14ymedio), March 17, 2026, Miami / Cuban opposition leader Rosa María Payá stated in an interview with EFE that a possible democratic transition in Cuba does not require a figure from the current power structure, as happened in Venezuela with Delcy Rodríguez, and asserted that civil society and the opposition inside and outside the island have prepared themselves to lead that process without the Castros or the ruling elite.
“Cuba doesn’t need a Delcy Rodríguez. In fact, the process we have been carrying out from civic and opposition organizations, both inside and outside the island, is precisely to have a transition team ready that can lead this provisional period and take the country from totalitarian barbarism toward fair elections,” Payá stated in Miami.
The daughter of the late Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá (1952-2012), who fought for the Varela Project to promote democratic changes in the country, emphasized that Cubans do not need a president like Rodríguez, who assumed interim power in Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the US on January 3.
The opposition leader asked President Donald Trump to maintain “pressure” on the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel, and is confident that contacts between the two countries would contribute to freedom in Cuba, amid the country’s precarious energy situation, aggravated by the US oil embargo.
The opposition leader asked President Donald Trump to maintain “pressure” on the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
“I believe the conditions are right for the liberation of Cuba. And those conditions, first of all, are the widespread demand for change from the Cuban people,” she said.
However, Payá said that the regime “will not buy us off with old Castroist strategies, such as permitting its citizens abroad to invest in private businesses on the Island without political changes and without rights,” as it announced this week.
Cubans “don’t want a fraudulent change. They don’t want the Castro family, and the group of generals
in power, to keep buying time and lying to the world and to Cubans about the reality.”
According to The New York Times, the Trump Administration has raised the possibility of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s departure, although without necessarily demanding a complete overhaul of the system.
She believes that those in power will not make the transition to democracy on their own.
Payá, however, believes that those in power will not make the transition to democracy and the rule of law on their own. “We don’t understand a transitional process that ends in free elections with the Castro family still in power,” she reiterated.
“It is not true that the regime is going to change itself,” she added. In that sense, she emphasized that a real process of change requires “that the Castro family and the group of generals who have held power for 67 years and their representatives leave.”
On the other hand, she noted that she considers the pressure being exerted by the United States to be “decisive” and stated that it must be increased to stop the repression against the protesters in Cuba: “They must increase that pressure to stop the impunity with which the Cuban regime is carrying out repression to this day.”
She also called on the governments of the region to intercede for the Cuban people.
“We hope that the rest of the Western democracies will join this effort.”
“We hope that the rest of the Western democracies will join this effort. (…). The Cuban people expect it, as they are demanding in the streets at a very high cost, at the cost of their safety, of their very lives,” she said.
Payá asserted that “the rights and freedoms of all Cubans must be guaranteed; political prisoners must be released,” and that none of this “costs money; it can happen on the first day.”
“Cuban civic organizations, opposition organizations on the Island and in exile are united behind a transition plan and forming the transition team that will lead and can lead this provisional period,” she stated.
Payá stated that she understands that a transition process will have to work with some structures of the “bureaucracy” to avoid “chaos,” but that it will not be “negotiable” that “we Cubans recover our national sovereignty.”
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