Cuba: From Paya’s Death to Carromero

Vincent Morin Aguado

HAVANA TIMES — After concluding with his legal responsibilities in the Paya affair, Mr. Angel Francisco Carromero Barrios might hope for a lucrative Hollywood contract – but not as an actor, rather as a well-paid professional stuntman or double.

Fans of radio soap operas in the style of scriptwriter Felix B. Caignet, who in 1948 established the genre in Cuba with El Derecho de Nacer (Birthright), will want to turn the sad death of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas and his associate Harold Cepero Escalante into a tragic event for international television and the Internet, marked by previously thought-out intrigue, but with nothing supported by real facts.

Now it has turned out that they’re anticipating the application of pressure, blackmail or possibly torture to explain to us why Carromero lied in Cuba. They speculate saying: “Who knows! Maybe he’ll tell a different story when he finally makes it back to Spain.”

They’re getting ahead of the facts, just like typical contemporary soap opera writers.

I prefer to believe in the honor and responsibility of Carromero, along with that of Modig, before making out-of-context comparisons with other people and events, ones far from the proven truth about that recent and unfortunate accident.

This involves two deaths, two friends and colleagues in the same battle, who astoundingly enough fell victims while sitting in the back seat of a car.

Could the Spaniard have maintained his honor while disregarding those dead friends in order to deny the facts when he faced the Cuban television cameras, which immediately broadcast his statements to the world?

What kind of savage pressures would have to be applied to a politician of the ruling political party of Spain to make him retract his statements made in Cuba to the national and foreign press?

It’s worth mentioning the position of Zapata Tamayo, a common criminal who was imprisoned yet in the end sacrificed himself for his ideals.

Carromero and Modig have the support of their embassies. In the first case his offenses are related to traffic laws, while in both cases they were tourists, protected by the travel insurance valid for these types of cases.

It was truly phenomenal, worthy of a Mission Impossible VI, one in which the foreigners survive while the internationally more-famous political opponents of the government end up dying.

The driver of the car, a young politician of Spain’s Partido Popular, soberly declared the truth and is now awaiting the police investigation to wrap up.

In the meantime, Modig has already returned to Sweden. So we’ll see what he says. We’ll see if he says anything new. We’ll see if something he says is different from what he said previously and if it’s credible.

As for me, I welcome accusations concerning any incident or circumstance. Many of them have to do with the daily problems that plague us. But it’s one thing to make a public statement here and another thing to go abroad and say something else – citing alleged “coercion.”

Honor is a sufficient shield in life when it comes to pressure.

Two dead (again, evidently friends in a political cause) are enough to weigh on any conscience. Galileo was shown the instruments of torture as he watched his compatriots slaughtered; yet, as is said, he responded by saying “but it worked.”

I don’t believe that Carromero is capable of such contradictions in the sphere of his personal life.

I’m sure that once outside of Cuba he will stand by his original statements. Otherwise, his personal honor would be like the muck in an outhouse.

For such an atrocity he would only be forgiven by the Catholicism of Paya – from heaven.

If the opposite were to occur, I would prefer to be where I am before having to count on such a shady ally within the context of the current demands for a better country.
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To contact Vicente Morin Aguado, write: [email protected]