Carromero callado

Diario de Cuba’s recent editorial called on Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero to speak in public about the car crash last July where he was driving and dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed.  It also called on the family to provide whatever evidence it has for its assassination theory, and to provide text messages it claims to have received rather than just make reference to them. 

That’s a reasonable thing to ask if you want to settle the matter – but not to Rosa Maria Paya, Oswaldo’s daughter, who fired back, saying it’s wrong to make demands of victims rather than the executioner.  She has since apologized.

Carromero remains silent; he appeared at a public ceremony and said nothing to the press. 

Meanwhile, Spaniards are questioning the political patronage that places people like Carromero, who has no college degree, in nice government jobs with vague duties at a time when many are suffering economically.

Carromero’s political associates are silent too, no longer talking about his need to get his memories in order before speaking out.

Carromero and his companion Aron Modig – who has said all along that he was sleeping and has no memories to reconstruct – are out of danger and face no impediment to speaking out.  No one has backed up the insinuation that their car was rammed and run off the road – not Carromero and Modig, nor the Paya family, nor Paya’s political associates, nor the Spanish and Swedish political parties that sent two young activists on an “assistance” mission that resulted in the death of two Cubans. 

What could Carromero possibly remember now that he could not recall since last July, or in the weeks since his return to Spain?  And what can we conclude from this collective silence, other than that it was a one-car accident, as Carromero said in Cuba?