Armando Valladares
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Armando Valladares was a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience in Cuba. Valladares was jailed in 1960, at age 23, when the new regime under Fidel Castro began to crack down on dissidents. He was sent to prison for refusing to place a placard on his desk at work stating that he supported Communism.[citation needed]
Valladares spent 22 years in prison. The Cuban government has described Valladares as "a traitor." After the campaign for Valladares' release began, and after he was adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience, the Cuban government claimed that Valladares was a former member of the secret police of Fulgencio Batista, who was toppled by the 1959 Cuban revolution. [1] Valladares was a 23-year-old poet at the time of the Cuban Revolution.
Valladares, unlike many of his fellow political prisoners, survived the forced labor camps. He survived years of solitary confinement.[citation needed] When, in 1963, Valladares was given a blue uniform to wear (the uniform that distinguished common criminals from political prisoners), he refused, electing to go naked until 1983. During 22 years of confinement, Armando Valladares received 13 visits.[citation needed]
Valladares’s refusal to participate in any political rehabilitation programs elicited a swift response from the government - 46 days without food. His weakened muscles relegated him to a wheelchair for 5 years.[citation needed]
An international campaign for his release, led by his wife Marta, culminated in French President François Mitterrand making a personal appeal to Fidel Castro. Armando Valladares was freed after spending 22 years in prison. He then moved to the United States.
Valladares's memoir, Against All Hope - which details his incarceration in the Cuban gulags - became an international best-seller. On the advice of his daughter Maureen, then President Ronald Reagan (who was moved by his writings),[citation needed] appointed Valladares to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. As Head of the US Delegation, he successfully brought Cuba before the Commission for its human rights violations. President Reagan would later confer on him the nation’s highest civil honor, the Presidential Citizens Medal. The Cuban workers' newspaper, Trabajadores described the appointment as "a disgrace". [2]
Valladares has addressed the United Nations General Assembly and legislative groups in Europe and the Americas. He is currently the President of the Valladares Project, an international non-profit organization which advocates children’s rights. Valladares is Chairman of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
Valladares was one of the closest friends of Pedro Luis Boitel.
[edit] Books
- El Corazon Con Que Vivo (1980) - a book of poetry in Spanish, published by Ediciones Universal (ISBN 0-89729-245-6)
- Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag (2001) - an autobiographical work, published by Encounter Books (ISBN 1-893554-19-8)
