Against All Hope

Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag by Armando Valladares, Encounter Books, 2001.

Arrest and Imprisonment

Armando Valladares was arrested 28 December 1960. The Political Police presented no evidence of a genuine crime committed by Armando Valladares. His political crime was refusing to praise Communism when asked to do so. He was held in La Cabaña in Havana and the Isla de Pinos. He spent 22 years, 1960-1982, as a political prisoner in Cuba. He was released due to the efforts of his wife Martha and others to publicize his situation.

Fidel Had It Easy

When Fidel Castro was imprisoned by Fulgencio Batista, Castro was allowed visitors, newspapers, books, conjugal visits, sunshine, daily baths, Italian chocolate, and H. Upmann No. 4 cigars.

Comrades Executed by Fidel

• Commandante Clodomiro Miranda, who fought with Fidel in Pinar del Rio,

• Julio Antonio Yebra, a doctor, who had rescued a leader of the 26th of July movement from Batista’s jail

• Commandante Jesús Carreras, a guerrilla leader who had fought in the Escambray mountains, but who had objected to the appointment of the Communist Ché Guevara

• Commandante Humberto Sorí Marin, who had fought with Castro in the mountains

Comrades Imprisoned by Fidel

• Commandante Huber Matos, Military Chief of the Revolutionary Army in Camagüey Province

• David Salvador, former secretary-general of the Federation of Cuban Workers

• Alfredo Izaguirre, who was beaten, almost to death, for refusing to perform manual labor in prison

People that helped free Armando Valladares:

• Liv Ullman

• Bernard-Henri Lévy

• Yves Montand

• Octavio Paz

• Mario Vargas Llosa

• Sean-Paul Sartre

• Humberto Medrano

Organizations that helped free Armando Valladares:

• French PEN Club

• French Committee for the Defense of Valladares

• Amnesty International

• Swedish Group 110

• International Commission of Jurists

• Organization of American States

• International Red Cross

• League of the Rights Of Man