Interviews with Armando Valladares

For the prisoners it is very important the support given to their families. The support for their families means both a direct and indirect support for the prisoner in many ways, materially, with medicines, and it helps them in every way. The political prisoner has absolutely nothing, and the fact that their families are supported in these ways, gives them a sense of security in regard to not being forgotten as there are people that are looking after them and their families. Remember that when many of these prisoners are arrested their families are left completely unprotected because the hate of the regime extends to the family.

The wives are fired from their jobs, the children are often expelled from school. That is why the support for the political prisoners´ families is so important. How can you support them? Well, economically, sending them equipment and things that will allow them to have their situation known overseas. As we have been supporting them, by sending them equipment, computers, cameras, telephones, so they can communicate overseas, which is the most important thing.

Armando Valladares, a poet, human rights advocate, and former diplomat, was a political prisoner in Castro’s Cuba for 22 years. After international pressure led to his release, he emigrated to the United States and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission from 1988 to 1990.

Valladares was a Cuban Postal Bank employee who was arrested in 1960 when he refused to display a sign on his desk that endorsed Communism. Valladares, then 23 years old, was convicted of being a “counter-revolutionary” and spent 22 years in prison. He was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and his prison memoir “Against All Hope” became an international bestseller and raised the profile of the campaign for his release. This campaign finally succeeded after then French President Francois Mitterand made a personal appeal to Fidel Castro.

During his service as ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Valladares succeeded in persuading the commission to adopt a resolution on the human rights situation in Cuba.