Armando Valladares
Encyclopedia
Armando Valladares is a former prisoner
in Cuba
turned United States
ambassador to the United Nations
.
. Valladares was jailed in 1960, at age 23, when the new government arrested him on charges of being a counter-revolutionary. Valladares spent 22 years in prison. He was adopted by Amnesty International
as a prisoner of conscience
, and an international campaign for his release was led by his wife Marta . Many artists joined it, for example Jacek Kaczmarski
. The campaign culminated in French
President François Mitterrand
making a personal appeal to Fidel Castro
. Valladares was freed after spending 22 years in prison. He then moved to the United States
.
Ronald Reagan
appointed Valladares to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He served in that capacity from 1988 to 1990. As head of the U.S. Delegation, he successfully brought Cuba before the Commission for human rights
violations, just to see all accusations been shown to be true. Reagan would later confer on him the nation’s second-highest civil honor, the Presidential Citizens Medal
. The Cuban workers' newspaper, Trabajadores described the appointment as "a disgrace".
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 the former Chairman of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation
. He resigned July 7, 2009, in support of Honduras's democratic institutions, publishing a public resignation letter with title "I am in total disagreement with what you published regarding Honduras". In it he pointed out the background to the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis
, calling Zelaya's plans illegal. In November 2009 he was decorated with the "José Cecilio del Valle" medal by Honduras's interim president Roberto Micheletti
, together with Alejandro Peña Esclusa
and Juan Dabdoub Giacoman, who had also been outspoken defenders of the country during the crisis.
Valladares was one of the closest friends of Pedro Luis Boitel
, the Cuban dissident poet opposed the governments of both Fulgencio Batista
and Castro.
Valladares signed his name to a full-page ad in the Dec. 5, 2008 New York Times that objected to violence and intimidation against religious institutions and believers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8
. The advertisement stated that "violence and intimidation are always wrong, whether the victims are believers, gay people, or anyone else." A dozen other religious and human rights activists from several different faiths also signed the ad, noting that they "differ on important moral and legal questions," including Proposition 8.
He is a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
.
, who was toppled by the 1959 Cuban revolution.
In 2004, Felipe Pérez Roque
, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, said: "That is Armando Valladares, a cop from Batista’s dictatorship, detained – that is the press of the time – for placing in public places bombs packed in cigarette boxes; a member of a terrorist cell in which Carlos Alberto Montaner
also participated. They were convicted and for that reason Armando Valladares went to prison in Cuba".
During his captivity, Valladares claimed to be partially paralyzed (and in need of a wheelchair) as a result of mistreatment in prison. Valladares is not actually paralyzed.
Prisoner
A prisoner is someone incarcerated in a prison, jail or similar facility.Prisoner or The Prisoner may also refer to:* Prisoner of war, a soldier in wartime, held as by an enemy* Political prisoner, someone held in prison for their ideology...
in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
turned United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
ambassador to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
.
Political prisoner
Valladares was a Cuban Postal Bank employee . He was arrested when he refused to display a sign on his desk that promoted communismCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Valladares was jailed in 1960, at age 23, when the new government arrested him on charges of being a counter-revolutionary. Valladares spent 22 years in prison. He was adopted by Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
as a prisoner of conscience
Prisoner of conscience
Prisoner of conscience is a term defined in Peter Benenson's 1961 article "The Forgotten Prisoners" often used by the human rights group Amnesty International. It can refer to anyone imprisoned because of their race, religion, or political views...
, and an international campaign for his release was led by his wife Marta . Many artists joined it, for example Jacek Kaczmarski
Jacek Kaczmarski
Jacek Kaczmarski was a Polish singer, songwriter, poet and author.Kaczmarski was a voice of the Solidarity trade union movement in 1980s Poland, for his commitment to a free Poland, independent of Soviet rule. His songs criticized the ruling communist regime and appealed to the tradition of...
. The campaign culminated in French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
President François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
making a personal appeal to Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
. Valladares was freed after spending 22 years in prison. He then moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
US ambassador to UNHRC
Valladares's memoir, Against All Hope - which details his version of his incarceration in Cuban prisons - became an international bestseller. PresidentPresident of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
appointed Valladares to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He served in that capacity from 1988 to 1990. As head of the U.S. Delegation, he successfully brought Cuba before the Commission for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
violations, just to see all accusations been shown to be true. Reagan would later confer on him the nation’s second-highest civil honor, the Presidential Citizens Medal
Presidential Citizens Medal
The Presidential Citizens Medal is the second highest civilian award in the United States, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded by the President of the United States, and may be given posthumously....
. The Cuban workers' newspaper, Trabajadores described the appointment as "a disgrace".
Other activities
Valladares has addressed the United Nations General AssemblyUnited Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
and legislative groups in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the Americas. He is currently the President of the Valladares Project, an international non-profit organization which advocates children’s rights.
Valladares is the former Chairman of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation
Human Rights Foundation
The Human Rights Foundation is a non-profit organization whose stated mission "is to ensure that freedom is both preserved and promoted" in the Americas. The Human Rights Foundation was founded in 2005 by Thor Halvorssen...
. He resigned July 7, 2009, in support of Honduras's democratic institutions, publishing a public resignation letter with title "I am in total disagreement with what you published regarding Honduras". In it he pointed out the background to the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis
2009 Honduran constitutional crisis
The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis was a political dispute over plans to rewrite the Constitution of Honduras, which culminated in a coup d'état against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by the Honduran military...
, calling Zelaya's plans illegal. In November 2009 he was decorated with the "José Cecilio del Valle" medal by Honduras's interim president Roberto Micheletti
Roberto Micheletti
Roberto Micheletti Baín is a former de facto president of Honduras who served as a result of the 2009 coup d'état. The Honduran military was ordered by the Supreme Court to forcefully detain President Manuel Zelaya once the Court stated he was violating the Honduran constitution; Zelaya was exiled...
, together with Alejandro Peña Esclusa
Alejandro Peña Esclusa
Alejandro Peña Esclusa is a Venezuelan politician, leader of the Venezuelan NGO Fuerza Solidaria and president of the pan-Latin-American NGO UnoAmérica...
and Juan Dabdoub Giacoman, who had also been outspoken defenders of the country during the crisis.
Valladares was one of the closest friends of Pedro Luis Boitel
Pedro Luis Boitel
Pedro Luis Boitel was a Cuban poet and dissident who opposed the governments of both Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro. In 1961, the regime sentenced him to 10 years in prison....
, the Cuban dissident poet opposed the governments of both Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
and Castro.
Valladares signed his name to a full-page ad in the Dec. 5, 2008 New York Times that objected to violence and intimidation against religious institutions and believers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8
California Proposition 8 (2008)
Proposition 8 was a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 state elections...
. The advertisement stated that "violence and intimidation are always wrong, whether the victims are believers, gay people, or anyone else." A dozen other religious and human rights activists from several different faiths also signed the ad, noting that they "differ on important moral and legal questions," including Proposition 8.
He is a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is a non-profit educational organization in the United States, established as a result of an Act of Congress in 1993 with the purpose to commemorate "the deaths of over 100,000,000 victims in an unprecedented imperial communist holocaust"...
.
Criticism
Since his release, the Cuban regime has described Valladares as a terrorist and a fraud. Cuban officials allege that Valladares was a former member of the secret police of Cuban dictator Fulgencio BatistaFulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
, who was toppled by the 1959 Cuban revolution.
In 2004, Felipe Pérez Roque
Felipe Pérez Roque
Felipe Ramón Pérez Roque was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba from 1999 to 2009. At his appointment, he was not only the youngest member of the Cuban cabinet but also the only one to be born after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.Pérez Roque was formerly an electronics engineer and leader of...
, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, said: "That is Armando Valladares, a cop from Batista’s dictatorship, detained – that is the press of the time – for placing in public places bombs packed in cigarette boxes; a member of a terrorist cell in which Carlos Alberto Montaner
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Carlos Alberto Montaner is an exiled Cuban author and journalist known for his more than 25 books and thousand of articles, including several novels, the last of which is La mujer del coronel, The colonel's wife. Some of his books are devoted to explain the true nature of the Cuban dictatorship,...
also participated. They were convicted and for that reason Armando Valladares went to prison in Cuba".
During his captivity, Valladares claimed to be partially paralyzed (and in need of a wheelchair) as a result of mistreatment in prison. Valladares is not actually paralyzed.
Books
- Desde mi Silla de Ruedas (1976)
- El Corazon Con Que Vivo (1980) - a book of poetry in Spanish, published by Ediciones Universal (ISBN 0-89729-245-6)
- Cavernas del Silencio (1983)
- Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag (1985) - an autobiographical work, published by Encounter BooksEncounter BooksEncounter Books is an American conservative book publisher. It is an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc. Encounter Books draws its name from Encounter , the now defunct literary magazine founded by Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender....
(ISBN 1-893554-19-8) - El Alma de un Poeta (1988)