Against All Hope. Armando Valladares

       PROLOGUE

      This is a book about my 22 years in Fidel Castro’s political prisons for expressing ideas different from those of the Castro regime.

      When the first edition of this book appeared in 1984, the government of Cuba and defenders of the Cuban Revolution denied that incidents that I recount ever happened. Castro sympathizers, who were more subtle, said the incidents I described were exaggerations. And there were others, well meaning, who simply could not bring themselves to believe that such horrors, crimes and torture existed in the political prisons of Cuba.

      But there is something that not even the most ardent defenders of the Cuban Revolution can deny. The oldest dictatorship in the world exists in Cuba, and left wing dictatorships, like those of the right, have repugnant disdain for human rights.

      My response to those who still try to justify Castro’s tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity.

      Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America’s Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro. While I was on book tours in the mid 1980’s talking about Against All Hope, I encountered many individuals who argued fiercely on behalf of the Castro regime. And at that time, in 1986 the United Nations Human Rights Commission had yet to denounce the systematic violations of human rights in Cuba. That year I received a phone call from the White House. It turned out that Maureen Reagan had given a copy of my memoirs to her father, then-President Ronald Reagan. The President himself, in an Oval Office meeting, asked me to lead the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission to try to convince this body to open an investigation into the violation of human rights in Cuba. He named me Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).

      To convince such a politicized body to condemn human rights violations in Cuba was no easy task. The thousands of accusations of violations of human rights in Cuba that had been gathered by several non-governmental organizations conflicted with the double standard then current at the UN. Sadly, this body considered crimes according to the ideology of the victims and the murderers. Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.

      I have become convinced that hatred towards the U.S. has been a chief reason for Castro’s longevity in power. The old dictator’s proximity to the U.S. and his confrontational attitude have given him undeserved support from the press, governments, politicians and intellectuals of this hemisphere. I believe that if Castro had established his dictatorship in Africa or Asia, far from the U.S., he would have disappeared years ago.

      What shocked me the most about United Nations politics during my time there was the double standard of many governments. One of the most glaring examples was the attitude the Spanish government took at the United Nations under the leadership of socialist President Felipe Gonzalez. While I was in Geneva, friends in Spain sent me a copy of a confidential report on the violation of human rights in Cuba, prepared by the Spanish Chancery. This report documented systematic torture, crimes, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Cuban political prisoners, including religious persecutions. It concluded by stating: “But even so, we cannot condemn him [Castro] because that would be proving the Americans are right.”

      A week before this report was leaked to the Spanish press, the Chancery issued a statement declaring that Spain did not believe that Cuba had human rights problems. In a show of misguided Latin American solidarity, the Mexican government made similar statements. And in spite of the live testimony of dozens of women and men who had been tortured and imprisoned for years, in a relatively obscure maneuver, India introduced a “motion of no action” on the U.S. resolution condemning human rights violations in Cuba. The resolution was adopted by a margin of one vote and the topic of Cuba did not even make it to the agenda.

      Although the United Nations Human Rights Commission did not act in 1986, pressure from several democratic countries built up, and in 1988, Ambassadors from Ireland, Nigeria, Senegal, the Philippines, Colombia and Bulgaria flew to Cuba. During their eleven-day visit this group was able to document 137 cases of torture, 7 disappearances, political assassinations and thousands of violations of each of the articles of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The trip was summarized in a 400-page report, which was the longest report ever to appear on the agenda of the UN, and provided irrefutable proof that human rights are violated in a systematic way in Cuba.

      Paragraph 75 of this report documents many types of tortures in use, most of which I saw or experienced during my time in the Cuban gulag. They included locking political prisoners in refrigerated rooms; blindfolded immersion in pools; intimidation by dogs; firing squad simulations; beatings and forced labor; confinement for years in dungeons called gavetas; the use of loudspeakers with deafening sounds during hunger strikes; degradation of prisoners by forced nudity in punishment cells; withholding water during hunger strikes; forcing prisoners to present themselves in the nude before their families (to force them to accept plans for political rehabilitation); denial of medical assistance to the sick; and forcing those condemned to die to carry their own coffins and dig their own graves prior to being shot.

      Under the administration of President George Bush, our work in Geneva continued to receive strong support, and in March 1990 when the results of the investigation in Cuba were published, the Cuban government suffered the greatest diplomatic and political defeat in all of its history. The efforts of four years resulted in the approval of a resolution condemning the violations of human rights on the island. This resolution, supported by Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bulgaria finally revealed Castro as a systematic violator of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

      Against All Hope is my witness; an attempt to inform the world about the true criminal nature of the ongoing dictatorship of Fidel Castro.

      — Armando Valladares

      June 18, 2000