Canterbury Medal Dinner

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2016 Canterbury Medal Award Honoree: Armando Valladares

Armando Valladares received the 2016 Canterbury Medal on May 12, 2016. Read his speech and view photos from the gala.

“My story is proof that a seemingly small act of defiance can mean everything to the enemies of freedom. They did not keep me in jail for 22 years because my refusal to say three words meant nothing. They kept me there that long because it meant everything,” said Armando Valladares. “Though my body was in prison and abused, my soul was free and flourished. My jailers took everything from me, but they could not rob me of my conscience.”

Armando Valladares is a former political prisoner who spent 22 years in Castro’s gulags for refusing to place a sign on his desk in support of Fidel. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison without due process. While in prison he became a “Plantado”—a prisoner who refuses to wear a common prison uniform. For refusing to sign a document admitting he was wrong and the Revolution was right, he was brutally tortured, spent 8 years in solitary confinement and underwent several hunger strikes which left him paralyzed for many years.  During this time, he wrote numerous poems which his wife smuggled out of Cuba and had published to critical acclaim. Valladares was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.

In 1982 Valladares was released thanks to an international campaign on his behalf. Upon release, he wrote a New York Times bestselling memoir, Against All Hope, which was translated into 18 languages.

In 1986 he was named U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission where he was able to highlight the plight of the more than 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba at the time.  In 1989, for the first time ever since the Cuban revolution, the Castro regime was forced to open its doors to a UN investigation. The resulting report was devastating for the regime and culminated with the release of many political prisoners. Valladares continues to advocate for human rights—particularly religious liberty—and lives with his wife in Florida where he continues to write poetry, paint and sculpt. He has three adult children and one granddaughter.

Below you can access to video footage, news stories, images and additional information surrounding the 2015 Canterbury Medal Dinner.

  • Photos
  • Drawings & Artwork
  • Articles and OpEds
  • “Against All Hope”
  • Videos

Written by Armando Valladares:

Philadelphia Inquirer: Faith drives social justice and freedom (December 21, 2015)

The Washington Post: I was a prisoner of Castro’s regime. Obama’s visit to Cuba is a mistake. (March 21, 2016)

The Wall Street Journal: Obama’s New Cuban Partners, My Old Jailers (August 20,  2015)

Other articles:

The American Spectator: Vladimir Bukovsky on Armando Valladares (March 21, 2016)

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Against All Hope by Armando Valladares.

Praise for Against All Hope: 

“Until the publication of this book, […], we had not had a full picture of the brutality meted out to real and imaginary opponents by the Castro dictatorship. What Mr. Valladares gives us is a picture of the hell that was the Cuba he lived in, and the story of how one man’s deep Christian faith enabled him to sustain the most evil treatment and never abandon hope, no matter how fruitless hope appeared.” –Ronald Radosh, New York Times review

“Cuban state security applied every torture method in the totalitarian handbook — and even some new inspirations — to break the prisoners. Many cracked and many committed suicide, but Mr. Valladares, along with a minority of others, would not bow to the “Revolution.” He says that three things preserved him during his 22 years in prison. First, he was totally sure of his ideals. Second was the love of Martha — who would become his wife — and the fact that she believed in him. Third were his religious convictions. He was finally released from prison in 1982 and forced into exile.” –-Mary O’Grady, Wall Street Journal 

“The suffering which he describes, the iniquities which he experienced or observed, the courage, faith (in God, as in himself) and Capacity for endurance which he showed and which he saw in others (often rewarded by murder) make this account one of the most extraordinary books which I have read.”  –Hugh Thomas, The Spectator (London)

“Valladares says what sustained him in his long agony was his belief in God, his resolve to love rather than to hate, and ‘fantasies about Martha and the children who had not yet arrived.’” —Mary McGrory, The Washington Post

“‘Against All Hope, the Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares’ is an extraordinary account of the cruelty that we should know enough to expect from dictatorships but that in the case of Fidel Castro has been more successfully concealed from outside observers–including this writer when, years ago, he served as a correspondent in Cuba–than is usually the case. What sets it apart from other prison memoirs is not the suffering–though in its particularities, it marks particularities of the regime in Cuba–but its record of all-out resistance. It could almost be entitled ‘The War Memoirs of Armando Valladares.’” –Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

“During my stay in Cuba last year, the subject of the Valladares book came up in many conversations with government officials. Aware of the immense damage in prestige this book had caused Cuba among Western European intellectuals (it evidently did not occur to Havana that Valladares would publish his indictment) [….]” — Tad Szulc, The Washington Post