Thirty miles off the southwest coast of Cuba is the Isla de Pinos (Island of the Pines). On this island is the notorious ‘Presidio Modelo’ (Model Prison, pictured above) built in the 1920’s by the president, turned dictator, Gerado Machado. When someone asked the dictator why he had built it so big, he replied, “Ah, don’t worry. Somebody will come along who will manage to fill it up.” That somebody was Fidel Castro.
In 1961, two years after the fall of the Batista regime in Cuba, 23-year-old office worker Armando Valladares (1937- ) was arrested for opposing Fidel Castro’s communism. He was sentenced to prison for thirty years of hard labor. What was the crime that earned such a severe punishment? He refused to put a pro-Castro plaque on his desk at work, and then, was often heard to criticize the new government. He was offered a lighter sentence if he would fall in line with the Communist Party, but he refused. Armando Valladares’s imprisonment in the Isla de Pinos prison would last twenty-two years. He was one of thousands of Castro’s enemies that would be incarcerated there, many of whom died in confinement or were executed.
Valladares later wrote of his decision to resist Castro:
For me it meant 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, and times of solitary confinement; 8,000 days of struggling to remember I was a human being; 8,000 days of testing my religious convictions, holding on to my faith, and fighting the hate that my atheistic jailers were trying to instill in me with every beating.
In his 2001 book Against All Hope, Valladares described his sojourn in this hell. The book contains accounts of the very worst of men, and some of the very best. Valladares and his fellow political prisoners were routinely beaten, tortured, and psychologically manipulated by cruel and sadistic guards. Every act of the prison staff was intended to break the will of the inmates, brainwashing them with “political rehabilitation” courses. Valladares held his ground throughout, but paid for it dearly. His account is a relentless tale of human degradation: months spent in solitary confinement, submersion in a ditch filled with human excrement, infrequent visits from family, and barbaric treatment.
Against All Hope takes its title from Romans 4:18, and its author’s faith in Jesus Christ is powerful and inspiring. When first incarcerated, Valladares heard the nightly cries of those taken out to the firing squads. Before they were shot, they would cry out, “Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long live Christ the King!). Then was heard the explosion of gunfire; and then silence again. Eventually, prisoners would be gagged before their executions. The killers could not stand hearing such victorious defiance, and did not want it inspiring the rest of the prisoners.
This faith and courage in the face of death led to Armando’s conversion. He wrote:
I understood instantly, as though by a sudden revelation, that Christ was indeed there for me at the moments when I prayed not to be killed; and also realized that Jesus lived and died to give my life, and my death, if it came to that, a deeper meaning.
The reader sees in Armando Valladares a faith that works in the depths of desperation. In contrast to the often-heard gospel of ‘success and prosperity,’ the author expresses a gospel of hope. Valladares cries out to a God who doesn’t “make everything okay” but who is God nonetheless. In an interview with Christianity Today magazine, he said:
I never asked God to get me out of there. I didn’t think God should be used for that kind of request. I only asked that he allow me to resist, that he give me the faith and spiritual strength to bear up under these conditions without poisoning myself with hatred. I only prayed for him to accompany me. And his presence, which I felt, made my faith an indestructible shield.
Inscribed over the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno are the words, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Those same words could have been posted at the entrance to the prison of Isla de Pinos. Along with the inhumane treatment of everyone, the prison was overcrowded and filthy. Men slept on the floor, in corners, and under beds. Disease was rampant and the fear of death filled every night. One never knew when the firing squad might be coming for them, as it had come for so many others.
But among the prisoners, there was one man who brought hope. He was known simply as “The Brother of Faith.” He constantly sang hymns to God at the top of his voice. He would shout encouragement to his brothers to have faith and to follow Christ to the end, especially when they were being led to the place of execution.
“Have faith, brother,” he would constantly repeat, and he left a wake of optimism, hope, and peace. He was a Protestant minister and had dedicated his life to spreading the word of God. He was not about to forget his calling just because he was in prison. He would preach to the prisoners and to the guards, but the way he lived his life was his most inspiring sermon. (continued…)
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