Armando Valladares, is a Cuban poet released (because of international pressure) from Castro’s political dungeons in 1982 after serving 22 years of a 30 year sentence for publicly opposing the Communist take over of the Cuban Revolution. President Reagan made him U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights. His Memoirs, Against all Hope, was a best seller in the United States and around the world and has been translated to numerous languages.)

Valladares vividly expressed how much it meant the international reaction to the Cuban political martyrdom: "During those years, with the purpose of forcing us to abandon our religious beliefs and to demoralize us, the Cuban Communist indoctrinators repeatedly used the statements made by some representatives of the American Christian churches. Every time a pamphlet was published in U.S., every time a clergyman would write an article in support of Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would be given to us, and that was far worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger. Incomprehensible to us, while we waited for the embrace of solidarity from our brothers in Christ, those who were embraced were our tormentors."