I am not an extraordinary man, and I am quite ordinary. But God chose me for something quite extraordinary.<\/em><\/p>\n Armando Valladares is a poet who in 1960 was jailed as a political prisoner. After his release he later wrote Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro\u2019s Gulag<\/em> (Encounter Books, 1985). He also has served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.<\/p>\n Initially supportive of the Revolution, he had been appointed to a low level position in the new government. Over time he began to have reservations about the human rights abuses of the new regime. He was arrested, for refusing to display a sign on his desk that said, \u201cI\u2019m with Fidel\u201d. He was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment (of which he served 22):<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it meant 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement and solitude, 8,000 days of struggling to prove that I was a human being, 8,000 days of proving that my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain, 8,000 days of testing my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust, fighting so that hate would not flourish in my heart, 8,000 days of struggling so that I would not become like them.\u201d<\/em> (Quoted in Richmond Times Dispatch<\/a>).<\/p>\n With God\u2019s help succeeded, as he later stated: \u201cEven though my body was in prison and being tortured,\u201d Valladares said, \u201cmy soul was free, and it flourished. My jailers took everything away from me, but they could not take away my conscience or my faith.\u201d<\/em> (National Review<\/a>).<\/p>\n