Armando Valladares was a 23-year-old minor bureaucrat in Cuba's Ministry of Communications when the police arrested him in December 1960. The charge: "counterrevolutionary activity" because he had publicly criticized Fidel Castro's increasing dependence on the Soviet Union. Although he had supported Castro's 1959 overthrow of Dictator Fulgencio Batista, Valladares was, after a two-hour trial, sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. During his confinement, Valladares began to record images and thoughts on the torn-off margins of Castro's official newspaper, Granma. Some of these fragments, which were smuggled out of prison in dirty laundry and...
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