“…princes and horses fighting without rest / attack and withdraw in a flash, it must be / Rapid thought and quick feet / they give you the initiative and you take the victory”
Above is an excerpt from a poem that Vietnam’s founder, Ho Chi Minh, wrote in prison, entitled “A game of chess.” And this was his approach to life, since the days when, only an adolescent using the name Ba, he signed up to work in the kitchen on a French ship. The name his parents in Nghe An gave him was Nguyen Tat Thanh. At that time, he was still far from adopting the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen, The Patriot), and even farther from Ho Chi Minh.
Ba, the son of a cultured teacher of classical Chinese, needed to see the world. He was born not when his land was the Kingdom of Anam, but a recently established French colony. His dreams of learning more, knowing and defending Vietnam emerged early, as the kitchen helper, a trade he learned quickly, including everything they taught him and all that he sought out himself.
This way, Ba saw Africa, Europe and America, over the course of four years aboard ship, until he settled in London, where he worked as a gardener, snow shoveler, kitchen helper and anything else that would allow him to study and learn the English language – which he did. By 1919, he was in France, immersed in the struggle of the working class and Vietnamese residents, with “rapid thought and quick feet,” as he would later write in his verses about chess.
He became a recognized sketch artist and, at the same time, drafted an eight-point declaration to the Versalles Conference advocating the Vietnamese people’s right to liberty, democracy, equality and self-determination. He signed the statement as Nguyen Ai Quoc, the Patriot. A year later, he participated in the founding of the Communist Party of France, at the celebrated Tours Congress.
The Patriot organizes his communist colleagues fighting tenaciously for the independence of French colonies in Indochina. He surprises everyone.
His quick feet keep moving, and with the help of French Communists and insurgents in the French colonies, founds the Union of Colonial Peoples and is elected as a permanent member of its Executive Committee. He forges ahead and establishes Le Paria, of which the Patriot, Nguyen Ai Quoc, is the director, chief editor-journalist and administrator. But with so much knowledge and energy, he collaborates as well with L’Humanité, official voice of the Communist Party of France and the French Workers Federation’s newspaper, La Vía Ouviere.
Nguyen Ai Quoc visited Russia. Lenin dies before he has the opportunity to meet him, but he lives in the Soviet Union, learns the language and studies at the Lenin Institute. He works nonstop, participating in conferences and publishing a book in France on that country’s colonialization process. He travels to China and approaches Vietnamese residents there, and speedily founds the Association of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, the precursor - he asserts - of Vietnam’s working class party, a projection that does, in fact, become reality.
Difficult days were approaching with Chiang Kai-shek’s betrayal and he moves rapidly forward to found the Communist Party of Vietnam, that would change its name twice, according to the circumstances, and approve a program he developed for the coming struggle. World War II was on the horizon.
This was the life of Ba and Nguyen Ai Quoc until 1940, when Germany invaded France, which capitulated, opening the way for Japan to occupy Indochina, too quickly, even for him. He goes to jail, continues to write, constantly pursued, but close to Vietnam. After living abroad since 1911, he plans to return in 1942, but the endeavor is interrupted. He had wanted to ask Chiang Kai-shek for help, but instead finds himself imprisoned for more than a year.
During this horrible time, when many thought he was dead, he wrote verses in his jailers’ language, Chinese. He did so to avoid suspicion, since anything in Vietnamese would have been beyond their reach and irritate them. The writings were personal, testimonial, providing information that newspapers could pick up. Today they are considered classics.
He reports on a prisoner’s life, “Before the dawn breaks, with arms tied to a rope that pulls him along, he sets out. And at twilight, when the birds return to their nests, he is locked in some improvised cell, beside a pile of filth, and the prisoner can consider himself fortunate if they put him in the stocks, freeing him of spending the night in the latrines.”
In one text, Ho Chi Minh notes, “It is your body that is in prison; your spirit cannot be incarcerated.”
These lines are faithful testimony, and the day approaches, September 2, 1945, when he reads the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence, in Va Dinh Square. Although many more, long painful battles would be faced before the 1954 victory at Dien Bien Phu, when French colonialism was defeated.
And there was more. Even after the socialist revolution triumphed in the North, the struggle against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam remained to be fought. But
Ho Chi Minh was not surprised, nor was his brilliant leadership team, confident in their people’s victory.
He was still working hard and fast, but aware that he had lived a long time, very quickly. His people affectionately called him Uncle Ho. He decided it was time to write his final testament: “Whatever difficulties and hardships may come, our people will achieve total victory. The U.S. imperialists will be forced to leave the country. The homeland will be re-unified.” And that is what happened.
IN CONTEXT
-The relationship shared by Cuba and Vietnam is based on a historic and ideological foundation that has been consolidated over 60 years.
-Regular visits by Party leaders of the two nations have been exchanged. We recall the trips to Cuba by the Communist Party of Vietnam’s secretary general and President of the Socialist Republic, comrade Nguyen Phu Trong, in April of 2012 and March of 2018.
-Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro’s first trip to Vietnam, September 12-17, 1973, is cherished by both the Cuban and the Vietnamese people. No one has forgotten that he was the only head of state to visit the country during the war.
-The 1966 meeting between Army General Raúl Castro and President Ho Chi Minh was a landmark in bilateral relations.
-We recall the visit to Vietnam by our Army General Raúl Castro during his Presidency, in July of 2012.
-Of great significance was the visit to Vietnam, in November of 2018, by President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
