"There are men who fight one day and they are good. There are others who fight one year and are better. There are those who fight for many years and are very good. But there are those who fight all their lives: those are the indispensable ones."
The sentence of the German playwright and poet Bertolt Bretch seems to have been written for the Vietnamese people, those who never stopped fighting and who today, without abandoning the struggle, rise up beautiful, prosperous, democratic and socialist; those who knew how to turn a land devastated by invaders into a nation that is a paradigm of nobility and firmness.
At the end of last year, Vietnam ranked first among Asean-6 countries in terms of GDP growth rate, with 7.09%, and with a per capita GDP growth rate of US$4,711, according to statistics compiled by Mekong Asean.
The Center for Economic and Business Research in the UK noted that, with an average annual growth rate of 5.8% over the next five years, Vietnam's GDP would surpass Singapore's, reaching US$676 billion in 2029.
According to Oxford Economics, the world's leading independent economic advisory firm, Vietnam's economy will be the most prominent among the six Asean countries, growing at a faster pace than its peers over the next few years.
Three Vietnamese seaports, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong and Cai Mep (also in the former Saigon) are among the top 50 container ports in the world, according to DynaLiners Millionaires.
The strength of the manufacturing sector and a rapid recovery of domestic demand are recognized as keys to the now booming economy of the brother country, which is among the 15 most dynamic in the world. High efficiency in agriculture, an impressive technological deployment, with the largest Intel Apt plant in the world, and the Amkor Technology chip plant, valued at 1.6 billion dollars, in Bac Ninh, which will be ready in 2025, plus FPT Software, a leading group in information technology services, already with 52 offices abroad, in 25 countries; an impressive cultural and educational development, the result of its own efforts, shows an empowered people, in which unemployment is only 2%.
VICTORY AT THE END OF THE THORNY ROAD
To enjoy this present, Vietnam traveled a long and thorny road, with the principle of putting small forces before much larger and more powerful ones, which was and has been the golden rule in the wars of national defense of its territory.
Under this principle, the national construction was built, in which its people faced various foreign aggressions. For 12 centuries, from the war of resistance against the Qin dynasty in the 3rd century B.C. to the end of the 20th century, the Vietnamese fought hundreds of battles and uprisings against foreign aggression. B.C. until the end of the 20th century, the Vietnamese fought hundreds of battles and uprisings against foreign aggressions.
On the basis of socio-economic development in the Dong Son Era and the fight against natural disasters and foreign invasion, Van Lang, the first state of Vietnam, was established in the 7th century BC. With their hard work and creativity, those people emerged with a civilization that influenced the entire Southeast Asian region. Along with the formation of that first state, a diversified economy and advanced civilization developed known as the Red River Civilization, symbolized by the Dong Son bronze drum, a legacy that reflects the quintessential lifestyle, traditions and culture of the ancient Vietnamese people.
Such an epic and rich history led the most illustrious of the men born in that land to generate a liberating movement, which not only achieved the country's independence, proclaimed a Republic and envisioned the future they hold today, but also set its people as a world reference.
Ho Chi Minh, as a revolutionary, was in essence a creator, because from creativity and intelligence, which he brought to a national scale, his foundational acts were illuminated. The most important of all, the one that gave life and action to his creative platform, was the Communist Party of Vietnam, born on February 3, 1930.
Only 15 years later, after heroic feats on the battlefield, both military and ideological, came the triumph of the Revolution of August 1945, which gave birth to an era and its most robust offspring, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, on September 2, 1945, 80 years ago today.
That day was consecrated as the crowning of almost a century of struggle against colonialism; but, in addition, the independence feat was an example for the rest of the colonized countries at that time. The event crossed its borders to become an icon for the world revolutionary movement and the essence of the victories that the country would experience until it achieved total sovereignty.
The expulsion of the Japanese government, after the flight from French domination, marked the trigger for the Republic. However, it was not the end point, but a starting point. Ho Chi Minh, like Fidel Castro Ruz, knew that a Revolution was not a one-day affair.
"All the Vietnamese people are determined to use all their spirit and strength, their lives and their goods to safeguard freedom and independence", said Uncle Ho on that September 2, and that was the premise and the flag with which the brave Vietnamese warriors, as José Martí called them, continued fighting to keep on winning.
He knew that he could count on men and women with patriotism, the tradition of unity and the willpower to fight for the just cause, and those moral values were not only bastions in the struggle, but are also, in the 21st century, the support for its growth.
After defeating France again, after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, they defeated and drove the very Yankee imperialism out of their land, so that on April 30, 1975, the Republic founded by Ho Chi Minh became socialist, once the country was unified.
Ho Chi Minh did not live that day, but he had seen it; it was another of his creations, as it was also a divine act that he said goodbye to his people on September 2, 1969, to leave in the heart of Vietnam and in the hearts of his children, that date as the date of the clarion call of the first state of workers and peasants in Asia.
THE NEW CUBA, FROM THE DAWN NEXT TO VIETNAM
A Revolution like the Cuban one, which came out of the entrails of its people, its peasants and its workers, like the Vietnamese one, could do no less. At the dawn of its triumph, on December 2, 1960, it established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, a fact that generated one of the most sensitive stories of friendship and complementarity of humanity to this day. Cuba was the first country in the Americas with which the Asian nation had diplomatic relations after its independence.
In the most difficult moments of the war, in the recovery of its territories and its people, Cuba stood by Vietnam's side, and that gesture has become eternal, because the Vietnamese have never ceased to extend their hand to the largest of the Antilles.
Today, with various exchanges in key sectors, including agriculture, food, trade, technology, construction and others, the two peoples are increasingly strengthening their indestructible ties. It is moving how they mobilized in the nation of Ho Chi Minh, from the popular will, to raise -to date- more than 14 million dollars, fruit of the campaign of the Red Cross of that country, which they will donate to the Cuban people.
Cuba was the first nation in the hemisphere to receive Vietnamese students to teach them the Spanish language at Fidel's request, the first to create a Committee for Solidarity with South Vietnam, and Fidel himself expressed, on January 2, 1966, that "for Vietnam we would be willing to give even our own blood". That supreme act of detachment remained in the hearts of the Vietnamese people, as did his gesture of being the first head of government to set foot in the liberated zone of South Vietnam, in Quang Tri.
In the Homeland of José Martí, who fell in combat on May 19, 1895, just five years after Ho Chi Minh was born on the same day, in 1890, these 80 years of victory of the National Day of Vietnam are celebrated as their own, with the pride that runs through the veins of their children for the words that Uncle Ho told our colleague Marta Rojas, in July 1969: "The strength of the Vietnamese people, their resistance, lies in unity, fundamentally, and in that they enjoy the support of the peoples of the world and, as an example, there is the brotherly people of Cuba."
