9-04-05, 9:38 am
NOBODY could have imagined on September 2, 1945, that that slight-built man with the graying beard, known by various names, among them Ho Chi Minh – that man who remains inseparably linked with the history of the world – would become one of the most exceptional figures of Asia in the 20th century.
That September day, from the Ba Dinh Plaza in the center of Hanoi in the North of Vietnam and the country’s capital, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed to the world the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In a relatively short time from that date, people would learn of the exceptional gifts of the revolutionary as a tactician and strategist. He was a renovator of his time – that was known – at least in Paris, Moscow, China, and in his own country, although nobody grasped the extent of his vision, tenacity and power to unite an entire people for a tremendous struggle against the strong redoubts of French colonialism, and later against powerful U.S. imperialism. But that vision and capacity for strategy would amaze the world.
There is film footage of the period that attests to that image of Ba Dinh Plaza, filled to overflowing with people listening to Ho Chi Minh proclaim the Republic over a microphone in a circular frame. World War II was ending. The Allies had defeated the Nazis; France, the metropolis of many overseas nations, was also liberated to a certain extent, General de Gaulle was the great hero of the Resistance. That was the tactical moment for the revolutionary Ai Quog, or Ho Chi Minh, to assume all the power of his leadership among his people and proclaim the independence of his country from North to South. It should be said in passing that Vietnam had just suffered a cruel battle against the Japanese, emboldened as a central part of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis disposed to take over the world. Millions of Vietnamese perished. Being occupied by Germany, France was unable to offer even crumbs to offset the famine, as the metropolis interested in a colony strategically located in South East Asia and south of China.
That was the general situation in Vietnam when Ho Chi Minh and his comrades from the Communist Party of Indochina and subsequently of Vietnam, founded by him, proclaimed a sovereign and independent republic, disposed to help liberate its sister colonies of Laos and Cambodia as soon as humanly possible.
One cannot talk responsibly of the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam – now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – without highlighting the political wisdom and knowledge of life in the colonies possessed by Ho Chi Minh. In his younger years in Paris he was one of the founder members of the French Communist Party and, from the heart of the organization, advocated the liberation of the French colonies overseas, to the shock of his comrades, although many of them finally understood him. He was directly aware of the situation of the colonies, including those in Africa, via his travels as a kitchen hand and simple sailor on board a cargo ship that docked in those ports; he was 22 at that time. He also suffered abuse on board a French warship that anchored in the Shameen inlet in the French concession of Canton.
As mentioned above he lived in Paris as a journalist and portrait painter. He was an insatiable reader. At that time he was the young Nguyen Ai Quoc, who traveled from Paris to Moscow in 1923 to attend the 5th International Communist Congress as a delegate of the French Communist Party, which was already concerned over the revolutionary movement in the colonies. From there he left on a new mission, to take part in the Chinese revolution and stir up the revolutionary movement in his own country. His first step was to found the Association of Young Revolutionaries of Vietnam. Later he was imprisoned and given up for dead in China, but was evidently not and returned to Vietnam.
This superficial account of his revolutionary undertakings is directed at sustaining a great truth: Ho Chi Minh was a man with highly advanced ideas, backed up by the experience of struggle and knowledge of his world in the time that it befell him to live and dating back to his early youth. He was an educated person, the son of teachers, who dominated the Vietnamese language, the Chinese language and writing, the French of the metropolis and could make himself perfectly understood in Russian. In passing, when we interviewed him in Hanoi a few months before his death, he welcomed us and bade us farewell in perfect Spanish, explaining that he had learnt some words of Spanish during his time in so many ports.
It was still a time of joy at the victory of the Allies and the metropolis, France, decided for itself and at the prompting of the United States, to retake its colonies, Vietnam first. And with that an impressive war began, between a hungry and barely armed people and the colonial army supported by the victorious U.S. army. That did not come as a surprise to Ho Chi Minh and his close collaborators, the then legendary General Giap, Phan Van Dong, Le Duan and others. A popular army of peasants, in its vast majority, stood up to the might of the forces of the re-conquest. And thus it was. The fighting extended throughout the north and south of Vietnam, but it was in Dien Bien Phu where the best trained of the colonial forces at that time suffered total defeat in 1954. The Vietnamese even entered the office of the French general leading the troops and took him prisoner.
It appeared that with such a colossal victory Vietnam could develop itself and live in peace as one sole family – as it had always done – from North to South. But the persisting alliances, in this context and period, between the United States and France, supported by a wealthy group of Vietnamese traitors, forced a change in the situation.
In virtue of the agreements reached at the end of the war and with that, the end of French colonialism in Vietnam, the troops of the metropolis were supposed to meet up south of the 17th Parallel to leave for their country. There was a stipulated time period for the withdrawal of those troops and, wasting no time, the Americans set about backing the South Vietnamese 'provisional' government with supplies of arms and showers of cash in order to strengthen it and thus keep Vietnam divided.
To the north, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with its capital in Hanoi, and to the south, the Republic of South Vietnam, with its capital in Saigon. The maneuver was not an easy one, given the immense power ranged against the North, which was still fighting hunger and tenaciously training an army that could stand up to any threat. And, in addition to that, the ideals of Ho Chi Minh and the vanguard of the Communist Party of Vietnam: education for the people, improvements of every kind – within the possibilities – unity of the people, whatever their religious associations or mountain ethnicities; the strengthening of the administrative institutions, and the development of the incipient industry, starting with energy – coal – and ports, among other basic premises.
In parallel, Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party in the DRV took up those ideas for which they had fought. They would soon discover that revolutionaries in the south were organizing into guerrilla groups. These revolutionaries had support and Ho Ch Minh in person met with Nguyen Thi Dinh, a woman from the Bentré area. A bridge was established and constructed at dizzying speed, along with a road that was unimaginable to the enemy, a real highway, the famous Ho Chi Minh Highway, which crossed rivers, mountains, and seemingly impenetrable selva.
The liberation war in the south was already a fact. The motto of Ho Chi Minh was exactly the same as at the beginning: One Vietnam. Artificially divided, Vietnam had to be reunited.
It was the most genocidal war of the 20th century, of a superpower with a sophisticated army of air, maritime and land forces against a small country. Chemical weapons, fragmentation bombs, Agent Orange, live phosphorus, napalm and even an electronic curtain – rapidly and ingeniously penetrated by the Vietnamese – were deployed for more than 10 years against South Vietnam and against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in a merciless aerial bombardment. A conservative summary of Vietnamese victims amounts to two million. As for the U.S. forces, there were so many thousands that the empire was shaken. The Vietnam syndrome inspired movies. The war on Vietnam produced the most brutal images that were seen up until then in such an unequal war. In response to indiscriminate aerial bombings, the Vietnamese used elements that included bamboo traps in the jungle that terrified the well-armed U.S. soldiers, or tamed wasps – that is no joke – it is for real. Ho Chi Minh called this, tactically and strategically speaking: 'The war of all the people' for national salvation, freedom, sovereignty and reunification. From that a military doctrine emerged.
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam founded on September 2, 1945, not only became a theoretical reality but a firm and indestructible one. One fine day, September 30, 1975, 30 yeas ago, televisions across the world showed an unprecedented spectacle: the elite troops of the United States running terrified across rooftops and anywhere that a helicopter could hover so as to hang onto its slides or any other part and flee Vietnam. It was a stampede; there was no order whatsoever in the retreat, although the Vietnamese had opened an office in Paris some years previously and established formal diplomatic contact between the U.S. government and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, acknowledged as a political entity with all the prerogatives of a government. The talks were presided over by the well-known Madame Thi Binh of the press cables. Her name, Nguyen Thi Dinh was similar to that of a peasant woman who rose up in Bentré and who became a deputy commander in chief of the NLF.
It should be recorded that this revolutionary undertaking, whose artifice was Ho Chi Minh, was capable of raising a solidarity movement throughout the world. Cuba was the first country in the world to recognize the South Vietnam NLF and to found the first Solidarity Committee with South Vietnam, which also extended to Laos and Cambodia. The most progressive forces of intellectuals, artists, scientists and professors worldwide joined forces in an International War Crimes Tribunal instigated by Nobel Prize Winner Bertrand Russell, which conducted sessions in Stockholm, Denmark, Paris and other cities. Men and women of goodwill in the United States, including – as already mentioned – soldiers who fought in Vietnam, became a significant factor of solidarity with that little nation brutally attacked by the greatest power in the world.
That man who proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, had already died (September 3, 1969) and thus did not see the colossal victory of his people, but the Political Testament that he left, written shortly before his death, was a mandate:
'Vietnam will be free, independent and sovereign, the enemy will be defeated, and the Vietnamese people will build a Vietnam 10 times more beautiful. It must be united. So certain of victory was he that he wrote in his testament: 'Our country will have the signal honor to be a little nation that, through heroic struggle, has defeated two great imperialisms – the French and the American – and has made a worthy contribution to the national liberation movement.'
And as his last will he proclaimed: 'My only desire is that all of our Party and people, closely united in struggle, construct a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic and prosperous, and make a valiant contribution to the world Revolution.' (Hanoi, May 10, 1969.)
From Granma
