New book about Fidel Castro’s visit to Vietnam

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 13 (ACN) The book Fidel Castro, nuestra sangre por Vietnam [Fidel Castro, our blood for Vietnam] was launched at the news agency Prensa Latina (PL) in Havana as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Commander in Chief’s visit to the sister nation.

Resulting from a joint work by the Vietnam News Agency and PL edited by the Ocean Sur publishing house, the book is a compilation of articles and photographs—some of them unpublished—about the historic event, including the input of former PL correspondents or special reporters deployed in Vietnam since the U.S. attack.

In September 1973, Fidel became the first and only world leader to travel to Vietnam in the midst of U.S. bombing raids to cross the 17th parallel, the dividing line between the North Vietnam and the liberated territories of South Vietnam. Furthermore, Fidel and his delegation fulfilled a busy agenda that included visits to the Martyrs' Monument and to Ho Chi Minh’s house, as well as official talks with Vietnamese leaders.

Editors Jorge Luna and Víctor Carriba, remarked that the Commander also insisted on visiting vulnerable and dangerous areas even when a typhoon was approaching and there were concerns about the coup d'état staged by Augusto Pinochet against Salvador Allende in Chile.

Le Thanh Tung, Vietnam's ambassador to Cuba, described the book about the history of solidarity and fraternity between the two nations as a gift to the new generations.