Cuban journalist Martha Rojas asserted today that the struggle waged by Vietnam from 1945 to 1975 against foreign invaders, was a war of all the people and only could have one ending, the victory of the Asian nation.
On occasion of the anniversary of Vietnam reunification, on April 30, 1975 and the victory in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, on May 7, 1954, the reporter recalled her experience as the first Cuban and Latin American war correspondent, in an interview with Prensa Latina.
The battle of Dien Bien Phu was the culmination of the First War of Indochina, in which the Vietnamese army, under the command of general Vo Nguyen Giap defeated French troops.
With that victory, the nation won independence, but it was separated in two states: North under a communist government and the South, in the hands of Saigon authorities, awaiting elections for reunification.
After expelling French colonialists, Vietnam faced the U.S. invasion during another 20 more years and on April 30, 1975, it won the last battle in Saigon and thus arrived to the end of the conflict.
During the war, Rojas was on several occasions in Indochina and the Vietnamese remember her speciallyh for being the last foreign journalist that interviewed the revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Communist Party in 1930, led the struggle against the French and after that against the U.S.
Marta Rojas was the first and only Cuban woman who entered the jungles of South Vietnam in 1965 in the height of war to inform the Cuban people and the world about the reality of that conflict.
"I was impressed by the tenacity of Vietnamese even in the most difficult situations. Before such powerful enemy, superior in number and technology, they used all possible means, including agricultural tools as weapons", commented the journalist.
"There were things so unusual as the soldiers who fired their guns at the U.S. airplanes", she stressed.
According to Rojas, all the Vietnamese people, from the children until the elderly, participated in one form or another in the struggle for independence.
The reporter said how an old woman, which she saw in a southern village, sitting on her knees, threw seeds from one side to the other.
"She was there marking the movements of enemy troops and later informed them to the Vietnamese army. She did not know how to count, as she was illiterate, she only threw seeds from one side to the other", she explained.
According to the journalist, even the children contributed to the struggle, as they fought and participated in transportation and road construction tasks.
"We were able to see the war as a battle of Vietnamese culture -argued Rojas- above the political or social struggle, a culture of patriotism and daily heroism.
We never doubted the victory of the Vietnamese people as everywhere there was an incredible will to win, the civil population mobilized with the active participation in combats together with the military forces", she expressed.
According to Rojas, the Asian country became a world symbol of liberty and justice; and for the opressed it is a legend, an example to follow as Ernesto Che Guevara did on the need to create two, three, many Vietnams.
The journalist assured that Vietnam was a unique war, because its inhabitants were ready to do any sacrifice to obtain the independence so yearned by president Ho Chi Minh.