Vo Hai Ha, president of the Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Association (AAVC), highlighted the significance of that deed, which he described as the first great defeat of US imperialism in the Western Hemisphere and the basis on which the Revolution would conceive its “war of the whole people” doctrine.

Vo Hai Ha, also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (PCV) and head of the Foreign Relations Commission of the National Assembly, assured that the Vietnamese will never forget the material and moral help of the island when Vietnam was struggling for its independence.

He noted that today the two countries are still united by the friendship sown by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and together they will overcome all difficulties to achieve prosperity and contribute to peace and stability in their regions and in the world.

For his part, Cuban Ambassador Orlando Hernandez said that the Bay of Pigs victory, and that of Vietnam over the US invader, showed the invincibility of two peoples never bent to colonial designs and determined to build a development model with the human being at the center.

Our relations, forged in the heat of the battle for independence and founded on the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, are an example of solidarity and mutual aid for the world, he said.

Presenting the nearly 40 books included in the exhibition, translated into Spanish, the director of the National Political Publishing House, Pham Minh Tuan, explained that they range from speeches and interviews with Fidel and passages of bilateral friendship, to essential titles on the construction of socialism in Vietnam.

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