Thursday, September 28, 2017

Tricontinental Magazine Looks at the Vietnam War, 1972 - Part One "The Call of the Hour"

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.


Leaflet: Tricontinental Magazine Looks at the Vietnam War, 1972 - Part One "The Call of the Hour"

For the last week we have been looking at some vintage leftist leaflets from the period of the Vietnam War that counter American revisionist falsehoods about how the United States somehow had good intentions in Vietnam and that the war was “started in good faith by decent men.”

In fact, the imperialist war in Vietnam was launched after a series of broken promises and straight-up American lies, was illegal on multiple levels, saw the illegal carpet bombing of a developing nation (North Vietnam) by the Americans, saw the widespread use of chemical warfare by their forces and saw them commit countless crimes and atrocities. 

Those launching and pursuing the war were anything but "decent men" acting in "good faith", they were war criminals. 

Previously we looked at a leaflet from a trip by three Canadians to North Vietnam, as well as at a longer booklet regarding US crimes in Vietnam.

Today we look at a 1972 issue of the anti-imperialist Cuban published magazine Tricontinental that was devoted to the Vietnam War. It looks at the history of Vietnam and Vietnamese resistance, has the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's Declaration of Independence (which was modeled on the American Declaration of Independence), outlines the Geneva Agreements and more.

Due to the length of the issue we will be dividing the post into two parts of which this is the first.


And what great people these are! What stoicism and courage! And what a lesson for the world is contained in this struggle! What role shall we, the exploited people of the world, play? The peoples of the three continents focus their attention on Vietnam and learn their lesson. We cannot elude the call of this hour. Vietnam is pointing it out with its endless lesson of heroism, its tragic and everyday lesson of struggle and death for the attainment of final victory.  - Ernesto Che Guevara
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When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets  (which is still being updated with past posts).

If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com


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