- “Cuba sent an annual aid of 10,000 tons of sugar, doctors and some advisers,” recalls a former ambassador of the regime in Hanoi
- Díaz-Canel comes to Vietnam to beg for investments from state and private enterprises of a communist ally that practices a market economy
14ymedio, Madrid, September 1, 2025 — In the midst of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s official visit to Vietnam, a country that has been gaining ground in Cuba — even literally by turning one of its companies into a tenant of land on the island — Cubadebate publishes an interview with former ambassador Fredesmán Turró, which, unwittingly, is very revealing of how the two communist nations have followed diverging paths and come to opposite results.
From being a very poor country receiving economic aid from Cuba, Vietnam has opened itself to the market economy and has become a developing society that helps an impoverished Cuba that still clings to centralized planning.
“Cuba sent an annual aid of 10,000 tons of sugar, doctors and some advisors, and in the middle of the war two poultry genetic centers and a cattle genetic center were built,” says Turró, who arrived in Vietnam in 1968 -at just 18 years old- along with nine other students. The group was part of a commitment made by Raul Castro, then commander, during a visit to the country two years ago in which he met with Ho Chi Minh.
“It was really a very, very emotional visit. In his speech, Raul said that Cuba would even be willing to send volunteers to fight alongside the Vietnamese,” he said. The Asian leader, who died in 1969, never got to know Fidel Castro -who did not visit Hanoi until 1973- although, according to Turró, “There are countless anecdotes that show the affection, the respect they had. “The Cuban sent, he says, ice cream from Coppelia to the Vietnamese leader and “species of bull frogs for Uncle Ho to raise in the pond near the humble hut where he lived, in the service area of the Presidential Palace.”
“It was really a very, very emotional visit. In his speech, Raul said that Cuba would even be willing to send volunteers to fight alongside the Vietnamese”
The former ambassador relates, with feeling, Castro’s first visit to Vietnam, which occurred in the middle of the war; he was “the first foreign politician to visit liberated areas of the south, very close to the enemy.” The Vietnamese “remember it with much gratitude and admiration for the audacity of the Commander, because that was really dangerous, but also for the decision of the Cuban leader to build and donate a hospital to the area.” Cuban doctors are currently working there, although the regime has not specified recently how many of them make up the contingent.
In the middle of the interview, the conversation revolves around Vietnam’s transformation from a poor country with no basic services to the emerging economy it is today. According to Turró, who admits that he does not know anything about economics and is limited to telling what he experienced, he says that the first mistake of the country was to try an industrialization similar to that of the countries in the socialist camp in Europe, when it lacked the necessary bases for this. Therefore, they decided to take another course.
They adopted a market economy with state control, not letting it “go wild,” while deciding to maintain social policies (…). In poor areas they built infrastructure, put in electricity and implemented new policies.
The former official also touches on a sore point, which has long been claimed by self-employed producers and small entrepreneurs in Cuba. “One of the initial measures of that renewal process was to liberate the productive forces and develop them,” he says, although he also claims the importance of the Communist Party in the process and says that “Ho Chi Minh’s thinking remains the guide.”
The development of Vietnam, based on these changes in its economy, has led it, he emphasizes, to be “in recent years (…) fundamental for winning and overcoming the difficulties we have in Cuba. As we know, it is the second largest investor in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) and the second largest trading partner in Asia.” He added: “Vietnam has helped and still helps us in several projects that are key, such as the planting of rice and corn. Its ZEDM companies produce basic necessities.” In addition, the country has now raised $14.8 million in donations for the island.
Turró, asked what measures Cuba could take to penetrate the Vietnamese market, recognizes that we must “have more initiatives, be more creative” and stresses that the Cuban side must understand that in Vietnam there is free competition, and it can cost a lot to do business. “If a Cuban company is going, for example, to sell coffee -which is not the case-, it must know that it will have to compete with several brands of Vietnamese coffee, including foreign coffee brands,” he says, while recalling that competition is in fact encouraged and fostered.
“The purchase of medicines in Vietnam is by tender. You have to go through a bidding process, and -this is no secret to anyone- those contracts are sometimes won by the big pharmaceutical multinationals, which dominate global trade,” he admits.
Political will, however, partially opens the way for Cuba. That is why among the activities of Díaz-Canel in Hanoi has been the inauguration of the high-tech plant for the production of medicines of Genfarma, the joint venture resulting from an agreement between BCF S.A. -an entity of the state group BioCubaFarma- and the Vietnamese Genfarma Holdings.
“We intend to produce blood products there in the short term. It will be another extraordinary fact that will give technological sovereignty to Vietnam, not just in the case of vaccines and biotechnological products, with very high added value,” said Mayda Mauri Pérez, president of BioCubaFarma. “It will have a decisively high impact on the health of the Cuban population, because everything we do with Vietnam will have a return to our basic list of medicines. With the participation of the Vietnamese we will have financial resources that will allow us to produce on a large scale and meet both the demand of their population as well as ours,” she added.
In Hanoi, Díaz-Canel stressed that “this is the fastest joint venture we have achieved,” as it had already been agreed during President To Lam’s visit to Cuba in September 2024.
In Hanói, Díaz-Canel stressed that “this is the fastest joint venture we have achieved,” as it had already been agreed during President To Lam’s visit to Cuba in September 2024, which demonstrates the efficiency of the Asians, who are also achieving some important advances in the cultivation of rice on the island.
The Cuban side has undertaken to give preferential treatment to its Vietnamese partners, who had expressed their annoyance at the inefficiency of their counterparts on the island. In 2024, the company Agri VMA -with several businesses on the island, including its presence in ZEDM- sent a letter to three ministers of the Cuban government requesting access to 300,000 dollars frozen in their account at the International Financial Bank. The company claimed that it needed these funds to import raw materials and maintain its production, which had been reduced to 10 per cent due to a shortage of inputs, and it reminded Cuba of Vietnam’s role as a supplier of animal feed.
Shortly before Díaz-Canel’s arrival in Hanoi, the Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Deborah Rivas Saavedra, was in charge of smoothing the way and assured that Cuba “is open and ready” to adopt measures to facilitate Vietnamese investment projects.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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