(1961, August 9)

--- Notes

Comrade Yefu[1], handle this. Can see him. If the other party can postpone their return home by two or three days, the meeting can be on the 15th or 16th, with the location to be notified at the time.
Mao
Morning of the 9th
[I]
This instruction was written on a request report dated August 3, 1961, from Liu Ningyi, Vice Minister of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee, concerning the proposed arrangement for Mao Zedong to meet Major Sánchez, Commandant of the Cuban Artillery School. The report stated that in May of this year, the Popular Socialist Party of Cuba, through our embassy in Cuba, proposed to our Party that Major Sánchez, Commandant of the Cuban Artillery School, be invited in the name of the China-Latin America Friendship Association to visit China after his visit to the Soviet Union. We expressed our agreement. Sánchez arrived in Beijing on July 31. Before leaving his country, he told our embassy personnel that he greatly admired Chairman Mao, and after arriving in Beijing, he repeatedly expressed his admiration for Chairman Mao and his hope to meet him. Given that Sánchez was one of the 81 men who landed in Cuba with Castro aboard the yacht "Granma" in 1956, one of the 12 heroes who broke through the encirclement of Batista's army, was very resolute in the struggle against the invasion by U.S. mercenaries this April and was wounded, and that this is his first visit to China, we are of the opinion that it would be quite good if Chairman Mao could find time to receive him once.
[2]
Yefu, namely Xu Yefu, was then Mao Zedong's confidential secretary.