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The Amanpour Hour
Interview With Harvard University Professor Jill Lepore; Interview With University Of Oxford Professor Timothy Garton Ash; Inside Mexico's Crackdown On Drug Cartels; Interview With The Parents Circle Families Forum Member Rami Elhanan; Interview With The Parents Circle Families Forum Member Bassam Aramin; The Vietnam War: 50 Years On; Excerpt Of Interview With "My Name Is Emilia del Valle" Author Isabel Allende. Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired May 03, 2025 - 11:00 ET
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR. Here's where we're headed this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: 100 days under Trump 2.0: flooding the zone, stretching the limits of executive power. American and British historians Jill Lepore and Timothy Garton Ash take us back to the United States' illiberal roots.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: Many Europeans are saying is this is the end of the west not as a historical or cultural entity, but as a geopolitical actor.
AMANPOUR: Then, after Trump goes on the offensive against Mexico, CNN's Isobel Yeung investigates the country's crackdown on the drug cartels.
ISOBEL YEUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is pretty tough work. I mean, they're wearing full hazmat suits. They have to wear masks because these drugs, obviously and the chemicals are very, very potent, but they're just trying to make sure that the cartels don't come back and finish making the drugs here.
AMANPOUR: And Israel marks Remembrance Day, and Palestinians mark a massive jump in deaths and a two-month siege of Gaza.
I'm joined by two courageous peacemakers, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin, who both lost daughters to this endless war.
RAMI ELHANAN, MEMBER, THE PARENTS CIRCLE FAMILIES FORUM: It's an alliance. It's an alliance of blood.
BASSAM ARAMIN, MEMBER, THE PARENTS CIRCLE FAMILIES FORUM: Our relationship is above any conflict.
AMANPOUR: Also, 50 years since the fall of Saigon. From my archives, how a single haunting photograph changed hearts and minds about the Vietnam War.
And finally, "My Name is Emilia del Valle". From San Francisco to Chile, celebrated author Isabel Allende on her new novel of self- discovery and female strength.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
It's been 100 days since Donald Trump's return to the White House, there have been lots of moving parts.
First, from over here, that picture at the pope's funeral this time last week in stark contrast to this scene in the Oval Office two months ago. It seems to have led to a bit of a U-turn on the Trump administration's dealings with Ukraine. Now that minerals deal has finally been signed, but on a much more equal basis.
And even the language has changed. Secretary Bessent called for this cruel and senseless war to end. And the Treasury Department described it as Russia's full-scale invasion.
Here's Bessent on Fox News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: It is.
A way to show that there is no daylight between Ukraine and U.S., as President Trump presses to end this horrible war. He wants both sides to come to the table.
Now, by showing that the U.S. has an economic interest in Ukraine, it's a signal to the Russian leadership.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: It is a significant shift, at least for now. No, Trump hasn't ended the war in 24 hours, or even in 100 days as he promised. And Russia, with the rest of the world will be wondering where the Trump administration lands on its next 100 days.
The first have been deemed chaotic and overzealous, where multiple polls this week show the president's approval is underwater, even on his signature issues, the economy and mass deportations.
While the MAGA faithful stand behind him, there's an uneasy feeling that Trump is pushing America and the world away from democratic norms by stretching the limits of executive power, ruling mostly by fiat.
But this illiberal turn has deep-seated roots in American history. I spoke to two major historians about it. Jill Lepore from Harvard University and Timothy Garton Ash from Oxford University.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome both of you to the program.
So Jill Lepore, let me ask you, because you write a lot about this. Explain what the liberal world order is, in short, obviously. And is America actually departing from it right now?
JILL LEPORE, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND LAW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, the liberal world order has its origins in the Second World War, really in the alliance between Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
[11:04:47]
LEPORE: But in the aftermath of the war in which the United States assumed authority on a global stage, as a beacon of liberal democracy, and put money behind that promise, there are many ways in which the United States fell short of those ideals, as many critics of American imperialism would suggest.
But American commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes around the world through its own economic force has been crucial to what stability there has been for the last 80 years of world history.
So this is an incredibly important turning point, an inflection point. No one knows which way this is headed but Trumpism represents a great retreat from those commitments.
AMANPOUR: The bottom line, apparently, is that liberalism requires power to be contained within its authorized and constitutional boundaries, executive power.
Jill, who is going to limit the stretching of this executive power by President Trump? Congress doesn't seem to be doing its job. That is presumably its job.
LEPORE: Yes. The separation of powers means that it's the job of everybody but the executive to exercise a breaking force on any kind of overreach. That's true of any branch of government.
Congress has been feckless for some time now, really since the 1980s. It is a function of the incredible polarization of the United States, part of which is a consequence of our two-party system. But also, really that's a function of widening income inequality in the United States. Those two are really closely related.
So Congress has been extremely ineffective even without this situation in which Trump enjoys a Republican Senate and a Republican House.
AMANPOUR: Timothy Garton Ash, what is Europe seeing and interpreting in this moment? Because obviously, the United States and Europe witness to the end of the Cold War played a pretty significant role in that. And now, again, it does seem to be turning its back on that tradition, certainly in foreign policy.
ASH: What many Europeans are saying is this is the end of the West, not as a historical or cultural entity, but as a geopolitical actor.
AMANPOUR: And what do you think -- you know, has -- is it just Trump or is it America's reputation and what America stands for, as somebody suggested, that's been shot in these 100 days?
In other words, what do people think about Americans today having imbued so much, you know, good intentions into America over the years?
ASH: So, I would say two different things. The Princeton scholar, John Ikenberry has a great term. He talks about the U.S. having been a liberal leviathan.
And to the extent that that liberal international order worked, it was often because there was a kind of hegemon, which was the United States. NATO being the obvious example, right?
But the other bit of it is the soft power, and I can speak for myself. I'm in -- for the whole of my life, I've had a basically positive default view of the United States and seen the United States as a natural friend of freedom in Europe and elsewhere.
And I, like many others, are now very much having second thoughts.
We're never going to have America back in the same way.
AMANPOUR: Jill, let me ask you about some of the key touchstones. You know, there are not just in the United States, but in Europe as well, an obsession with immigration, migrants -- that side of the identity piece, right?
And I guess I'm trying to figure out whether America has showed its face. They wanted a president who would stop migration into the U.S., at least they say illegal migration.
Now, we've got polls on the first 100 days, which suggests the American people feel that he's gone too far, that the mass deportations, ignoring the courts are just a step too far. What does America stand for?
LEPORE: I think America is truly divided on this question. And I think on the whole, a lot of Americans are fairly ill-informed about it as a consequence of just the disruptive force of social media over the last 20 years.
I mean, I think that immigration in a way kind of parallels the issue of liberalism. If you think about the end of -- the aftermath of the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, American politics became really tribal, partly because there was no communist enemy to demonize that sort of united the parties.
[11:09:50]
LEPORE: And the demonizing of liberalism became kind of the commitment of the conservative insurgency. And one piece of that demonizing involved demonizing immigrants.
Not to say that immigration isn't a substantive policy issue on which Americans have really clear policy differences and preferences, but I think that has gotten bound up in the tribalism of American politics. So it becomes hard to know what Americans really think about immigration, because it's kind of a proxy for all the other issues that divide Americans.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Stay tuned for part two of my conversation with the historians where we will talk about how America emerged from these great struggles in the past.
And coming up later on the show, how two bereaved Israeli and Palestinian fathers are channeling their grief finding a path to peace.
[11:10:40]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program and to the second part of my conversation with historian Jill Lepore and Timothy Garton Ash.
We discussed what can be learned from Americas ongoing struggle to balance a deeply and ever more divided nation, and why it matters also to the world.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, Jill, from a U.S. perspective. America has gone through illiberal periods -- great and grave ones, going way back to Jim Crow, the Japanese internment during the Second World War, the Red Scare. How does America look to the past and figure out how to emerge from this one if indeed it ever will?
LEPORE: You know, I actually think the last burst of democracies is the best model for our understanding historically at this moment. So, thinking about that rising number of democracies since 1974, there was a similar rise in the number of democracies after the First World War, right?
Wilson said he was going to make the world safe for democracy, and as European empires collapsed, democracies were born. And then, during the economic crises of the 1920s, they began collapsing.
And in the U.S. that seemed possible as well. The 1930s in the United States were -- you just couldn't open a magazine without coming across a series of essays or a symposium or forum on the future of democracy.
Everyone was concerned in the United States that the United States might fall prey to fascism or to communism or to technocracy, the movement that was led in North America by Elon Musk's grandfather.
There was this real sense that liberal democracy might not survive in the 1930s because the forces of illiberalism were on the rise all over the world. Same was true in Britain, of course, a kind of Brown Shirt moment.
And I think that how Americans confronted that challenge in the 1930s is a possible model for this moment in that those conversations, well, what do we do if democratic behavior seems to be on the decline? If people's commitment to the separation of power seems to be falling? If our sense that the country can endure as a self-governing entity is one that we are questioning.
People got together in essentially versions of town meetings and tried to talk through issues. The broadcast media was really important to American democracy in those years, the way that radio was used to try to bridge divides among Americans, to try to restore faith in democracy.
And then, of course, the leadership of Roosevelt. So, we don't have a Roosevelt in this moment obviously, but I do think there are lessons to be learned from the 1930s in particular.
AMANPOUR: That's really interesting.
And, Tim, from an outside America point of view, we just saw Mark Carney, the head of the Liberal Party, basically rise his party from underwater polls by essentially running on an anti-Trump platform.
I just want to play what he said when he won.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over.
The system of open, global trade, anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that while not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades is over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So that's pretty profound in its bleakness and its realism.
Do you think, Tim, when you think about how, you know, illiberal democracies can be pushed back outside the United States, like you mentioned Hungary and elsewhere, there is a playbook?
ASH: I do. First of all, Trump is actually a gift to the opponents of Trumpism in much of the world. Without Trump, Mark Carney would not have that victory. We have an Australian election coming up next weekend. And again, it looks as if the conservatives will suffer from their association with Trump.
All over Europe, hard-right populists are deeply embarrassed by their association with Trump. So, that's point number one.
Point number two, because quite a few other countries went into this dismantling of democracy.
[11:19:46]
ASH: This anti-liberal revolution, which is what you're seeing in the United States, sooner we have some experience about how you get out of it.
For example, Poland had a populist government for eight years, which nearly succeeded in doing what Viktor Orban did in Hungary, and what indeed Trump is trying to do in the United States because, of course, Trump is famously a great admirer of Viktor Orban, but has come out the other side.
And one lesson is very, very simple, win the next election. The polls came out of it because despite it not being a free and fair election, not a level playing field, they had the biggest turnout in Polish history. More young people voted than old people, more women than men, and they just won the election.
So, one lesson for the United States is win the midterms.
AMANPOUR: It's really fascinating. And next time we talk, hopefully, we'll talk about a potential world without the U.S. as the defender of the liberal world order that it created.
Timothy Garton Ash, Jill Lepore, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
LEPORE: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Up next, have Trump's threats of tariffs and strikes against Mexico worked?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YEUNG: We're with American military right now flying over the state of Sinaloa, over this massive expanse of rural land, looking for any signs of cartel activity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: CNN's Isobel Yeung investigates the country's crackdown on the drug cartels when we come back.
[11:21:17]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
For years now, Mexico's drug cartels have inflicted endless violence across their own country and fed America's drug addictions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The cartels are waging war on America, and it's time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, Trump is pressuring Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to crack down on these cartels, threatening tariffs and strikes.
In response, Mexico has sent hundreds of troops to the gangland state of Sinaloa, once led by the notorious drug lord El Chapo, selling huge quantities of illegal substances to the U.S.
CNN's Isobel Yeung traveled to that region to find out how Mexico's cartel crackdown is going.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
ISOBEL YEUNG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're with the Mexican military right now flying over the state of Sinaloa, over this massive expanse of rural land looking for any signs of cartel activities.
Mexican soldiers find and burn acres of marijuana and poppies that would otherwise be turned into heroin.
But it's synthetic drugs that are responsible for most overdose deaths in the U.S. These drugs like fentanyl and meth are produced in enormous quantities, generate much bigger profits and are often made in remote rural areas.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through graphics): OK, look over here. This is an area with the chemical products. Everything here will be destroyed.
YEUNG: This is pretty tough work. I mean, they're wearing full on hazmat suits. They have to wear masks because these drugs obviously and the chemicals are very, very potent. But they're just trying to make sure that the cartels don't come back and finish making the drugs here.
Over a six-month period, thousands of suspected cartel members have been arrested across Mexico, and more than 140 tons of drugs have been seized.
But the reality is more than 1,200 people have also been killed in Sinaloa in the past year. Hundreds more have disappeared, fueled by a vengeful war between two rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel.
In downtown Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, the military's narrative that they are fully in control begins to unravel.
Very stark reminders here of people who are missing, who have been disappeared as part of this cartel war between the two factions that's playing out right now. All very recent cases. This was last week, 23- year-old went missing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those, you cannot say if they are real.
YEUNG: What do you mean?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those flyers are old.
YEUNG: No, this is the -- post the date here. This is the 22nd of March they went missing, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Yes, but this is a copy. Who put this? We don't know.
YEUNG: As we're talking, a soldier blocks our camera.
You mean it's not verified? Yes. Presumably people aren't just putting up posters for the fun of it. They're putting them up because they're missing family members, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't know.
YEUNG: What's up? You don't want us filming it?
The military steer us off and invite us to film something else. But we call the number on the poster of the missing woman. Her name is Vivian Aispuro. Her family tell us she disappeared 17 days ago. We promised to follow up on her story.
But who are the men running this criminal network, wreaking havoc on people living here? We part ways with the military.
So we've just entered an area of the city that is still very dangerous.
[11:29:45]
YEUNG: After weeks of trying, our contact here on the ground has managed to secure a meeting with a member of the cartel who's involved apparently in the production of drugs.
And so we're meeting him now in -- somewhere around here in an undisclosed location.
How are you?
This man is talking to us on the condition we hide his identity and location.
Can I pull up a chair?
He says he produces fentanyl for the Sinaloa cartel.
How safe or dangerous is this area to be in?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Right now, all areas are dangerous.
YEUNG: The Mexican military are making a big effort to crack down on the drug production here, how are you responding to that and how does that impact your work?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): They're doing a good job. There are more of them now, so we have to find a way to keep doing this, to keep working. Of course, on a smaller scale, not the same as before. But it continues.
YEUNG: I mean, according to the Trump administration, you are a terrorist. I mean, the cartels have been labeled a foreign terrorist organization. What do you make of that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Well, the situation is ugly. But we have to eat.
YEUNG: What's your message to Donald Trump if he's watching this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): My respect. According to him, he's looking out for his people, but the problem is the consumers are in the United States. If there weren't any consumers, we would stop.
YEUNG: There is a lot of violence playing out on these streets here at the moment every day, right? I mean, people are dying on a daily basis. Children are afraid to go to school.
Do you have any sense of remorse over your role and your involvement in this group?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Of course. Of course. Things are sad, but -- well, things are sad.
YEUNG: His phone is pinging. Someone is nearby. He tells us we need to leave for our own safety.
It's because of the action of cartel members like these that civilians too are caught up in the violence.
Vivian Aispuro, the missing woman from the poster was one of them. Her body has just been found.
I'm so sorry for your loss, I really am. Are you able to tell me a little bit about your sister?
ALMA AISPURO, SISTER OF VICTIM (through translation): She was very loved. She really likes cats, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga. We wanted to go to her concert together. Not anymore. YEUNG: Vivian's sister believes she wasn't directly involved with the cartels. But the conflict here has broken all norms, she says, and violence has come for everyone, including women and children.
YEUNG: I mean, the authorities are saying that they're going after the bad guys, they're making a lot of arrests, they're going after the drugs, they're going after the weapons. Do you feel like they're not doing enough?
AISPURO (through translation): No, they're not doing enough. Culiacan has become a place where it's impossible to live.
YEUNG: Thank you for talking with us. I mean, you're being so strong, she'd be so proud of you.
AISPURO (through translation): Thank you very much, really.
YEUNG: Thank you.
AISPURO (through translation): Thank you for telling my sister's story.
YEUNG: For Vivian's family, the authorities' efforts amount to nothing more than anguish.
Isobel Yeung, CNN -- Sinaloa, Mexico.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
AMANPOUR: It's so often people like Vivian who are the innocent victims.
Still to come, victims of the war in the Middle East turning their grief into empathy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELHANAN: It's an alliance. It's an alliance of blood. What connects us is far way beyond words.
ARAMIN: Our relationship is above any conflict because we see Israelis as Palestinians as Americans, as Iraqis, as Canadians. We belong to the mankind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Bereaved Israeli and Palestinian fathers talk about their extraordinary friendship and their call for peace.
[11:34:09]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
This week, sirens sounded across Israel, honoring all those lost to war and terror. This, as dozens of Israeli hostages still are being held captive by Hamas. About 24 are believed to be still alive while Israel's total siege on Gaza has entered its third month with no food, no water, no medicine getting in to the starving and the injured people.
But despite the pain and the suffering that has lasted throughout this decades' long conflict, some have channeled their grief and pain into friendship and a joint struggle for peace.
Like my next guests -- the Israeli Rami Elhanan and the Palestinian Bassam Aramin. They both lost their daughters to this cruel and endless war.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome both of you.
I'm going to ask you to tell the stories of your girls.
[11:39:43]
AMANPOUR: Rami, I see behind you -- I see a little bit and I've been told that you have pictures of your daughter and Bassam's daughter behind you, the two girls who were killed.
So, remind me -- I'm going to ask you first, tell me your daughter's name and what happened to her, Rami?
ELHANAN: My daughter's name is Smadar Elhanan. Smadar is the grape of vines (ph) from the Song of Solomon. She was 14 years old. She was killed by a Hamas suicide bomber on the 4th of September, 1997 in a suicide bombing in the heart of Jerusalem.
AMANPOUR: And, Bassam, what happened to your daughter, and tell me her name.
ARAMIN: Abir was my third child. She was 10 years old. An Israeli border police unfortunately shot and killed her in the front of her school from a distance of 15 to 20 meters in her head from the back. She was with her sister and two other girls 9:30 in the morning. And unfortunately, two days later she passed away in Hadassah Hospital where she born (ph) and where Smadar born and died.
AMANPOUR: Can you tell me how you two met and how you managed to translate this terrible pain and loss and grief into something positive?
ELHANAN: I met the Bassam in 2005 on the cradle of the creation of new peace movement and I immediately fell in love with him and we became very close friends.
And then two years later, on the 16th of January, 2007, we got a telephone that Abir was shot and she's in the hospital. And we drove to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, me and my wife, and we spent two days by her bed.
And for me, it was like losing my daughter for the second time.
I think it's an alliance. It's an alliance of blood. What connects us is far way beyond words. We are feeling the same. We don't need words to understand each other.
AMANPOUR: And Bassam, it must have been unbelievable when Rami came and sat with you all for those days. And how did you develop into that -- into that friendship as well and that commitment to turn grief into something positive, like maybe one day even peace?
ARAMIN: You know, it's not easy. We didn't start to make friendship. We want to be partners. And always, I said, we don't need to love each other. We don't even need to like each other.
Just we need to respect each other and to respect our rights to exist in both sides, to live in peace and security and dignity and social justice. Of course, we're human beings.
And always I said that when you discover the humanity and the nobility of your enemy he's not your enemy anymore. We became the same side who want peace, who want -- who are ready to pay the price for peace.
Because we know as ex-fighters the price of fear and war and losing our children, especially because we lost our children.
And really, we love each other as brothers, as family.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
ARAMIN: Our relationship is above any conflict, because we see Israelis as Palestinians, as Americans, as Iraqis, as Canadians -- we belong to the mankind. We need to work not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis, to make our world much safer and better.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, because you're talking especially about a period before October 7th, and that has changed everything. It certainly has changed so much in Israel. It's changed so much in Gaza and the West Bank as well, not just the terrible loss of life, but the hardening, obviously under this constant bombardment and this separation of people's ability to talk like you.
So, has it been difficult, Rami, to continue this friendship, continue this level of empathy since October 7th? Have there been stresses on your relationship on October 7th?
ELHANAN: The conflict did not start on October 7th, did not end on October 8th. The Hamas killers that did the massacre on October 7th were 12 years old when Israel attacked Gaza in 2014. And it's a chain of violence, which we are like the kid who puts his finger on the dam trying to stop this bloodshed and this -- and this madness.
And we do it with our moral authority. We pay the highest price possible. We have the moral authority to tell those people, we cannot go on killing each other forever. We must put an end to it. We must respect each other. We can live together. And me and Bassam are an example that it is possible. [11:44:45]
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you just quickly about this attitude, because just before Passover, about a thousand Israeli, current and former, Air Force pilots and other personnel, they published a letter. They demanded an end to the war for the sake of the hostage release.
And since then, you know, more than a dozen or a couple of dozen more petitions by army units, civil society have been published. According to Haaretz, they've got some hundred thousand supporters and signatories.
But do you see that having an impact inside Israel, Rami, on either the politicians or indeed the majority of people these days?
ELHANAN: We are fighting for our lives this very last dark days. And we are fighting for our democracy. We are fighting for our freedom, and we are fighting for our ability to raise children like normal human beings.
And we are governed by a fascist government who has lost any Jewish value, and to put us in a place that, me personally, I'm ashamed to be Jew at these days, vis-a-vis what is going on in Gaza.
And I really hope that we will conquer, that we will win, and this -- the minority of the Jewish people and the whole world will come and put an end to this massacre in Gaza.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: But while there seems no end in sight in Gaza, next we talk about the end of the Vietnam War, 50 years since the fall of Saigon. How wartime photographer Eddie Adams changed hearts and minds in America with his haunting images.
[14:46:20]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
50 years ago this week, North Vietnamese tanks advanced on Saigon as U.S. helicopters airlifted Vietnamese and American staff from their embassy roof, marking the chaotic end of the Vietnam War. Throughout the war, incredible American and other photographers exposed the world to its brutal reality and galvanized the antiwar protests in the U.S. and around the world.
From my archives, a tribute to the famous wartime photographer Eddie Adams, who uncovered some of the worst moments and, with his camera, helped change hearts and minds and ultimately even policy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: In 1975, after America's calamitous Vietnam War, the boat people piled into rickety wooden vessels to flee the communist regime. Nearly one million tried to cross the South China Sea; at one point
10,000 people were fleeing Vietnam every week. Many died of starvation or they were killed by pirates and treacherous seas. And the many who reached countries like Thailand were towed back out to those same seas.
These tragic pictures were taken by the renowned photographer Eddie Adams, who jumped on board one of the stranded boats crammed with dozens of people.
The story, told through his lens, captured the world's attention, and eventually his photos were presented to Congress and they forced President Carter to extend a hand of friendship.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants settled in the United States, becoming successful entrepreneurs and moving up into the middle class.
Adams was already famous for this shocking picture that he took during the Vietnam War, and he won a Pulitzer prize. But he always said documenting the Vietnamese boat people was the only work he really cared about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: It is an incredible story. And those so-called boat people to this day mark one of the most successful waves of immigration into the United States. President Carter's policy shift inspired in part, as we said, by Eddie Adams' photos added a robust layer to the middle class that helped strengthen America.
Coming up. "My Name is Emilia del Valle" -- female fortitude, self- discovery, and the power of journalism. That is the focus of award- winning author Isabel Allende's new book. Catch a sneak peek of our conversation after this break.
[11:53:34]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: And finally, the critically-acclaimed Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende has sold 80 million books around the world. Beloved for weaving historical events with magical realism, as in her first novel, "The House of the Spirits".
Her latest, "My Name is Emilia del Valle", is a journey of self- discovery from San Francisco to Chile.
Here's what she told me about creating strong female characters that defy social conventions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You focus very, very much on women. Women who don't necessarily follow conventional laws. Women who are always ahead of their -- ahead of their time. Tell me about how you chose to portray the women in this book. And,
you know, do you feel you still have to keep doing that given women's place in the world today?
ISABEL ALLENDE, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, "MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE": Of course. But it's not an intentional wish to deliver a message. Not at all.
When I write fiction, I just want to tell a story and engage my reader in that story. There's no message, no preaching.
But I write about what I like, what I care, what interests me. And that's women's lives. I'm surrounded by strong women.
I have a foundation that works mostly with women. Many of them are refugees, women that have lost everything, that have gone through hell. And they are not victims.
[11:59:45]
ALLENDE: They get up on their feet and they take hold of their own destinies. And that -- that is so fascinating to me that that's what I tend to write about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, as well as selling a lot of books. Isabel Allende remains a fierce advocate of human rights, women's rights too.
Make sure to tune in this time next week for more of our conversation, where I'll ask her about living in an America that's rolling up the welcome mat.
That's all we have time for now, though. Don't forget you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.
I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you again next week.
