politics 101

When I first moved to VN, I wasn't really thinking of it as a "communist" country.  I mean I've only been around since 1974, so to me the word VN conjured up images of the Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July, and Apocalypse Now, but it had very little to do with communism as such.  The films tend to depict the struggle as being between the capital-A Americans, and the kind of unknowable, incomprehensibly-yabbering, sneaky in the jungle Vietnamese. Not to get too high-faluting, but most of the American war movies seem more about us-versus-them, them being foreigners, rather than commies (with, of course, the important sub-element of us-versus-us as in Born on the 4th, but mostly for the sake of us rather than us-versus-us for the sake of them).

Of course, I've missed out on all the years that were spent worrying about the rise of communism in the west, and its success in other places.  I remember the Chiclets commercial with the Gorbachev puppet, and people packaging bits of the Berlin wall for sale, not times when communism was actually seen as a threat.

So when I went to VN, I wasn't surprised by anything related to communism, I was surprised at how the country didn't measure up to those American movies. First of all, it's not called The Viet Nam War there.  It's the American War.  And it wasn't the be-all and end-all of VNese life and history.  I mean, that was the first time the Americans got beat, but the VNese had been invaded and plundered and had set up resistances for over two thousand years. 

The first kingdom of VN, Au Lac, was well established more than two thousand years ago, and the first Chinese invaders came to call shortly afterwards.

It's interesting, nowadays the streets in all cities in VN are named after the heroes of the country, and of those I could recognize, 90% had been resistance fighters of some kind.  During the Chinese occupation, there were two extremely well known occasions of heroines rising to the challenge, and these women are still worshipped today.  The two sisters Trung fought against the domination of the Chinese on elephant-back, and raised huge armies against them.  Ba Trieu took to the hills after her family was mis-treated and did the same.  Our house was just down Ba Trieu Street, in the Hai Ba Trung ('Two Ladies Trung') district of Hanoi.  In the 14th century, when the Mongols crushed all their other foes and tried to make inroads into VN, the VNese were led by the famous General Tran Hung Dao (his street runs east-west in Hanoi), and were the only country to successfully defeat the Mongols.  Not only that, they did it three times in succession.

Another thing that most of us in north america don't think about too much is that the French were squeezing money and life out of VN for almost a hundred years before the Americans set foot on the land.  Unlike the Americans, they eventually gained control of the entire country, set up their own beaurocracy and government and schools, and used VN mainly for financial benefit, setting up enormous plantations and enterprises and funneling all the money back to France. 

Of course, the French had to struggle to get control of VN because there were also incredible resistance fighters at this time as well.  One of the major hold-out areas was in north-eastern VN, where a rebel leader named De Tham held off the French for almost fifty years.  His main trick was that he didn't engage the French on their terms. They'd come up into the hills, set up camp, then get out their guns and march to fight him, and he'd have snookered off into the woods, and meanwhile his colleagues would have sabotaged the French camp.  Zut alors, non?  He carried out his guerrilla war until he was something like 65, and then he was caught up by the betrayal of someone in his family who was paid off by the French, but even then the French gave him credit, saying he was one of their 'worthiest adversaries'.  And now, the street next to the main backpackers district in Saigon is 'De Tham Avenue'.

In between the French and the Americans, you've got the occupation by the Japanese, who forced all VNese farmers to grow jute or hemp for the war effort instead of rice.  As a result, VN suffered its worst famine ever, with over 5 million dying from lack of food.

Ho Chi Minh is, I think, seen as a bit of a caricature in north america, a sort of asian Colonel Sanders (or an evil asian Colonel Sanders, depending on your position), who is goofily referred to as Uncle Ho.  But in VNese, that same term 'Uncle' conveys an incredible amount of respect - this was someone who was not only a leader, but was and still is seen as a member of the family. 

I saw a slide presentation in Vientiane, about the history of Laos, and the Power Point organizer had put in a picture of Ho Chi Minh with a bubble cartoon caption coming out of his mouth.  Yikes, was I ever shocked.  I mean, it's sort of ok in Canada or the US to get away with putting googly eyes on George Washington, or to joke about John A. MacDonald falling down drunk, but it's just not what you do with someone who people think of as an Uncle, close to your heart, who helped to get rid of those crummy foreigners once and for all and actually brought peace to your country. 

One of HCM's most-quoted statements is 'Khong co gi quy hon tu do doc lap'; or, 'there is nothing more precious than independence and freedom'. Of course, I'm not saying there aren't people who hate the communists.  But if you can just try and see this man as a person - well, what an incredible person he was.  He grew up when his country was being crushed into the ground by the French, and went off to learn more about the world.  In his twenties, he worked as a cook on a ship, and travelled to the US, to Brazil, to Africa, and to Europe.  I wish someone would write a semi-true novel about this time period in his life - just imagine what he must have been thinking and learning, and the people he must have been meeting.  After the ship, he set up shop as a photographer in Paris, and got involved with the anti-colonist communist movement.  During the course of his travels he had something like over 30 aliases.  He escaped Hong Kong in disguise while pursued by the police, was later thrown into jail in Russia and in China, and only made it back to his country when he was middle-aged. He organized his under-supplied and under-funded forces to win against the French at Dien Bien Phu, and led the North VNese forces during the American War, but didn't live to actually see the end of that war.  He spoke and wrote in VNese, French, Russian, and Chinese, never got married, never had a family.  Regardless of where you stand ideologically, this force of character is impressive, I think. 

Not only that, but the Uncle Ho of today provides a really good focal point for what Viet Nam and being Vietnamese means.  I went to a dance show the other night at the main cultural centre in Vientiane, and while there were lots of dignitaries and even a load of soldiers, there was no solidifying, edifying element to bring everyone together.  No concrete bust on stage to make everyone remember where they were and who they are, just a non-descript bunch of flowers.

Ok, now here's where the loop back to communism comes: Nowadays, VN is about the least macro-communist country you can imagine.  On a very small scale, within families and with very close friends, people are generous and share their wealth in a way westerners really don't - but that may just be because so few people have access to banks, and therefore can never get loans, but must borrow from the people they know.  But in every other sense, VN has a massively energetic market economy.  Essentially, everyone works and they are all working to make money.  There's no social assistance.  If you're poor and you've got nothing, you've got to get out there and sell vegetables or throw bricks on a construction site.  If you loose your job, you'll have to find another one pretty damn fast because there's no unemployment insurance.  And for most people, there's no such thing as a weekend - everyone works full time, seven days a week, except for office workers. 

I mean, what was my breakfast noodle lady going to do, close up shop for two days when she could be earning cash?  Not only that, but most people have two or even three jobs so that they have enough money to pay for their food and housing.  Salaries are so low that teachers, for example, may work at three different schools, and tutor kids in the evenings as well.  And here's the kicker:  everyone really wants to make money.

VN was once more like the eastern block countries in that it had a very limited supply of goods, and you had to line up around the block to get into the department store.  But what is still "communism" there today is nothing, as you can see, like what you might expect.  When visitors came to see us, they would go around the city, and come back and say things like, 'it's very interesting to visit a communist country', or 'it doesn't seem so communist, does it?', or 'ha ha, what a funny cement bust of Uncle Ho we saw today'. It seemed like people were always thinking about communism and the one-party system.

Here's where my own thinking gets a little mixed up.  Ok, on one hand, it's true that there's only one party available for people to support.  Officials are elected, but they are all of course with The Party - so you'll have one ballot, with the regular number of folks on it for a district, and people do vote, but it's still only one party.  The same thing is the case here in Lao PDR, and it's called a 'centralized democracy'.  It's democratic, but there's only one party.  So is this bad, or good, or what? 

Well, I haven't come to a conclusion.  But it does seem to me that the 'communism' that exists is positive in some respects.  There is a continuity from the leadership that won the war, and people are proud of that.  There aren't many threats to national security at the moment, and the economy is doing better recently, so there isn't unrest that might create harsh government backlashes against its critics.  And interestingly, the way that the governments work, there is a great deal of consensus building before decisions are finally ratified by the upper levels, the result being that lower officials usually quite heartily support the decisions that are made (unlike, say, in Canada or the US where the opposing parties, or even members of the same party are often up in arms in outrage, thus perhaps diluting the effectiveness of whatever decision had been taken).

At the same time, as our close friends know, you can't get ahead unless you're part of The Party.  You certainly can't print up your un-checked opinions.  And you might find the judicial system pretty dicey. But and so, I was also recently thinking that there are only 2 political parties in the US, the harbinger of democracy to all.  And while voter turn out in Laos is something like 85%, in the States they have to have special multi-million dollar campaigns to try and get people to care about voting, and in the end, what, 40% or more stay at home? [Vietnam-21-August-2000]