Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta

5. Modernization

153 T he negotiated end to the First Indochina War at Geneva in July 1954 brought in its aftermath a rapid expansion of American activities south of the seventeenth parallel through both military and civilian channels. The broad array of military and civilian efforts sponsored by foreign governments to create a client state (an endeavor that diplomatic historians typically refer to as modernization) affected not only political culture in Vietnam but also the environment, especially in areas targeted for bases, agricultural mechanization, and especially refugee settlements. After the signing of the Geneva Accords in July 1954, the growing numbers of American advisers, the mass shipments of heavy equipment, and several hundred thousand northern Vietnamese refugees reconfigured social and physical landscapes in the Mekong Delta. The vast network of canals and the villages and war-torn plantations were subject not only to the new policies of a government led by Ngô Ðình Diệm but also to the 5 Modernization The simple, unadorned truth is that in Vietnam the peasant is the center of the piece. If we are to help him to become a useful, self-reliant citizen, making the most of his land, and giving his allegiance to the national government, then we must make an effort equal to this goal.—Wolf Ladejinsky1 154 mod er niz at ion modernizing influences of the Green Revolution and American-sponsored mechanization programs. American equipment and funds flooded the Sài Gòn government; in just three years, the annual operating budget for its Ministry of Public Works and Communication (Bộ Công Chánh và Giao Thông) increased fortyfold from four million dollars in 1953 to one hundred sixty million dollars in 1957.2 Despite the windfall, or perhaps because of it, the relationships that developed between the United States and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) over the next several years were contentious. Amid this weighty presence of American experts, Vietnamese leaders such as Diệm struggled to realize their own visions of development, visions often influenced by past experiences in the Bảo Ðại government, in the First Indochina War, and with the colonial administration before 1945. Department chiefs repeatedly complained to their ministers and the president of severe staff shortages, unrealistic American contracting deadlines, and the hopelessly bureaucratic reporting procedures involved in using American aid funds. Meanwhile, they were forced to compete with colonial-era French companiesandrecentlyarrivedAmericancompanies,whichquicklymoved in to fulfill some aid contracts. The private contractors were formidable competitors with Vietnamese public agencies, which struggled throughout the 1950s and the Second Indochina War to retain personnel. Changing environmental and political conditions in the field also undermined their efforts, as floods, guerrilla attacks (on people and machines), corruption, and increasing militarization frequently caused people to abandon projects. Failed canals, broken machines, and crop losses undermined not only the perceived legitimacy of American nation-building programs but ultimately the Sài Gòn government’s authority over people and places that for a decade prior to 1954 had existed semi-autonomously under the domains of Việt Minh, Hòa Hảo, and Cao Ðài groups. Because the early stages of American intervention occurred in such a politically and ecologically complex environment, nation-building in this era was less an ideological campaign drafted in Washington and Sài Gòn and more a series of concrete events involving transfers of technology, bodies, and new commodities into heavily contested regions beyond the major roads, canals, cities, and airports. By following this latest procession of advisers, allied authorities, heavy equipment, troops, and refugees into the water landscape, it is possible to trace how such projects were ultimately transformed and reinterpreted by local leaders. A small but growing literature in Cold War diplomatic history draws on Vietnamese and other 155 mod er niz at ion archival sources to question common stereotypes of the RVN as a “puppet regime.” Philip Catton suggests that Diệm and other officials exercised a highdegreeofagencyinimplementingAmericanmodernizationprograms; on many occasions they also subverted American designs and resisted American calls for reform.3 By traveling beyond the high-flying world of Sài Gòn politics to the water landscapes of the delta, it is possible to see how local people—refugees, tenant farmers, and provincial authorities— and local nature also sometimes subverted or resisted American programs. By following the course of land reform programs, refugee resettlement, and attempts to rehabilitate the damaged colonial-era canal system, it...