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Losing the Waterways: The Displacement of Khmer Communities from the Freshwater Rivers of the Mekong Delta, 1945–2010*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2012

PHILIP TAYLOR
PHILIP TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
Australian National University Email: philip.taylor@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

In the latter half of the twentieth century thousands of Khmer people were displaced from their homes along the freshwater rivers of Vietnam's Mekong delta. Their pattern of settlement along freshwater tidal rivers was an ecological adaptation unique in the Khmer-speaking world, of which only vestiges remain. Drawing upon oral histories and ethnographic observations of O Mon, a district in the central Mekong delta, this paper reconstructs a picture of the traditional river-based livelihoods, social structure and religious life of Khmers in this region in the 1940s. It describes how these Khmers were driven from their villages early in the First Indochina War. Experiencing ongoing dislocations in subsequent periods of war and peace, most have been prevented from returning to their former homes or reclaiming their land. Relying on testimony by elderly Khmers, who witnessed the disintegration of their riverside communities, the account challenges existing depictions of the ecology and history of the Mekong delta, offering new insights into the complexity of the Indochina wars and the severity of their consequences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 500 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper was funded by the anthropology departments of the University of Western Australia and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, and an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship entitled Ethnic, Social and Religious Bases of Community in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. I wish to thank the many Khmer residents of O Mon who entrusted me with their life stories. I am grateful to Do Thien for his help with textual sources.

References

1 Interview, O Mon, July 2010. (As respondents related their stories for this study in confidence, their names have been changed to protect their identities.)

2 The term Khmer Krom (short for Khmers Kampuchea Krom) which means ‘Khmers of Lower Cambodia’ is in widespread use by the Khmers of Vietnam. Its use is discouraged by the Vietnamese government because of the perceived irredentist implications of the term. The officially preferred term is Dan toc Khmer or ‘Ethnic Khmers’, although many Khmers in Vietnam dislike the implication of being classified as an ethnic minority. I use the two terms interchangeably along with the unmarked term ‘Khmers’. French colonial-era writers referred to the same people as Cambodgiens de Cochinchine.

3 This estimate is generated from my survey of the majority of Khmer villages in Vietnam. It excludes people of Khmer heritage who no longer speak Khmer or identify as such.

4 Barrault (Capitaine). (1927). Les Cambodgiens de Cochinchine, Extreme Asie: Revue Indochinoise Illustree (n.s.), August (14): 144; Brocheux, Pierre. (1995). The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy and Revolution, 1860–1960, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, p.11Google Scholar.

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16 Barrault, Les Cambodgiens de Cochinchine, pp. 135–138. The displacement of Khmers from the northeastern delta continued into the mid nineteenth century. See Wook, Choi Byung. (2003). Vietnamisation of southern Vietnam during the first half of the nineteenth century, Asian Ethnicity 4 (1): 51–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 Bernard Fall's classic map depicting the division of the Mekong delta at the cessation of the First Indochina War into a variety of zones each controlled by a different ‘political-religious sect’ does not include areas where Khmers were demographically or politically pre-eminent. See Fall, The political-religious sects, p. 236.

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33 For a discussion of the way that the socio-economic situation of Khmers in Vietnam has been treated in national and international development discourse see Taylor, P. (2004). Redressing disadvantage or re-arranging inequality? Development interventions and local responses in the Mekong Delta, in Social Inequality in Vietnam and the Challenges to Reform, Taylor, Philip (ed.), Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp. 236–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, P. (2007). Poor policies, wealthy peasants: alternative trajectories of rural development in Vietnam, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2 (2): 3–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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35 This area corresponds to the former Khmer-named administrative divisions of Khet Long Hor, Khet Prek Russey, Srok Kompong Spien and Srok K'Sat. Note that I use the term Prek Russey to designate an ecological region that is considerably more extensive than the administrative unit of the same name.

36 Societe des Etudes Indo-Chinoises, Monographie de Can Tho, p. 18.

37 According to Van Lier, their channels connect to back swamps behind the levees of the main delta distributaries that act as ‘natural flood regulators’ when the water level rises rapidly. Van Lier, W. J. (1980). Traditional water management in the lower Mekong basin, World Archaeology 11 (3): 266Google Scholar.

38 In just a couple of places within the freshwater river region their settlements are atop phno, narrow elevated bands of coarse sandy soil.

39 Elderly Khmer people in settlements throughout this region note that in the 1940s, fruit was grown mainly as a domestic subsistence crop and, unlike rice, generally was not for commercial sale.

40 Edwards, Penny. (2007). Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, University of Hawaii Press, HonoluluGoogle Scholar.

41 Author Fieldnotes, Wat Phesachavonna, O Mon, 1999.

42 Co Do [Khmer: Sethadaw] district capital is situated at a seven-ways confluence about 25 kilometres southwest of O Mon. It is in low marshy land on the verge of the vast depression of acid soils that stretches westwards to the Cambodian border and south to the Gulf of Thailand.

43 Just to the west of O Mon is the district of Thot Not. To the north, across the Bassac River, are the districts of Cho Moi and Binh Minh. They were strongholds of the Hoa Hao Buddhist ‘sect’ during the First Indochina War (See Fall, The political-religious sects, p. 236) and remain so to this day.

44 See Taylor, Redressing disadvantage; Poor policies, wealthy peasants.

45 Author Fieldnotes, Wat Phesachavonna, O Mon, 2003.

46 Author Fieldnotes, Wat Phesachavonna, O Mon, 2007.

47 Thoi Lai in Co Do district is situated on an important four-way intersection on the O Mon River eight kilometres south of Rach Tra. It was one of the main sites to which war refugees from O Mon fled.

48 Later I was told by one of the younger monks registered to this pagoda that the government had contributed one-quarter of the cost of the crematorium (Can Tho, 2008). I cannot account for the discrepancy between these figures.

49 Interview, O Mon, 2007.

50 Interview, Dinh Mon, 2007.

51 A mixed Khmer-Vietnamese term that translates as ‘Port Port’.

52 Author Fieldnotes, Dinh Mon, 2007. By 2009, the number of Khmer households beside this wat was reduced to three with the death of one of these elderly people and the departure of his wife.

53 These economic dynamics leading to land loss among the Khmers in Vietnam are discussed in Taylor, Redressing disadvantage, and Poor policies, wealthy peasants.

54 Interview, Vung Liem, 2000.