Land Reform: The Long Delay

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363-04814.pdf

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363-04814

Title

Land Reform: The Long Delay

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Article published in the New York Herald Tribune about the lack of progress on land reform in South Vietnam, page 18

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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.

Transcript

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- Page 1
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Our Girl in Viet- -V
Land Reform: the Long Delay
Next to the problem of security, the peasants
of South Viet Nem are most interested in
land reform. The disenchantment of the
peasants with government land policy-or
the lack of it--makes them easy prey for
Viet Cong propaganda. In this fifth of a
six-part series, the Herald Tribune's Beverly
Decpe explains the importance of land reform.
and what has and has not been done about it.
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent
SAIGON.
"The most important question in the Vietnamese
countryside besides security is land reform." an American
technician said "Yet virtually nothing has been done
about it.
"The Viet Cong are gaining a lot of points with the
peasants by simply issuing land titles--and it costs them
nothing. They take the land from the landowner and give
it away. Nothing we give to the peasants-like pigs,
insecticides or fertilizers as important as land."
American technicians and provincial officials for the
past several years have urged the implementation of an
effective land reform program. Two land distribution
schemes currently have been written, but neither has been
accepted. Higher officials in the American Embassy and
in the Agency for International Development belleve "land
reform is not the panacea for Viet Nam's problems."
A program for the training of land-reform cadre is
under consideration. But the program will not be insti-
tuted until the other day when the Viet Cong Com-
munists have been defeated.
WARNING
However, one Vietnamese general recently warned
American generals and officials that American-backed
efforts to pacify the provinces would fail unless they were
linked with land reform.
"When the Vietnamese National Army goes back to
pacify areas from the Viet Cong, the local landowner goes
back with them, offering to serve as intelligence agent."
the general explained. Obviously he wants to collect his
back rent. So when the army pacifies the area it pacifies
it for the landowner and not for the peasant.
"Of course, 35 per cent of the peasants are landless.
They become fanatics and will fight for the land given them
by the Viet Cong because it's as important to them as life."
One U. S. official described as "horror stories" the
actions of some landowners to collect back rent, once
government forces had pacified Viet Cong areas.
In Viet Cong-controlled areas, if landowners or their
agents return to collect back rent the matter is simple.
The peasant complains to the Viet Cong, and the agent
is shot.
American officials who have talked with large num
bers of Viet Cong prisoners and returnees believe the Viet
Cong recruits within South Viet Nam are almost entirely
from the rural population, probably indicating not the
strength of the Viet Cong appeal so much as the acces-
sibility to rural masses for Communist recruiting.
Furthermore, an estimated 30 per cent of the Viet
Cong strength recruited in the South are considered to
belong to the "farm labor class," the lowest in the semi-
Confucianistic, rigidly stratified rural society.
The five rural classes in Vietnamese countryside area
are: the landowners (who lease out all the land they
own); the rich peasants (who own more land than they
till, and lease out some of it); the middle-class peasants
(who own all they till); the tenant farmers (who rent ali
their lands), and the farm laborers (who cannot rent
land, but are seasonally hired for planting and harvesting).
LONE PEASANT
"The question of land reform is quite simple," one
low-ranking Vietnamese provincial official explained. "The
government represents the landowners: the ministers and
generals are either landowners or friends of landowners.
The Catholic Church owns land. The Buddhist Church
owns land. Nobody is interested in fighting for the poor
peasant. And the top Americans-well, they talk to only
the ministers and rich people so they don't push it either."
The land-reform issue in Viet Nam--involving not only
issuing of land titles, but also law enforcement on land
rents, land security for tenants and fixed rates on the
interest of borrowing of money is not considered as acute
as in other parts of Asia. The Japanese say, for example,
that a peasant without land is like a man without a soul.
The victory of Chinese Communists in taking over main-
land China was achieved not so much by armed guerrillas
as by the promise of land to the poverty-stricken, landless
peasantry.
"The land for the landless" campaign in the Philip-
pines virtually broke the back of the Hukbalahap insurrec-
tion in the Fifties.
According to reliable so
the Viet Cong guerrillas
in Viet Nam have a haphazard, inconsistent land-reform
program which varies from area to area in sections of the
country they control. However, the current government
has virtually no program at all. One American provincial
official estimated that the Viet Cong had issued land titles
to 50 per cent of the peasant families in his province; the
government had issued none.
In some areas, the Viet Cong take some of the land
from the rich peasants and give it to the landless tenant---
who still pays rent, to the Viet Cong.
So far, the Viet Cong have not killed or harassed the
rich peasants as they did before their seizure of power in
North Viet Nam
In some cases, the Viet Cong program in the rural
areas is considered self-defeating. They have made a
definite push for higher rents as they move toward the
mobile warfare phase.
In some areas, Viet Cong taxes and indirect taxes in
rice have doubled over that of last year. In other areas,
the Viet Cong are known to have redistributed the land,
increased the land tax from 100 to 900 piastres and in-
creased the rice tax from 50 to 300 piastres
In the countryside outside Hue, which has lately fallen
under their control the Viet Cong are attempting to
collect 10-15 per cent of what the peasants had raised
during the past decade, when they lived in peace. The
peasants are said to be discontented about that. In isolated
cases. peasants have burned their own crops rather than
pay Viet Cong taxes.
One American provincial official in Viet Nam, who had
served in the Philippines during the Communist Huk
rebellion, said that in the early Fifties, more than 80,000
armed Filipino guerrillas controlled virtually all of Luzon
Island and were fighting on the outskirts of Manila.
Then Ramon Magsaysay took over as President and
promised land for the landless" He ordered Army units
to clear acres of forested land, to build houses, and a num-
ber of the Huk fighters laid down their arms and took
advantage of the offer to live peaccity.
"Magsaysay was a dumb guerilla fighter. he wasn't
brilliant," the American said.
"But he traveled in the provinces: he sacked colones
he saw sleeping on the post; he promoted on the spot
sergeants who had fought well.
"He instituted the Presidential Action Committee,
where any peasant for a lew cents could send a telegram
Within
from any postoffice complaining about anything.
48 hours there was an investigating team out there to see
what was the matter."
In Viet Nam, in 1963, a plan was formulated whereby
the late Mr. Magsaysay's scheme of giving land to win
back peasants from the Communists would have been
implemented.
But the plan fizzled during the turbulent Buddhist
crisis.
"Last year alone there were 700 American tractors of
all varieties in the warehouses in Saigon," one low-echelon
American agricultural expert explained. "They had been
turned over to the Vietnamese government, which refused
to release them for use. If a province chief wants a tractor.
he has to rent it from the Saigon government for $200 a
hectare-but where would he get the money, except from
Salgon. Now, those tractors should be in the mountains,
clearing land for defected Communists
Tomorrow: The . S. rural aid prorams.

Date

1965, Jun. 3

Subject

Vietnam (Republic)--Politics and government; Land reform--Vietnam (Republic)

Location

Saigon, South Vietnam

Coordinates

10.8231; 106.6311

Container

B4, F6

Format

newspaper clippings

Collection Number

MS 363

Collection Title

Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers

Creator

Keever, Beverly Deepe

Copyright Information

These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.

Publisher

Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries

Language

English