Grandfather Dao, daughter Mizen, son-in-law William, and Jimmy.

I met William through Kickstarter backer Adam Edwards. William motorbiked me around Vung Tau, to the locations of old French cannon, and historic religious sites. His delightful wife Mizen introduced me to her father, Dao Quang Hung, and we had four hours of sit downs in their living room. He lived through it all, from the Japanese occupation,  French colonial oppression, the American War and even a bit of a conversion from Marxist scientist to Jehovah’s Witness. Here is the first part of our interview. Watch this blog for additional segments.

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Tell me first about yourself. Where were you born, what did you study, what did you do professionally?

I was born in 1938, in Hanoi, during the second world war. I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, we had to run back to the countryside to stay away from the bombs. In 1946, I turned 7 and there was already a big war in Hanoi against the French.

What are your first memories about being under French colonial rule?

At seven. of course, I did not understand politics. Only the memory of what I saw every morning when I opened the door and saw carts carrying dead people passing my house, their skin charred from the bombs.

When, as a young boy, did you develop a political sense or consciousness as to what was happening, a personal point of view?

What I felt was pity and love for the people that died in front of my house. One of my neighbors had three children, and I saw their starving mother lying and dying right on the street. I watched her husband take off her shirt and roll her body into a mat.

What were the reasons for the starvation?

The Japanese and the French both prevented the farmers from planting to have food. The Japanese came during WWII and instead of sewing the crops to make rice, they destroyed the crops and they wanted the farmers to plant to produce war materials. Two million died. You would go out of your house in Hanoi and see dead people everywhere. A lot of provinces around Hanoi, poor people died and had to move to Hanoi to live as beggars. My mother raised rice and cooked porridge to help these people and Hanoi provided them a place to stay.

Unexploded ordinance or UXO. Sixty thousand Vietnamese have died from UXO since the end of the American war.

Did the French carry out policies to continue the starving crisis?

The French negotiated with the Japanese to open the streets to allow Japanese troops to come in. Before the Japanese, the French already were here, invading, conquering, killing revolutionaries in Vietnam. The French should kick the Japanese out, but instead they negotiated, making Vietnam like a hard pressure rock from two sides, one neck with two shackles.

President Roosevelt insisted that the French would not be allowed to return to colonize Vietnam after the war. But he passed away before it’s conclusion.

FDR was a good man. He meant to free the colonies. But he passed away. Truman was different, he was an evil man, against independence.

Why?

First, communism is a choice for each country. Wrong or right? That’s a different story. Whatever the citizens desire. On the other hand, Ho Chi Minh wasn’t yet a communist.

But Ho Chi Minh joined the Comintern in the twenties while studying in Paris, went to Moscow and identified as a Marxist in much of his writings and statements.

In 1920, there was a monarchy, there was capitalism. We are an agricultural country. Monarchy, capitalism, each causes suffering and sorrow. Ho Chi Minh wants to relieve the suffering. Capitalism was good for rich people but not for the poor and farmers, who were treated like slaves, tortured. He wants to free everyone, no different levels, farmers and teachers, engineers all equal.

If the US supported Ho in 1945, would he be communist?

By the time Ho Chi Minh made that speech (famous Declaration of Independence to a half million people in Hanoi after the end of WWII), he was not communist yet. The top of the speech (which quotes the American declaration of independence) says democratic republic, freedom from the French, no more king, no more slaves.

Ho Chi Minh’s Comintern membership card from the 1920’s.

Wouldn’t his membership in the Comintern, his travels to Moscow, his Marxist interpretations of history cause Americans to think he was a communist?

True communist theory is a beautiful picture about how people might live. How can they consider communists as enemies?

Americans saw millions dying under Stalin, Eastern Europe being invaded and controlled by the Soviet Union, Ho speaking the same rhetoric, and Americans now considered the Soviet Union a potential threat. Isn’t it logical that they see Ho in the same way?

The Third Communist International (Comintern) had the purpose of releasing colonist countries, so people seeking independence would go to Russia to find ways that they can be released from colonialism.

What do you recall of the French?

First, the deepest impression is of August 19 (1945) revolution, after the years of starvation, ninety percent of Vietnamese were illiterate, ninety-five percent were farmers, poor suffering farmers. They were treated like slaves, and worked like slaves. Their lives were worse than animals. Uncle Ho stood up and called for the people to fight the French and kick the Japanese out. I remembered I stood along the pavement and saws thousands of people, they are holding anything they had, a knife, a stick, a hammer to run to the provinces to the factories, to attack them. While they were marching, they were calling out “Defeat the French,” political chants. The French factories and offices were wiped out and Ho set up a new government.

What was your experience under French occupation from 1945-1954 as a boy, then a young man?

The French attacked Vietnam in 1885 with only 500 troops. They won because the Vietnamese had only simple weapons like knives and no guns. The monarchy negotiated with the French making it easier to be defeated. During that time Viet people tried to rise up and constantly pushed back against the French for a hundred years. They hated the French. They lacked a clear political way against the French. Uncle ho offered a clear direction.

So, you had no weapons. You had no unifying ideology and Ho came along and offered one. Something that explained colonial capitalism, its behavior, its exploitation of labor, virtually enslaving your people, often controlling via starvation and brutality.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

One of the visible reminders that Vietnam is one of the few remaining formally Marxist countries in the world is the presence of posters and billboards such as these. Limits on freedom of the press, speech, religion and the existence of only one political party are less visible to outsiders but a daily reality for nationals.

The French were attacked by Japan, and had no power over Indochina; they ran away. During that time, the Japanese had the power. The Viet Minh (Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh, or Vietnam Independence League), stood together, with the (US) Allies to oppose the Japanese. The Vietnamese took power from the Japanese, not the French. In 1945, Ho proclaimed independence, then the French tried to attack a second time. During that time, the allies allowed the Chinese to come to Vietnam to get the weapons from the Japanese. That ended up destroying the newborn government from Uncle Ho because they want to set up their own government system. I saw the 200,000 Chinese soldiers as they came to every corner of the North, saw them in Hanoi.

In the south, the English troops came over to get the weapons from the Japanese. and Vietnam’s army was weak, still young, as was the government system. Ho does not want war, after the war with the Japanese, so Ho had to be very skillful in handling them. Ho had to be patient and swallow his anger, even though Chinese killed people in Hanoi, raping women and killing children. President de Gaulle, during these transitional moments, was supported by America and England.

(Grandfather Dao’s daughter Mizen, our translator, exclaims, “It sounds like an 18-year old getting repeatedly raped.”).

Stalin’s forces brutally controlled and repressed eastern European countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, so there was a sense among American and western European democracies that the Soviets and their expansion had to be resisted.

Russia had 20 million people killed and 2,000 cities destroyed. When Russia invaded, it was to attack Hitler. And the fascists were not only in Germany. So to oppose fascism, those countries have communist groups as well. Russia came over to help and kick ass on Hitler but also expand the battle where Hitler invaded. There were then no governments, so of course the communist cells wanted to run the government, and of course they were supported by Stalin.

In 1945, Americans supported the French to come back to Vietnam. Vietnam tried to have a policy communication with the US, but the US put it aside. In 1950, the French kept losing battles and the US provided more money to pay for the French to create a south Vietnamese army. The more the French fought, the more they fell. The US kept providing funds, eighty percent by the end, and then it was finished at Dien Bien Phu. US General Taylor said no one can take that base and the French military brass said no one can defeat them. But General Giap defeated the French there.

The French were brutal overlords in Vietnam. Political prisoners, i.e. anyone speaking against the colonists, were tortured, starved and held in filthy prisons. These are cages for uppity prisoners, unbearable in blazing heat.

When Dien Bien Phu was going to fall, the French asked help from America. The military war-mongers intended to drop hundreds of bombs to kill Vietnamese, but they couldn’t do it (dropping an atomic bomb to save the besieged French troops was proposed at one point by a senior American military official). If they did, it would expand the war to Russia and China and it would be another Korean War. America would have loved to join the battle, as it was a way of opposing communists, and Uncle Ho was now a communist.

Was there an economic purpose as well as political purpose for Americans to join the fight?

Sure, we have an oil industry here, it was all basically about economics. I have a question for you. What does the word politics mean to you?

I paused and said, “It is the way individuals, organizations and governments maneuver for there own self-interest or position.”

In Vietnam, we have a saying, nothing comes for free. Yes, the Russians got access but they helped the revolution against the French, while the Americans opposed it. The US spends a hundred billion dollars here, sends half a million army troops to defeat VC, not just simply to help the South Vietnamese government. As well, when the Chinese helped the northern government before, they had their own agenda.

If the US conquered Vietnam, all of Southeast Asia would be in US hands for sure. And they would threaten China. US military bases in Vietnam, nuclear weapon bases. According to Marx, politics, for both Marxists and capitalists, politics is using different methods, even devious ways, to protect your own rights. On the theory, causing war ends up protecting your own rights or self-interest.

What do you think the US was thinking, why did they not support that 1954 Geneva peace agreement, why did they support the war between 1954 and 1964, when President Johnson began to increase troops?

We have a saying here. Buffalos and cows hit each other and the mosquitos and flies die. The domino theory was true based on the theory of communism that once you are free you want to help free countries from capitalism.

A similar situation happened in Nicaragua. As soon as the Sandinistas won, they wanted to support the guerrillas in El Salvador, even though it ultimately destroyed their relationship with the United States.

(Our translator Mizen jumps in, “Why do you have to put your nose in your neighbors’ business, you don’t really know what is happening in that house.”).

China invaded Vietnam many times. It became like a national enemy, a traditional enemy. Vietnam can still separate who is the enemy. The Chinese people are not the enemy to us, it is the political war-monger who likes to conquer, to invade Vietnam (in 1979). Chinese people are nice, gentle people. Our enemy is not them, but the government. And the same for America. American citizens love peace, they don’t want to invade another country. But those in power are the enemy.

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Part Two of the interview will be posted shortly.

I meet Jorge Fuentes, Guatemalan congressman, Central American Parliament member, preacher and businessman at the home of Carmen Aida de Fernandez. I had been to the home earlier in the week, where I was invited for Sunday lunch, after I watched her sons and daughter run in the Guatemala City marathon.

Fuentes is dressed in a business suit, and speaks with an energetic, sometimes boisterous style. The voice of an evangelical preacher, which he is. Faith healer, too.

After opening pleasantries and a description of the project, we discuss the Main Event: the 1954 overthrow of democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz.

Carmen acts as translator, but, in his enthusiasm, Fuentes frequently makes his points in English or performs his own translation. He uses his whole body when he speaks, often waving his arms or slamming things for dramatic effect. He begins with a provocative statement.

“The conditions of the time of Jacobo Arbenz are the same now. I understand that the North American government is the leader of the world. The world needs a leader. It”s a good leader. It has a philosophy of human rights. But the people in the CIA, the State Department, the embassies, their history with countries is not good. Because they partner with military governments and economic interests, so they put aside the interests of the people, as those interests have no value to them.

“Let”s say I am a dominant businessman in Guatemala and I have a problem with the president. And the President has ideas about social issues.” Fuentes knocks over the napkin holder with a wave of his right hand. “People? Bullshit. I will say, “The president is a bad man, a criminal, a communist.” I will talk to the army and give the cue. “Cut him down, he”s a communist.””

Does that still happen today?

“Yes, in Honduras, in many places. I could tell you some stories. OK, we are friends…”

Carmen and Marco hosted Jorge and I in their home in Guatemala City for the meeting.

Jorge reaches to hit the napkin holder again for effect. Carmen Aida objects, grabbing the holder, laughing, “I bought this in Chile!” I put my hand over my glass. “Just leave the water, Jorge.” We laugh, then he continues.

“An American comes and says I want to buy this company at x price. Then he eliminates the president if is not willing to give it to him. This is a real story, a real man, a friend, at 14 years old we went to school together. He had a lot of money. From Nicaragua, from the dictator Anastasio Somoza.”

He takes off his coat and tie.

“These names are in Serrano”s book, the second book. The second best seller in Guatemala. Jacobo Arbenz, he was fighting with commercial interests and they declared he was many things, including communist.”

Was he a communist? And if not, why was he called a communist?

“He took some ideas about redistribution of property. Let me tell you something. I am a businessman and a politician. My family, for many generations, has been in politics. I am trying to give you a bigger vision and Big broken hard drive data recovery is the latest trend to emerge because of these factors. with that vision you can change the names and times, and you will find exactly the same in all of Latin America. This originates in the colonies and the colonies had a certain structure.”

He asks for paper and I give him my notebook. He grabs my red ballpoint pen and furiously draws a diagram.

“The Catholic Church. The government. The economic leaders. The military. That is what you see in every town. If you go to any Central Park, you see this.

“This is the colonial structure. And there are tunnels at that time. The presidential house, the residence of the cardinal.”

I interrupt, “Was this institutional structure inherited from Spain, this close relationship between the military and government?”

He takes my pen again.

“Please keep it,” I laugh. “I bought a package on the bus for twenty five cents. They”re not very good.”

“They make an understanding between the military, the church, and the government. The church is looking out for the people, but the people do not have the power. The political sector is relegated, because the military sector commands the government, and the church looks to both the people and the political elites. The rich families have a good relationship with the cardinal. He is invited to the family parties. And the cardinal says, please give me money for my purse. A little check! His dignity, values, righteousness, everything is affected.”

I say, “And I would think, Jorge, that there would be a theological structure put forward by the cardinal to suggest to the masses that this system is the will of God. Even in Arbenz” times, there was a religious component to anti-communism. Godless, atheistic communism.”

Jorge answers, “I am Christian, and I am a preacher. I am full of the Holy Spirit. I pray for people to be healed. I love my Lord, He is the first place in my heart.

“The Catholic Church was the only church by law in many Latin American countries. We had a university founded years before the U.S. People, Creole people, began to think and to protest. President Rufino Barrios put out all the nuns and priests, throws them out of Guatemala. He put out the properties of the church. The church had too many properties, got too rich. He was a reformer.”

“That”s pretty strong.”

Carmen Aida adds, “He closed all the convents. He started in 1871. Barrios built La Reforma Avenue (a central, tree-lined downtown street).”

Fuentes: “At this moment, there is a revolution and they proclaim freedom of religion. Many countries did not have that. Guatemala started this. Then the church returns to Guatemala but they come like a dog with their tail between their legs. They lost their money, their power, their influence.”

“What did the powerful Catholic families think about this?”

Fuentes shrugged. “There was a revolution, obviously, and it affected the politicians and the military. Then the power increased in this triangle (economic, military, religious elites). The political sector came to have very little power. The economic sector put the military officers in the government. We had this for many years.”

“What is your sense of United Fruit in the fifties? You talked about economic elites. United Fruit was a powerful company.”

“Guatemala was not a banana country. It has rich land. United Fruit had a strong position. But not as powerful as in banana countries like Honduras.”

I ask, “But Arbenz wanted agrarian reform and wanted to buy unused land from the company at the (undervalued) price that United Fruit paid as valuation for taxes. And United Fruit went to Washington and asked for an intervention. Weren”t they a significant factor?”

“Nah. United Fruit promoted another level of agriculture. They gave good salaries and promoted people. Nobody paid the salaries like the Americans, in any area that you looked. Communism, this is a phantom, a fantasy. Not real.”

“Fantasy? I think the Americans were legitimately concerned about communism in 1954.”

“Well. Let me explain something. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were living here in Guatemala. They were promoting a liberation army. The initial guerrillas were military men who they saw that the officers were subservient to the economic sector.

“In my personal opinion, the business sector of the U.S. was responsible for Castro. Cuba was the destination for cheap casinos, liquor, for tourists from the U.S. The military from the U.S. betrayed the Cuban military. The U.S. sent the military to rescue the soldiers in Cuba. The military then received a contrary order. The government wanted to have a crisis in Cuba because the tourism industry in the U.S. wanted to hurt Cuba.

“I came to Christianity with a Cuban pastor named Victor Toranzo, who was one of the two ministers who supported Castro and the revolution. The original revolution used the imagery of the Virgin Mary and the cross and the bible, because it was about the rescue of morality, of the economy and of the liberty of Cuba. Because the North American interests and investors and tourism turned Cuba into a cabaret. They said, we need to be free of these influences, their money, their boot on our neck.”

“What happened when Cuba became communist?”

“When Castro doesn”t receive support from the U.S., the Russians come to help him and he shakes their hand.”

“Was he Marxist before that?”

“No no no no no. He has Marxist ideas, these ideas were the moda, the fashion of these times. The modern thinking was liberty, socialism… everybody, all young people were talking about that. Everybody. The anti-communist leader of Guatemala, he was at one time working in these social movements. I was a deputy with him in the Central American parliament. The revolution of Castro was a revolution of freedom from the influence of the United States.”

Part two of the interview, on the emergence of narco trafficking and it”s effect on Guatemala, will be posted soon, along with an interview in Panama with Fuentes uncle and former president Jorge Serrano.

Julio Gonzalez Gamarra, Vice President and Deputy of the Parlamento Centroamericano, head of the monetary and finance committee, former president of the Parliament, settles into his seat at the head of the conference table. Carmen Aida, daughter of Cesar, will translate for us.

“Why do you think Arbenz was overthrown?”

Julio is dressed formally, in a brown suit and matching tie. He considers the question, sizing me up. He is a statesman, and a seasoned veteran of both Guatemalan and Central American politics. He measures his words carefully.

Carmen Aida, says, “OK, he is going to tell you.”

“I’m going to tell you first who I am.”

I ask him to tell me if any of the questions are too sensitive, if he would rather not answer.

He answers, “No, for me, it is fine. First, I am going to show you this picture. This is Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, ex-president of Guatemala. And this on the right is Juan Jose Arevalo and this in the center is my father. My father was the second most important person in Guatemala at this time. Humberto Gonzalez Juarez. He started the first radio station in Guatemala. At this moment, we have 65 radio stations. My father started the station that became the large group that exists today. Then, my father was the secretary, at this time the only secretary to the president.

“When I was in the Congress in 1994, we made a resolution saying these men were heroes in Guatemala. My family was exiled and went to Uruguay and Mexico for five years. My father had permission from the next president to return, but with the condition that he not get into politics. In the seventies, they killed my father. In the nineties, they killed my brother. That’s why I started in politics. If somebody knows the real truth, it is me.”

Julio looks again at the picture.

“The United States conducted a coup. And for three reasons.

“One was because of the agrarian land reform. With the land that was unused from the United Fruit Company.

“The only road that we had was the road to the Pacific. And all the Pacific coast was controlled by the United Fruit Company. One of its associates was the Secretary of State under Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, and his brother was CIA head Allen Dulles.”

I mention the Stephen Kinzer book, “The Brothers.” He is familiar with it but has not read it. I tell him he must read it and it is likely available in Spanish.

“There was an ambassador here, Peurifoy, and he was the contact with Foster Dulles. That’s one reason.

“Second. The railroad. Owned by the same group. United Fruit. When Arbenz was going to build the road to the Atlantic, then people were not going to use the railroad anymore. United Fruit didn’t want the road to the Atlantic built.

“And the third was the hydroelectric dam project. They were in opposition to the project. For the agrarian reform, there were like 25-30 rich families in Guatemala, very strong and allied with U.S capital. The government didn’t touch their land. Only the land that was not being used, which they offered to pay for. That land was to be distributed to 100,000 families.

“There was a group of Guatemalans who were not happy with the U.S. invasion. The U.S. had people in Honduras prepared to attack Guatemala, and they came every night with guns and bombs. The driver of the invasion was Foster Dulles supported by the President of the United States. The Arbenz government provided education with no cost and opened schools in the mountains and all over Guatemala. That was the more aggressive effort, education. But people, and especially the U.S., wanted to continue having slaves.”

I press the issue further. “With respect, the U.S. narrative in 1954 was that the CIA invaded to keep out godless Soviet communism. You’ve not mentioned this as a reason thus far, only economic reasons.”

He laughs.

“Guatemala already had a communist party that never had been in the government. It was very small.

I ask if he heard that Dulles sent a message through Peurifoy to Arbenz that the U.S. wanted no communists in the national life of the country, not the government, not the party.

“We already had a democracy in Guatemala because we had thrown out a dictator that we had for 23 years. Jorge Ubico. When they threw out Ubico, they gave participation to all the sectors. That was in 1945, when they came into the government. The revolution was in October of 1944.”

I ask, is there a link from the overthrow of Arbenz to the thirty-five years of civil war?

He gestures, “Definitely. The Army colonels were paid by the United States with ten thousand dollars per month. They were very well paid so they wouldn’t let in any communists.”

Each? (I had heard it was two thousand per month). Ten thousand per month? Yes, he answers. I exclaim, “Very nice!” We laugh.

“That is a secret. But everybody knows it. And they did that in all of Central America. They put a base in Honduras.

“After Arbenz, they went to the Dominican Republic to throw out their president. In Guatemala, the civil war was for thirty-six years. Then they started killing people who didn’t think the same as them. The guerrillas started because a group of young military officers went to the mountains.”

I ask, “So these are not communists, these are military men who were upset at the takeover of their country?”

“Yeah, that’s it. They were patriots who didn’t like what was going on.”

Part Two of the interview will be posted tomorrow.