0. Introduction (summary)

The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation
by Tran Tu Binh as told to Ha Anranslated by John Spragens, Jr. - edited and introduced by David G. Marr
Ohio University Center for International Studies - Monographs in International Studies
Center for Southeast Asian Studies - Southeast Asia Series Number 66 - Athens, Ohio 1985 [p. III]

        
Tran Tu Binh 1949 [1] - map of Vietnam [map 01] - book Tran Tu Binh on colonial rubber plantations [2]

[Tran is born in 1907 in North Vietnam - poor family - seminary with discussions - expelled in 1926 - forming of resistance groups]

Tran Tu Binh was born May 1907 in an all-Catholic [fantasy Jesus] Village in Ha-nam Province in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam. His father sustained the family by collecting and selling manure, perhaps the lowliest occupation in the village. His mother managed nevertheless to scrape together enough money to enroll Tran Tu Binh at a [priests] seminary, where he disappointed both of them in 1926 by being expelled for publicly mourning the death of Phan Chu Trinh, a prominent Vietnamese scholar-patriot. At that moment, without yet knowing it, Tran Tu Binh joined the ranks of the young intelligentsia, a group destined to play a critical role in modern Vietnamese history.

[Tran becomes a fantasy Jesus Bible teacher - then rejecting good jobs in the village - changing to South Vietnam on rubber MONOplantations - he knows Lenin principles]

As narrated with piquancy and verve in this autobiography, Tran Tu Binh spent the next year as an itinerant [fantasy Jesus] Bible teacher, then signed up to labor on a rubber MONOplantation in the distant red-earth region of southern Vietnam [Cochinchina]. Although he doesn't say so, this was surely another severe blow to the family. After all, even without any school diploma, Tran Tu Binh could have found a respectable job as village clerk, landlord's agent, or shopkeeper simply because he knew how to speak and read French as well as Vietnamese. Instead he was determined to break away, to seek adventure, to test his physical and spiritual powers on totally unfamiliar terrain. He was also vaguely familiar with the Leninist concept of "proletarianization", whereby young intellectuals immersed themselves in a working-class environment in order to engineer eventually the overthrow of both foreign imperialists and native landlords.


[Trip on the ship "Dorier" (French: "Golden") to South Vietnam - docking in Saigon - fraud and fight for food at the new MONOplantation "Phu Rieng"]

Even before boarding the French ship Dorier that was to take him south, Tran Tu Binh became embroiled in a confrontation with plantation recruiting agents who had defrauded hundreds of his illiterate fellow workers. Because the agents feared that many contract workers might simply pack up and return home, some satisfaction was obtained; however, the atmosphere became more ominous the further they traveled. When the ship docked in Saigon [in South Vietnam at the North end of Cochinchina], workers were driven ashore like cattle and a spokesman badly beaten for daring to complain. After being trucked to a tropical forest location 120km north of Saigon, Tran Tu Binh found himself in truly appalling physical and psychological circumstances.

     
France with steamers, e.g. at Singapore in 1900 appr. [3] -
Map of South Vietnam with HCMC (ex Saigon) and Phu-rieng rubber MONOplantation in the hills [map 02]

[The MONOplantation of] Phu Rieng was one of about twenty-five French rubber plantations that stretched in a three-hundred kilometer band from the South China Sea to the Mekong River in Cambodia [that is whole Cochinchina]. From before World War i the colonial government had allocated huge blocks of forest land to metropolitan corporations; from 1920 on, large amounts of capital became available to construct roads, nurture rubber seedlings, clear land, and plant saplings.


[French colonies enslave natives from the same country - Tran arriving in 1927]

Unlike the British in Malaya, who imported Indian or Chinese nationals to develop rubber MONOestates, the French decided to use indigenous labor. However, they soon discovered that the proto-Indonesian [p. VII] tribes people who normally wandered this region were quite unsuited to plantation work. Ethnic Vietnamese who resided in and around Saigon, although they might be lured on a seasonal basis, preferred not to sign longer-term contracts. Besides, they were close enough to home to walk away if conditions proved intolerable. These facts led French rubber companies, with colonial government encouragement and assistance, to focus increasingly on recruiting contract laborers from the heavily populated Red River delta provinces far to the north. From a mere 3,022 contract laborers on southern rubber MONOplantations in 1922, the number increased ten times to 30,637 in 1930 [note 01]. Tran Tu Binh was one of the 17,606 who arrived in 1927 alone.

   [note 01] Pierre Brocheux: "The Rubber Plantation Proletariat in Southern Vietnam: Social and Political Aspects (1927-1937)" (orig. French: "Le Prolétariat des plantations d'hévéas au Vietnam méridional: aspects sociaux et politiques (1927-1937)"; [In]: Le Mouvement Social (Paris), no. 90 (January-March 1975): 63. The Great Depression reduced the number of contract laborers to 10,800 in 1933, but five yeras later the figure had risen to 17,022. [p.87]

[MONOplantations: rapes by plantation overseers - new babies on the plantations - losses are concealed - reports are also in Paris at the National Archives (sector: oversees countries)]

Today's reader [year 1985] will perhaps be skeptical of Tran Tu Binh's "hell-on-earth" description of Phu Rieng. Admittedly, he employs poetic license on occasion. For example, one finds it hard to believe that so many husbands died of humililation and heartbreak after their wives had been raped by plantation overseers. Nor does it seem likely that all pregnancies at Phu Rieng resulted in stillbirths. On the other hand, many of Tran Tu Binh's grim assertions are confirmed in confidential reports that colonial administrators forwarded to Paris, and which are now available for study in the National Archives of France (section oversees countries (Archives Nationales de France - Section Outre-Mer). For example, the minister of colonies is a conservative figure, since the plantation supervisory staff had reason to cover up some losses. Then, too, Tran TU Binh's characterization of Triair, the plantation director, as particularly brutal is corroborated in a report of the governor general to Paris ([note 02]: same place, pages 71 and 80 [p.87]). Overall, Tran's account of plantation life may be assessed as exaggerated in tone, yet essentially reliable in substance.

  
Rubber plantation in Vietnam: the French "Christians" were stealing land from the mountain natives Montagniards for installing MONOplantations [4] "Christian" torture and murder with sticks, whip and shackles [5] - Violations with fixed women, London tube painting [6]

[Tran i the seminar testing the Canadian fantasy Jesus priest Mr. Quy - 18 years later the Canadian priest Quy is working in the prison of Hanoi]

One theme pervades The Red Earth: the existence of a bitter test of wills between exploiter and exploited. We see it first in Tran Tu Binh's confrontation with the Canadian [Jesus Fantasy] priest, Father Quy, which culminates in a bit of Jesuit-like rhetorical jousting in a Hanoi prison eighteen years later. We see it again in the author's argument with the captain of the [ship] Dorier on the way (en route) from Haiphong to Saigon.

       
 Jesus fantasy priest is a FAKE (comic) [7] - every Jesus fantasy priest is a spy, THIS is the REALITY (comic) [8] - Slave collar [9]

[Phu Rieng MONOplantation: constant terrorism against the slaves - slaves partly develop counter strategies]

Most important, we are witness to the ruthless, persistent efforts of the Phu Rieng supervisory staff to tear down the psychological defenses of Vietnamese workers in order better to control them [constant terrorism]. For at least one year these tactics -- akin to those of slave masters, prison workers, drill sergeants since time immemorial -- enjoy considerable success. Workers are clearly disoriented and demoralized. Gradually, however, some workers recover internal poise, improvise protective tactics, organize quietly, and plan countermeasures. Ironically, they are assisted by Triair's less brutal successor, [camp boss Mr.] Vasser, who allows them to form a variety of sporting, cultural, and religious groups.

            
Slash and burn in a rain forest, e.g. in Brasil [10] - Leg broken, leg in a cast [11] - Cut with blood [12] - Skeleton skull [13] - "Christian" Machine gun [14]

[Phu Rieng MONOplantation: Tran with French knowledge understands how the criminal French are thinking - the "master" is the animal]

Because Tran Tu Binh can understand French, he is more aware than most of the nonphysical aspects of oppression. He points out how each plantation staff member styles himself [p. VIII] "master" and demands that workers use that form of address. Each "master" refers to the Vietnamese as children or animals. One senses that such verbal abuse rankles Tran Tu Binh even more than blows from the truncheon. It follows that much of what he and his comrades do in response is an attempt to prove to themselves, and perhaps to the French as well, that they are resourceful adults who know how to take destiny in hand.

[Phu Rieng MONOplantation: Tran with French becomes the spokesman for the workers - job at the plantation clinic - investigating wounds+"Christian" torture instruments - forming of 4-person cells with members from Ho Chi Minh]

Tran Tu Binh's knowledge of French often led his fellow workers to thrust him forward as spokesman, an inherently dangerous position. However, it also led to his being employed as an orderly at the plantation clinic, a "soft" job (for which he continued to be apologetic) clearly enabling him to study the enemy more carefully and to make many friends among the worker patients.

The clinic gives often only a "medicament" to vomit [15]

When a member of Ho Chi Minh's Revolutionary Youth League came secretly to Phu Rieng [plantation] he naturally sounded out the clever medical orderly. Soon a four-person cell was formed, followed eventually by a Communist party branch with Tran Tu Binh in charge of organizing a security unit.

[Phu Rieng MONOplantation: the workers learn revolutionary tactics - killings provoke more killings - colonial justice at Bien-hoa - dire conditions of housing]

Although there was scant opportunity for formal political instruction, plantation workers at Phu Rieng were not devoid of revolutionary experience. They had already learned, for example, that to swear a blood oath and split open the head of a hated French overseer brought a few moments of satisfaction, but also provoked terrible retaliation. On the other hand, they had discovered the futility of relying on colonial justice to punish the wicked. In one specific case that advanced as far as a court in Bien-hoa, an overseer found guilty of negligent manslaughter was sentenced to pay a token five piasters [the French colonial currency in Indochina] to the victim's widow.

Workers also leaked stories to Saigon newspapers about the dire conditions at Phu Rieng [plantation].

They devised a method to sabotage rubber saplings without being discovered.

Although such initiatives did induce the French to make minor concessions, the basic system of exploitation remained fixed.

[Vietnam Communist Party: against criminal "Christians" with slavery+torture+mass murder - Michelin company - better conditions - coup project - the coup against Soumagnac at Tet Day (30 January 1930)]

The new Communist party's objectives at Phu Rieng [plantation] were
-- to heighten class consciousness among plantation workers,
-- to build an organization implicitly competing for power with the Michelin company hierarchy, and
-- to link local with regional and national struggles [for a national independence with Buddha].

From Tran Tu Binh's account, it seems that by 1929 Phu Rieng laborers were able to react quickly to some of the more flagrant cases of physical abuse and to gain redress from the plantation director. Then they went a step further, demanding and receiving
-- better food,
-- better medical care, and
-- boiled water to drink at work sites.

Excited by these gains, workers began to look toward a general strike.

Recalling events thirty-four years later, Tran Tu Binh still manages to convey the millenarian excitement that gripped Phu Rieng workers in early 1930. The strike was set to coincide with the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet), always a time of high emotion and spiritual renewal. Most workers probably had in mind overturning the evil masters, enjoying a huge feast, and then proceeding to operate the plantation themselves pending a new deal from the authorities. Some workers sharpened weapons in [p.IX] expectation of an armed uprising. Tran Tu Binh makes it clear that the local Communist party branch (of which he had become secretary) was of no mind to try to hold back the movement, although it had no authorization from higher echelons to proceed beyond a simple strike.  It did engage in rudimentary contingency planning, ensuring that workers established hidden food caches, and making a pact with some of the local tribes people [Vietnamese mountain natives] whereby the latter promised not to serve as strikebreakers for the French.

The MONOplantation's director, Soumagnac, seems to have been poorly prepared for what happened from the first day of Tet (30 January 1930) onward. Not until his office was surrounded by angry workers three days later did he telephone the nearest military post for reinforcements. Somehow workers managed to disarm seven soldiers and send an entire platoon into retreat. This forced Soumagnac to sign a paper agreeing to all the workers' demands, after which the festival of revolution began, complete with demonstrations, red flags, speeches, singing of the "International", rifle volleys in the air, burning of office files, traditional opera performances, and a torchlight banquet. All supervisory staff were allowed to flee the MONOplantation.

Throughout the night of 2-3 February1930, the Communist party branch met apart from the festivities ebating what should be done next. To resist incoming troops meant bloodshed, defeat, and repression. Not to resist meant deflation of the movement, probable demoralization of the workers. Similar dilemmas were encountered a few months later by party members in a number of other locations, most notably the provinces of Nge An and Ha Tinh. The manner in which Tran Tu Binh and comrades dealt with their own "moment of truth" provides valuable insight into a much larger question of revolutionary strategy and tactics.

[Death penalty or prison for the revolution leaders of Phu Rieng MONOplantation - Tran 5 years on Con-Son prison island - formation as Marxist-Leninist]

Whatever they decided, the Phu Rieng Strike leaders were likely to be killed or captured. Tran Tu Binh was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 5 years on the infamous Con-Son prison island. There, like so many other radical Vietnamese intellectuals, his systematic training as a Marxist-Leninist began. Upon release the party designated him secretary of his home district committee, then in 1939 promoted him to be Ha-nam province secretary. As a member of the party's Northern Region Committee he helped engineer the general uprising in Hanoi in August 1945. Subsequently, he was deputy secretary of the party's Central Military Committee, commander of the army's military academy, and chief inspector of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces. In 1959 he was appointed ambassador to China, and the following year was made a member of the party's Central Committee. Tran TU Binh died in February 1967 and was honored posthumously wit a medal befitting his long service to party, state and army ([note 03]: Nhan Dan (Hanoi), 12 February 1967 [S.87]).

[BUT: Communism maintains exactly the same concentration camps with Gulag systems as the "Christian"-Jewish stock market capitalism in the colonies. Vietnam demolished the last concentration camps in the 1970s, and South Vietnamese fled from the communists on boats until the 1980s. The middle ground was only found after perestroika].

 
Flag of the Soviet Union with hammer, sickle, and 5 pointed star with the WARNING GULAG [16] - Communist leaders WARNING GULAG [17]

[Tran telling about growing resistance - unification of the forces of Kinh Vietnamese coast line peoples and Thuong Vietnamese mountain peoples]

The Red Earth is a straightforward account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics, was tested amidst the most difficult conditions imaginable, and not only survived, but also gained the obvious respect of his peers [p.X]. Nevertheless, readers will be aware that a number of Marxist-Leninist didactic points are being made as the story progresses [but the GULAG was forgotten to be mentioned]. Three times, for example, Tran Tu Binh asserts that the more people are oppressed the more they will struggle, a theme that Ho Chi Minh stressed constantly, and that was also meant to be applied by Vietnamese readers in 1964 to the growing threat posed by the [criminal Zionist] United States. The feasibility of ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh) and highland minority (Thuong) peoples joining to fight a common foe is highlighted for the same reason. Only passing  mention is given to international proletarian solidarity, since that sentiment was much weaker in 1964 than it had been in 1930. Naturally "the Communist party" is given credit at the end for every significant achievement, although the narrative itself suggests no such thing.

The Red Earth is one of more than a 100 memoirs published since 1960 by veterans of the 1925-45 struggles in Vietnam. Like many other busy luminaries, Tran Tu Binh relied to some degree on a ghost writer, Ha An by name. Although it is impossible to know how Ha An influenced the narrative, a comparison of this book with certain others suggests that Tran Tu Binh was entirely in control. The story has a liveliness and sense of milieu that only one who actually experienced the events could provide. If the story is excessively dramatic in places, this stems from spontaneous feelings of the participant, not the stylistic devices of a literary cadre. In short, we have here an authentic, edifying, and eminently readable autobiography.

David G. Marr

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