Movement of Catholic Vietnamese, 1954-6

Transportation of Catholic Vietnamese

Dear VSG members,

There's a new article about the migration of nearly one million Northern

Vietnamese down South in the mid-1950s entitled *"The Virgin Mary Is Going

South”: Refugee Resettlement in South Vietnam, 1954–1956

<http://viet-studies.info/kinhte/VirginMoveSouth_Nov14.pdf>, *which

basically argues that the joint project by Ngo Dinh Diem and the US

government enjoyed a limited kind of success, one that conflicted with the

overwhelmingly positive assessment produced by US advisors at the time.

However, it was a real success in the sense that "following Mary" was able

to mobilize such a huge population in the timeframe of just a few years.

Today most Vietnam scholars are quite open that the "exodus" resulted from

a large-scale propaganda campaign (in his book, *The Spy Who Loved Us *(2009),

Thomas Bass singled out Edward Lansdale as the architect of the slogan "the

Virgin Mary is going South" and even the entire South Vietnam project).

Why this success? Did it come because of Lansdale's psyware tactics and his

background in advertising? Did Landsdale and the propagandists involved

base their strategy on any *theological *ground?

My mother told me that my fraternal grandfather and his family, all

Catholics from the Northern province Nam Dinh, came to Saigon in 1954 "để

theo Chúa" -- "following Christ's call." So my understanding is that, for

people like my mother, moving down South was not simply a matter of

escaping the Communists' brutality against Catholic Vietnamese; rather, it

was a response to a divine call to the chosen, "more holy" land.

So my question really is: Was there any theological basis for the

propaganda campaign? Or was Lansdale a genius by accident/luck?

Also, is there any scholarly work out there about how "the Virgin Mary is

going South" is understood among Catholic communities, especially the

living priests?

Many thanks in advance for your help with those questions.

Sincerely,

Giao

Vu Thi Quynh Giao

Independent Researcher

Ho Chi Minh City

Hi,

Just shooting from my waist, but it seems a very clever slogan that can capture many things while also staying positive (following the Virgin Mary rather than fleeing the North) and thus away from the negative.

As Lansdale had plenty of experience in the Philippines and the struggle against the Huk, I would see continuities and parallels between his work there and later in Vietnam.

Best regards,

Mathew Berry

Tobias Rettig

Singapore

Giao,

If you haven't already, check out Peter Hansen's article in the *Journal

of Vietnamese Studies: "*Bac Di Cu: Catholic Refugees from the North of

Vietnam, and Their Role in the Southern Republic, 1954–1959." (2009, Volume

4, Issue 3, pp. 173-211). Hansen interviewed a number of Catholic refugees

and not one of them mentioned anything about Lansdale or his propaganda

campaign. He find instead that northern Catholics primarily made decisions

based on the choices their parish clergy made.

Best,

Dear Giao and all,

Following Matthew's post, I'd like to share with you a Vietnamese version

of Peter Hansen's article. I myself find it very interesting.

http://nghiencuuquocte.net/2014/05/06/bac-di-cu/

Best regards,

Hiep

I would strongly second Peter Hansen's article as a far better researched and much more persuasive exploration of the motives that lay behind the north-to-south movement of Catholics during 1954-1955. The claims advanced by Bass and other authors recently about the supposedly decisive influence of Lansdale's psywar campaign are merely retreads of an interpretation that first gained currency in the 1960s and 1970s. There is very little evidence to support this interpretation, other than the self-serving and patronizing reports written by Lansdale himself. As I have suggested in my own work (Misalliance, pp. 97-100), this view is based on the assumption that the refugees were superstitious simpletons who could easily be manipulated by slogans--a notion that reveals far more about Lansdale than it does about the refugees.

This interpretation endorsed by Bass et. al. also overlooks some very salient historical facts such as: (1) many Catholics from northern and north-central Vietnam had traveled south of the 17th parallel prior to 1954 (for example when making pilgrimages to the shrine at La Vang); (2) a significant portion of the northern Catholics who ended up moving to the south after July of 1954 had actually fled their home districts in the southern Red River delta earlier, following the retreat of French forces from those areas; (3) while the majority of the people who moved from north to south in 1954-1955 were Catholics, a significant minority (200,000 or more) were not; presumably those Buddhists and other non-Christians who chose to move were not much influenced by the claim that "the Virgin Mary has fled to the South."

Best regards,

Ed Miller

Hmmmm..... interesting thread.

Giao, from the responses so far it sounds to me like the best place to

start to answer your question might be with extended conversations with

your mother and her family and friends about what it meant to them to

follow Christ's call -- what they remember of the events of those times,

that call, and their various decisions to respond (in a variety of ways).

There is certainly a lot of theological writing about answering Christ's

call -- but what part of it is relevant at that time in those places, I do

not know.

Those memories would make an interesting oral history counterpoint to the

more political or academic treatments.

I'd love to read what you find.

Diane

Diane Fox

College of the Holy Cross

I agree with Matthew Berry that the slogan "Virgin Marry already moved South" is none of Landsdale's invention ( we historians must, in good methodology, ask :what concrete proof you have of this imagined Landsdale's idea?), but the propaganda gimmick of Catholic Priests to move their followers, especially the devout --and easily persuaded --believers of Bui Chu and Phat Diem areas(where I stayed 3 years and witnessed their devotion in "Khu An Toan" run by Bishop Le Hưu Từ and his private army commanded by father Hoang Quynh). Most other emigrés from the North are Buddhists, my family among them, moved South for political reasons, as political refugees, to escape communism that already showed its brutal face for many years with assassinations of nationalist parties Dai Viet, Quoc Dan Dang during 1945-47 and later years and land reform atrocities.

Please stop theorizing, without solid evidence, about this imagined act of the genius of Landsdale.

Tai VaTa

--------------

There is also anecdotal evidence that some Catholics moved south on their own, in the circumstances Ed Miller suggests. I interviewed an old lady whose husband served in the colonial troops in the Mekong Delta in 1954. He sent her word that she should join him. She walked from Nam Dinh to Haiphong with her two small children to catch the boat south. She did so on her own as opposed to part of a parish community.

Other northerners who were not Catholics also went south. One PAVN veteran (who served from 1965 to 1974) was from Nam Dinh. All his father's siblings had gone south. His father, being the eldest son, had stayed behind to care for the parents. He did not explain why these non-Catholics opted to go South.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Kenneth T. Young Professor

of Sino-Vietnamese History

Dear professor Ta Van Tai, thank you for your remarks.

You raise two important points about the strong spirit of Catholics in

the Bui Chu-Phat Diem areas and about the case of nationalist forces

involved in a decisive fight against both communism and colonialism.

Many reasons other than religious ones have pushed North Vietnamese

families to join the South in the early fifties not and only in 1954 at

the end of the Indochina War. I remember the case of the lawyer Le Ngoc

Chan, one of the VNQDD leaders in Hanoi, and his family and also some

other Dai Viet members which could not remain in the North because of

the serious political repression. Sometimes their family had to take

refuge to Saigon before them for security reasons.

There is a new history to write about this particular « political exode

» because we know too little about it and it seems it has had an

important impact on the political scene in the South.

Best regards,

François Guillemot

Chi Quynh Nhau,

I was very suprirsed to read your contention that "today most Vietnam

scholars are quite open that the "exodus" resulted from a large-scale

propaganda campaign"

Without wanting to sound too much like Margaret Thatcher, may I ask, who

are they? What are their names? Where did they write this? And most of

all, what is the evidence to support their contention? With respect, I

suggest that modern schlarship shows that this theory has no factual

vbasis, and to the extent that it gained any popularity, it was by the

repetition of bruit and misinformation emeanating from Hanoi.

This is not to say that Lansdale didnt include it in a 'psychwar'

campaign. But none of the people who quote this fact ever seem to examine

the issue of cause and effect; in other words, was the fact that Lansdale

engaged in his campaign in any way causitive of the actual movement of

Catholic Vietnamese from North.

I say emphatically that the answer is no. Moreover, I point to my evidence

base for making this claim. If you read my doctoral dissertation, I trace

the document trail back to the origins of this rumor, and also undertook

extensive fieldwork both with those who moved and those who didnt. All of

this showed a clear linkage between general attitudes and those of the

Catholic pupulation and their clerical leadership. But the clergy had

plenty of reasons to fear the incoming regime, and to seek to flee them,

none of which had anything to do with the CIA. Frankly, with due respect

to any of them, the authors who have been cited in this string did not do

that, and I would be more than happy to stack my evidence up against theirs

(an interesting conference, perhaps!).

The significance of this debate is that the 'all because of the Virgin

Heads South propaganda' line implies that Vietnamese Catholics were nothing

more than superstitious and ovine pawns waiting to be pushed around at will

by would-be neo-colonial masters. The truth is the precise opposite, these

were, indeed, 'rational peasants' who looked to their own traditional,

internal, clerical leadership, who reflected on their experience with

hostile forces, and decided - right or wrong - that their communal best

interest was to leave. Colonel Lansdale was never required.

Peter Hansen

Sydney Australia

Thank you very much everyone for sharing your knowledge on this topic.

Special thanks to Mr. Berry for recommending the article by Dr. Peter

Hansen (aka Hà n Sơn Thạch!).

Lansdale himself wasn't sure about the effect of his propaganda, but he and

his US fellows "made the transportation possible." Resonating this, a

Redemptorist priest told me that "no Catholic would be naive enough to

believe in a slogan like 'God has moved to the South'. He also mentioned

the fact that the Chau Son Abbey, the Congregation of the Most Holy

Redeemer and the Sisters of Saint Paul Convent were determined to stay in

the North as proof of Lansdale's slogan having no impact on Vietnamese

Catholics at that time.

Putting aside Lansdale, why did the belief that God had gone south exist,

though? Some priests literally said "God is not here [Northern Vietnam]

anymore". Was it only an excuse, forged by circumstance, that the priests

used to persuade the parishioners to go south with them? I'd appreciate it

a great deal if an insider of the Catholic Church like Dr. Hansen could

explain its theological implications.

If I had been a Catholic at that special point in time, I would have

thought that I was following Moses to travel to God's promised land...

Thank you, in advance, for your insights.

Sincerely,

Giao

Vu Thi Quynh Giao

Independent Researcher

​​Ho Chi Minh City

I've been travelling, and until tonight, hadn't the opportunity to review

this thread, highlighted by Father Peter Hansen's insightful article on the

1954-55 relocation to the south of over half the Catholic population above

the 17th parallel.

I had considerable contact with the Northern Catholic refugees in 1966-68,

not as a scholar but as a very junior US Foreign Service Officer. My job

was to monitor 'opinion' in a swath of provinces that included many

refugee parishes in Bien Hoa and Long Khanh provinces. Subsequently, I was

the US Senior Advisor in Duc Tu district of Bien Hoa (now Dong Nai)

province, which included the super-village of Ho Nai, some 60,000 northern

Catholics strung out in about 30 parishes along National Route 1 northeast

of Bien Hoa City.

Though somewhat happenstance, the reconstitution of Bui Chu/Phat Diem

parishes north and east of Saigon had created a substantial bulwark for the

Diem regime, and subsequently against regimes (*e.g.*, Nguyen Khanh)

suspected of seeking accommodation with VC. In 1966, what was called the

Luc Luong Dai Doan Ket regularly mobilized and bused many tens of thousands

of Catholic refugees into central Saigon for rallies.

There was a distinct strain between the urbanized and sophisticated

Catholic refugees from Hanoi -- a group that not only had a

disproportionate share of posts in the Diem-Nhu regime but continued to

wield great influence in subsequent Saigon governments -- and what they

regarded as an embarrassing bunch of country bumpkins settled in Ho Nai,

Gia Kiem and other provincial centers.

To almost a man, my interlocutors in Ho Nai said that they came south

because Father X told them they should. As Hansen reports, the priests

wielded political as well as spiritual power in each parish. These

communities were as a rule both fiercely anti-Communist and persuaded that

they therefore were specially entitled to the lion's share of US aid

supplies

Ed Lansdale's unique role, I believe, was to recognize the mass migration

that was underway in 1954, recognize the propaganda value inherent in this

development, and persuade the US Government to deploy vessels to move the

refugees south from Haiphong, etc.

David Brown

freelance writer and researcher

Fresno, California

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