14.3 (Fall 1990) Cambodia

The Innu

During the Pol period from 1975 to 1979, Cambodia was subjected to probably the world's most radical political, social, and the outside world, its cities were emptied its economy was militarized, its Buddhist religion and folk culture w

After 1955 a clear deterioration began in the conditions of production for small farmers in the Cambodian countryside. Increasing monetarization of the rural economy, combined with extortionate interest rates, pushed small peasants off their insufficient land. At the same time, the process of social differentiation accelerated, particularly as some people accumulated small herds of oxen.

The legacy of Pol Pot - the most hated man in Cambodia - and his policies are immediately apparent in the physical and emotional landscape of village life.

Angkor, the great medieval city located near the Tonlé Sap (the "Great Lake") in northwestern Cambodia, was abandoned by Khmer rulers in the fifteenth century in an effort to find a capital that could be more easily defended against the expansionistic Thais. In the ensuing centuring - called the first "dark age" of Khmer history (the second being that instituted by the Khmer Rouge under Pol pot) - Angkor become a ruin, destroyed as much by the inexorable expansion of nature as by the destructive acts of humans.

From near and far, the kramas grace the Cambodian people with their own special character. The humble Khmer garment, a scarf made up of thousands of tiny squares, resembles Khmers' own history: it is a patchwork of contrasting hues - dark and light, sad and joyous.

Cambodia has not known peace since well before the United States' withdrawal from Saigon on 30 April 1975.

A pair of giant basrelief dancers frames the main entrance to Phnom Penh's palace compound. With cured-back hands and diaphanous stone sarongs, these apsaras, or heavenly dancing nymphs, are fitting gatekeepers for Cambodian royalty. True, it has been two decades - and three regimes - since kings held court in these saffron-roofed halls. But just 20 years ago, on the ornate second story of Chan Chhaya pavilion, directly above the stone apsaras, the queen of Cambodia herself presided over the court ballet that was the country's loveliest jewel.

The Vietnamese army has withdrawn from Cambodia, 10 years after its invasion to oust the Pol Pot regime.

It was at the Pochentong International Airport in early 1974 when I last saw relatives, friends, and dance students as they sent me on my way to the Philippines with my husband, Sam-Ang Sam, who was then sent by the University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh to the Conservatory of Music, University of the Philippines. Information leading me to my relatives and friends was unknown to me until 1981, when my three brothers fled the country; two went to France and one joined me in the United States.

Remember us." On a spring day in 1960, this phrase was repeated to me time and again as I said goodbye to friends and neighbors in West Sobay, a hamlet that I had lived in for almost a year while doing fieldwork on Cambodian peasant culture. I felt particularly forlorn when I stopped at the house of Iing and Dom, an elderly couple of exceptional gentility and kindness who had become my fictive grandparents. Because they were already old, I looked long and hard at their faces, wondering if I would ever see them again.

In 1975, a spokesperson for the newly installed communist regime in Phnom Penh claimed proudly that because of the revolution "2,000 years of Cambodian history have ended." By "history" the spokesperson seems to have meant the sum total

For a decade and a half now, Cambodia has been in a state of warfare and instability. Control over Cambodia's politics has changed hands form monarchy to republic to communism.

All of the musical instruments that make up the classical orchestra of Cambodia can be constructed within the country with indigenous materials. Traditionally, theses materials were collected from almost all areas of the country and were then traded through long-established routes to various centers where the instruments would be assembled. These traditional crafts and trading routes were disrupted during the 1970s when civil was divided the country, and again during the four-year Pol Pot period, when all classical and traditional cultural activities were stopped.

How is one to write about Cambodia? In New York, thousands of miles away, images tumble into mind. A bejeweled dancer gently lifts an arm, bends a wrist, and seeks out her magic crystal ball while xylophones and gongs play vibrantly at her side. At Angkor, a multitude of enormous faces casts Jayavarman's benign Buddha smiles in four directions, the twelfth-century dark stone surfaces still startling against the bright blue sky.

Because Cambodia's population density is quite variable - some provinces are isolated and mountainous (Ratanakiri), and some are populated and fertile (Battambang) - the country's health care needs and services vary greatly.

Flowers in the Forest: A Talk with Chheng Phon, Minister of Information. and Culture

This interview was conducted in December 1989 by a group of 11 Southeast Asian journalists visiting Cambodia on a tour sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and hosted by the Association of Cambodian Journalists. Evans Young Quaker international affairs representative for the AFSC from 1986 to 1989, edited this interview.

Since World War II, the United States has frequently flexed its political muscles by assessing which side in a given struggle is likely to come out victorious and then backing it.