Anti-American Art: The Forgotten War, part 2

Still on the subject of the forgotten war, this statue is in Vieng Xay, Lao People's Democratic Republic. It's a monument to the Pathet Lao resistance to the American "Secret War" that dropped huge quantities of bombs on Laos. The statue shows a peasant, a worker, and a soldier standing on a bomb labelled "USA" and looking resolutely forward. It's a little stiff for socialist realism, but certainly doesn't let the US off the hook for its role in trying to return Laos to the stone age. Here's another photo with a different perspective:




(Top photo snagged from "T Lao" blog documenting an Australian's year-long stay in Laos. Second photo snagged from alands763's flickr. Click on the photos to see the statue larger.)

Anti-American Art: The Forgotten War

This is a 1967 poster from ICAIC, the Cuban Institute of Cinemagraphic Art and Industry, promoting a 1967 documentary from Santiago Alvarez entitled "La Guerra Olvidada" or "The Forgotten War." The poster shows an American B-52 bomber pierced by a spear; the film documented the spread of the Vietnam war to Laos, and portrayed the society built by the Pathet Lao insurgents under the American saturation bombing.

The "secret war" in Laos started in 1964, and the Pathet Lao retreated to caves to escape American bombing. Vieng Xai Cave City in northeastern Laos is today a destination for adventure travellers. One travel website reminds visitors to watch out for "leeches and unexploded bombs."

Anti-American Art: Samson v. Goliath

Colorfully-dressed female insurgents stand on the wing of a downed US Air Force plane in remote Laos. This stamp was issued in 1973 by the Pathet Lao insurgents for areas of Laos under their control. Often forgotten as an adjunct to the Vietnam war, Laos was bombed by US forces both to defeat the local insurgency and to prevent North Vietnam from moving troops and supplies through Laos to the war in the south. CIA troops made mercenaries of many of the local minority tribes, resulting in a mass exodus of Hmong tribe refugees to the US in the late 1970s after the victory of Pathet Lao forces.

According to Defense Department records, 520,000 bombing runs were made over Laos, dropping 2 million tons of bombs. "According to UNESCO, unexploded military ordinance (UXO) still contaminates 25 percent of the area of Xieng Khouang province," according to the Asia Pacific Journal.