Independence Movement Media (Vietnam)

Poetry and Anticolonial Resistance

The French colonial government pressed heavily upon the Vietnamese population, setting up monopolies on alcohol, salt, and opium and placing taxes on almost everything. An anonymous poem circulating in 1905–1906 recounts:

In the early days of the resistance to colonialism, poetry was a popular way to share despair and grievances and to build political opposition.

Vietnamese poetry is often expressed in a unique form, known as the luc-bát (six-eight) form, in which lines of six and eight syllables alternate in a complex rhyming scheme that is easily memorized to be sung and recited; this form of poetry was popular in the villages. Ca dao poems can be proverbs and sayings, love poetry, or political weapons.

By the 1930s, the scholars' protests were widely seen as ineffective, and, at the same time, modern political parties were developing—usually cruelly repressed by the colonists. Hô Chí Minh formed the Vietnamese Communist Party in Hong Kong in 1930 by drawing together disparate elements within Vietnam and activists operating in southern China. The party was not very effective inside Vietnam until after Hô Chí Minh had returned to northern Vietnam in 1941. At that time, he formed the Việt Minh, an alliance of independence-minded groups dominated by the Communist Party.

The Communist Press: Beginnings

About 90% of the Vietnamese population lived in rural areas, and one of Hô Chí Minh's first concerns was to engage these mainly illiterate people. He began by publishing a small newspaper Việt Nam Dôc Lap (Independent Vietnam!) in 1941 and wrote the first issues on stencils and printed them using a flat rock and a roller in a river bed, in the mountainous province of Cao Bäng. The newspaper was not free, but it spoke of ordinary people's concerns. It carried international news too, which, in pre-broadcast times, was almost unprecedented. In Vietnam, newspapers were only available to the wealthy in the big cities, but here was a newspaper specifically for poor rural people. It carried hope for a Vietnam independent of any colonial oppressor. Each issue carried a little section called the “Culture Garden” with some poetry, sometimes with a political message, sometimes just for pleasure. New issues of Việt Nam Dôc Lap were produced about every 2 weeks, and copies were carried around the country by Việt Minh cadres, who either read them aloud or chose a villager who could read to do so.

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