Please tell us about the Land Reform of 1955.

In 1955, there was a land reform in our country. And so we also had a land reform in this area. A Land Reform team came from the central government to coordinate activities with the local people. In each neighborhood a committee was formed and a committee chairman was elected.

The inhabitants in the neighborhood would then be invited to meetings where the poor and landless peasants would talk about their situation. In this way, we found out how the rich exploited the poor and landless peasants. Through these sessions we were also able to put the landlords into three different categories: despotic landlords, average landlords and landlords who only exploited the labor of the agricultural workers.

Can you describe to us again the land reform of 1955?

In 1955 the Party and the government allowed us to hold meetings in this village to study and discuss land reform. The poor and landless peasants went to the meeting, talked about their miserable situations and denounced the landlords. The peasant described in detail the various ways the landlords exploited them. After these study sessions in which the exploitative landlords and local despots were denounced, we were able to categorize the landlords.

One group of landlords, known as the despotic ones, both exploited and abused the peasants physically. These landlords made their tenants and sharecroppers take all the yields of the land to them after the harvests. If the peasants failed to do so, they would be roughed up. In any case, after we had put the landlords in different categories with the help of cadres from the central government, we would bring these landlords before a people's court which was set up in the village.

Those found guilty of actual crimes against the people would then be sent to jail. Those found guilty of exploitation only would then have their property, which was composed of cattle, land and houses, either confiscated or subjected to forced sale to the village. This land which had been confiscated or purchased from the landlords would then be parceled out to the landless.

My family, for example, was able to get about two acres of paddy fields and a quarter of a cow, shared by several families. We had been a poor peasant family and previously had only about a quarter of an acre of land. Some families were also able to receive rice, copper pots and stone mills from the landlords' estates. Those landlords whose property was confiscated were sent to other houses in the village, and the houses of these landlords were partitioned out to poor and homeless peasants.

Could you tell us how the coop was formed in 1959?

After the peasants all got their own pieces of land, in 1958 we formed a work exchange collectives. In this way, the families helped each other out in their agricultural work. After a few crops, the government asked us to hold study sessions to discuss the establishment of cooperatives in order to help each other out. This was in order to surmount the many production problems left behind by years of war.

After the study sessions, we were left to ourselves to volunteer to bring our land into the cooperatives. We had to write up our own statements of application. After we entered the cooperative, the government gave us fertilizer and loaned us money to buy cattle and buffaloes. The government also supplied us with certain pieces of machinery such as water pumps and insecticide applicators.

Some people volunteered for the cooperative right away, others waited for a while to see how things work. When they realized that collective work made a lot of difference, they then volunteered to enter the cooperative. So this was how the cooperative was formed.

How has the system changed since the beginning of 1980. Do the peasants like it more now than they did before the system was changed?

In 1980 the Central Committee of the Party issued the 6th Plenary Resolutions which stated that production had to be allowed to develop freely. Based on our study of the resolutions, we decided to loan out land to the individual peasant families to plant the winter crops in any way they wanted so long as more food would be produced. This was only to serve the interest of the state, the coop, and the individual coop members. So the coop members liked it a lot.

The point of the Resolutions of the Sixth Plenum was to encourage the people to maximize the use of the land and their labor to produce more goods so as to improve the standard of living of the entire population. We have been able to produce more food as a result and have been able to use this extra food to raise animals for meat.