MÉTODO NECROPSICO Y PREPARACIÓN DEL MATERIAL

In the days, weeks, and months following the coup, the government struggled to maintain stability, to achieve international recognition in the face of the considerable publicity being generated by Sihanouk, and to quell the upsurge of unrest in the countryside. In order to maintain support, and in accordance with the wishes of Lon Nol, who was a de-vout Buddhist, they continued to pursue their attacks on the Viet-namese (and Cambodia’s growing band of insurgents), referring to them collectively as nonbelievers, or thmil. As waves of young Cambodi-ans enlisted to fight in the holy war, reports of massacres of the many Vietnamese civilians living in the country made international media headlines.¹⁶

With the war as a backdrop, it is difficult to discern the forces at work in shaping the Cambodian state over the five years of the republic. It is possible, however, to identify a number of threads that serve to provide an understanding of the ideology guiding Lon Nol’s attempt to recon-struct the Cambodian nation-state. The first was Lon Nol’s perceptions of Cambodia and himself in religious terms. The marshall “saw him-self as a predestined Buddhist chief of state, leading his people in a re-ligious war.”¹⁷Buddhism, Lon Nol conceived, was the force that bound all Cambodians.¹⁸ A second thread was Lon Nol’s ramshackle “neo-Khmerism.”¹⁹Like Sihanouk’s Buddhist socialism, this ideology drew on the glorious past of the Khmer nation and was based around Lon Nol’s belief that he could reunite the Khmer people living in Thailand and Vietnam, particularly the region of South Vietnam known to Khmers as

Kampuchea Krom. A third thread was the promotion of democracy, through the institutions of a Khmer Republic. In drawing on Buddhism, on past glories as the basis of a new Khmer nationalism, and on de-mocracy, Lon Nol was promulgating an ideology similar to that of the prince.

The differences between Lon Nol and his predecessor, including the establishment of republicanism, were more pronounced. Both leaders urged Cambodians to participate in a “struggle.” Where Sihanouk had promoted the “struggle against underdevelopment,” Lon Nol’s struggle was against the thmil, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, whose incur-sions had sought to undermine the stability of the nation. Another dif-ference stemmed from the leaders’ application of Cambodia’s neutral-ity. Sihanouk had long advocated for Cambodia a policy of “extreme neutrality,” although on balance, he leaned considerably to the left throughout his years of tenure. Lon Nol, on the other hand, while ad-vocating Cambodian neutrality, was definitive in his opposition to Com-munism and considered the United States as Cambodia’s “number one friend and ally.”²⁰

A final difference could be found in the relative strength of person-ality of the two leaders. Sihanouk was a member of the royal family, he was charismatic, often flamboyant, energetic, and entirely confident in his capacity to lead Cambodia. Lon Nol was the antithesis of this profile:

he was a quiet, unassuming character whose political successes had been few and whose primary role had been executing orders, not formulat-ing them. In terms of policies in education, Lon Nol’s tendencies and state ideology were to result in two significant differences in his attempts at state formation. The first, stemming from neo-Khmerism, was a shift in what constituted a good citizen, with loyalty to the Cambodian monar-chy no longer a desirable trait. Second, the direct involvement of the national leader in the formulation of educational policies diminished.

For the first time since independence, the Ministry of Education would be able to assume almost full responsibility for the development of ed-ucational policies.

Education: Interpretations of the Past

In order to reconstruct the Cambodian state, the new regime sought to denigrate its predecessor. One of its earliest educational priorities was to interpret the past, discrediting the achievements acclaimed by Si-hanouk as examples of the national progress made by the Sangkum. A new periodical, New Cambodge, distributed its first issue in May 1970.

Among many articles proclaiming alleged Cambodian successes on the battlefields in the war against the unbelievers were other articles that sought to discredit the former regime. Phouk Chhay, the founder of the General Association of Khmer Students, who would ironically later rally to Sihanouk’s National United Front of Kampuchea (FUNK) organiza-tion, wrote an article of sweeping economic and social criticisms of the former regime. Noting that the “time of personal rule, based on abso-lutism, individualism, favoritism, and terror is thus overthrown,” Chhay turned to education when highlighting the burden of Sihanouk’s devel-opment aspirations on Cambodia’s peasants. Referring to Sihanouk as an “excellent demagogue,” he claimed that while the prince would in-vite his “children” to “accept heavy burdens in order to build schools,”

the people who contributed to the construction were too poor to afford the exorbitant school admission fees. “The poor peasants,” he con-cluded, “had no chance at all of sending their children to high school.”²¹ Another article, in the second issue of New Cambodge, highlighted the development of education under the Sangkum. While it can be con-ceded that the article was written for an explicit political purpose far re-moved from the realms of educational policy, it was both perceptive and incisive in its criticisms. The article predictably leveled its criticisms at Norodom Sihanouk, arguing the prince “was seized with a desire to con-vince foreigners at any cost that in the realm of education Cambodia was a progressive country.” In regard to higher education, the article noted Sihanouk’s “opposition . . . to any preliminary studies” that “had serious results,” while in secondary education, the article noted the unsuitabil-ity of many sites selected for educational infrastructure development.

These were often “enforced [by Sihanouk] against the explicit and con-sidered advice of the people concerned.” A second criticism centered on Sihanouk’s lack of concern with the specific details of educational policy. The article argues, quite rightly, that “neither the cost of con-struction, nor the plans, . . . nor the availability of the necessary teach-ing materials mattered to him.” A final criticism highlighted Sihanouk’s tendency to act out of compulsion, citing the prince’s inclination,

“whilst touring a province, as a reward, he said, for the welcome he re-ceived, to decide suddenly to transform a junior high school into a se-nior high school” without taking other factors into consideration. In summing up, the article argued that Sihanouk “introduced uneasiness, improvisation and disorganization into a field which should by defini-tion be controlled by a sensible and practical organizadefini-tion.”²²The decks were being cleared by the ship’s new crew.