BLENDED POPULATION

by David Nuttle

President Ngo Dien Diem, of South Vietnam, was a Catholic trying to lead a nation with an active communist insurgency. The added problem was that there were other major religious

populations to include Buddhists, Cao Dai, Hoa How, Christians, and Animists in addition to Catholics. Diem got the idea that he could better stabilize national populations if they could learn to blend. As a student of history, Diem believed the Roman Empire lasted as long as it did by integrating and totally blending mixed populations.

Based on Diem's above beliefs, he had his military, ARVN, identify 10 families from each of the above groups and force them to all move to what he called "New Life Village" these mixed populations has to create to include houses, cottage industries to meet basic needs, and farms to grow their own foods as well as cash crops. None of these families volunteered so they were moved by force-of-arms. To prevent escapes by families in the designated area for this new village were fenced in & ARVN posted armed guards to force families to remain.

With no easy options, the families put differences aside long enough to construct homes and start cottage industries as well as farms. Diem was providing rice to sustain these people until they could get enough food crops grown to feed themselves.

Diem wanted to create a large number of his New Life Villages and attempted to get the U. S. Ambassador to S. Vietnam, Nolting, to request American dollars to fund total efforts. Ambassador Nolting was invited to visit said first New Life Village to see what a great and promising project this was. Diem directed his staff to organize a "dog-and-pony" show, at said village, for Ambassador Nolting to see. A date was determined for Nolting's visit and he asked me to meet him at the village, to act as his Vietnamese language interpreter and give

him my opinion on subject population blending experiment. I had provided some other very similar assistance for Nolting.

The "dog-and-pony" show was well orchestrated with some project families making brief presentations indicating how wonderful the New Life Village was. Nolting and I had series doubts about what we were being told. Based on this doubt, Nolting demanded immediate

private interviews with a few project families. Each of these families, told us in private, that they hated life in the village and objected to living with, and working with, other families who were so totally different in their beliefs. After that Experience, Ambassador Nolting told me he would not recommend USG funding for any more New Life Villages!!

If you are going to create a mixed bag of anything, make certain you can confirm what the final result may be!!!!

With no real options,