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Keeping Colonial Laos Profitable

"We will not miss the plane because the plane will be late the same way we are. If it left when it said it would, that would be just stupid, No one would be on it."]

Form over content. . . . If the job doesn't look like it would back in the States, then it just isn't getting done, that's all there is to it. Inefficiency which would horrify an American management consultant must be just as dangerous in Laos, it just must be. . . .

THE American style and the Lao style are so disparate that no American will believe that a Lao can be trusted to perform well. And as long as there are Americans around to "help out," to give the natives the benefit of their expertise, then Lao casualness will continue to be taken at face value, as a sign of hopeless incompetence.

The Lao know what the Americans think of them, and they respond with mixed emotions. Almost without exception they worship American materialism. . . . Where the Americans go, so does money, and things to spend the money on-movies, records, radios, clothes, cars, motorcycles. Of course, for as long as you care about them, you can spend the American dollars on uniquely Lao status symbols and valuables-silk, gold ornaments, huge, lavish parties for all your family and friends.

The Lao who goes on caring about Lao things longer than most tempers his love of American money with prideful resentment of Americanization. Yet outwardly he is as charming and warm as the most enthusiastic concert to the American way.

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This Lao charm confuses most Americans, even revolts them, since they insist on judging the Lao culture by American standards of "straightforwardness." "These folks sure don't shoot from the hip, do they now? Come to think of it, they might even shoot you in the back." For some reason Texans seem disproportionately represented in the Foreign Service.

Americans don't know how to deal with "the smiling Lao"-as a result they tend to put their foot in it quite often, but they get away with it. The Lao responds with such politeness that the American comes away unaware that he has been rude. The rudeness of individual Americans, and the racist quality of official policy combine to offset the otherwise limitless ingratiating power of the American dollar.

It is typical that America should want, and should expect to be able to, buy love with dollars, just as it is typical that we find it necessary to disguise our neo-colonalism as "protecting the right to self-determination, "promoting democracy," etc.

How much will it all cost? [I ask the head of USAID in Laos, "Is there any way of estimating approximately how much money we give Laos every year?" He laughs and answers, "Why, of course, 50 million a year-exactly-no more, no less."

I can't figure me out-I was cynical enough even then to know that there must be loopholes, like rice for the peasants being sold to buy tanks, but I was so naive that I actually thought this man would admit to their existence-even describe them for me. Oh, well, even $50 million is a lot to spend to keep a country of two million in line. . . . And that was four years ago.] . . .

How much will it cost? When will we know? When will it end?

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