On the weekend, I was confronted by an issue that followed me quite a while when I was younger. It was the period when I began to investigate the history of Vietnam, my country of origin.
I went to the PS1, a contemporary art museum of the Moma in Queens. There was an exhibition with works of 1969, the year of the space's opening. I went through the halls, which mostly presented political artwork, then current issues like the Cold War and the Black Power movement. I also passed by a piece that was called "Q: And babies? A: And Babies.".
It was a photo of an incident during the Vietnam war. On 16 March 1968, a group of US soldiers marched into a village. On the command of "Take care of these people!" the soldiers killed app. 500 people. They claimed to have shot Vietcongs, but there were no men of combat age, only women, elderly men and children. They didn't show a sign of resistence or provocation, nor were there any hints of military involvement of that little village. The men began to shoot around. Babies, elderly people and women were tortured and killed. Young girls were sexually abused. Their corps were found humilated.
The killings and humilations were only stopped by the inervention of US military helicopters that observed the dead civilians and threatened to shoot if the soldiers wouldn't stop. By then, only a dozen of the villagers could be saved.
In the course, the US military tried to cover the incidents up. Only in november 1969, more then a year later, the independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh succeeded to publish the full extent of the story - after being denied publication by most of the major newspapers.
The My Lai massacre was the beginning of the end of the war. More massacres came to light and the purpose and the means of the war were more cirtically questioned. The public sentiment turned against it given the revelation of its cruelty and hopelessness.
There was a trial on the massacre. The only man convicted was amnestied a couple of years later by the president himself. The journalist who revealed the events was honoured with the Pulitzer 30 years later. By that time, the war was long passed and the victims almost forgotten.
By the way, this was the notion to the poster in the Museum:
"This poster was conceived at a meeting between two matters of the Art Work Coalition and the Museum Executive Staff Committee [Moma] on november 25, 1969. The idea of a "co-sponsored" mass produced poster in condemnation of the My Lai massacre was supported by the Museum Senior Staff present at the meeting. The poster used Life photographer Ronald Haeberle's photograph superimposed with text from the transcript of the interview conducted by Mike Wallace of Paul Meadlo, one of the soldiers who participated in the massacre. Paper and printing were donated to the cause. The color plates were completed on december 18, and a color mock-up was presented to William S. Paley, President of the Board. He argued that the Museum withdraw its support of the poster. He did offer to bring the matter before the Board of Trustees during its next meeting. However, the AWC in the interest of time and with little optimism for a positive outcome released the poster without the Museum's sponsorship in the amount of 50 000 copies which were distributed freely."
This is how the campaign ended: The Art Workers Coalition demonstrating with the poster in front of Picasso's Guernica in the Moma.
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