April 17 marks the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, a day to remember and stand with peasant communities around the world who continue to resist dispossession from their lands, rivers, and ways of life. The date commemorates the 1996 Eldorado dos Carajás massacre in Brazil, when 19 landless workers were killed by military police during a peaceful march for agrarian reform. Since then, movements across the globe have used this day to draw attention to the structures of international finance and state security that have historically treated rural people and their environments as obstacles to progress rather than communities with rights. 

This article examines how that pattern took shape in Thailand, where Cold War geopolitics and development lending transformed the rivers and livelihoods of the country’s northeastern peasant communities and sparked movements that continue to this day.

This article is part of a four-part series on the history and politics of dam construction and energy transition in Southeast Asia.

During the  Cold War, the United States had launched the “European Recovery Program” in the 1940s ^[i]and with the Truman Doctrine on “supporting the developing countries affected by the Cold War,”^[ii]  and “to prevent the domino to fall,”^[iii] had led the American army to conduct military operations in Thailand, influencing the region’s domestic affairs. This grand strategy had been leading to the formation of SEATO, with its anti-communist campaign inciting a crucial role in militarizing security^[iv] upon the local state entities and their people, supplemented by the support from development initiatives such as USAID.

Encouraged by funds, the Thai state began its development policies and models to resonate with a development agenda derived from the US and the developed world from the 1950s and continued for more than three decades afterward. The goal was said to “improve” the basis of the country’s agricultural production and relevant infrastructure, ranging from railways construction,  runoff dams, reservoirs, to hydropower dams – all were proposed in the name of development with many supra state actors and international financial institutions e.g. World Bank^[v], Asia Development Bank, and many Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) involved.

The most concrete action from this supra-state financial institution was the direct development loan from the IMF to reform and prepare the Thai economic liberalization for free trade,  tariff ceiling reduction, and promote  exchange rate flexibility as such.^[vi] As Thailand is an agricultural-based society, this new form of globalization, instead, only promotes certain agro-industries, big companies, and conglomerates such as Chareonphokaphan (CP); A&A Acres in farm chicken breeding; Mitsubishi corporation’s technology in Tiger prawn farming; Monsanto’s business model, among others.^[vii]  The Shin Corp. telecom giant also started growing in Thailand in the same decade.

These policies and partnerships reflected a new vision of modernity, where large-scale construction and industrial expansion were seen as symbols of progress.

Thailand’s agriculture had been maintained in the rural and suburban areas, making Thai rural areas, especially the northeastern plateau, become the object of development. This could be traced back to the very first runoff dam ever built, the Chao Phraya dam. The dam was finished in 1952 on a suggestion from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at that time to secure Thailand’s agricultural production power, mainly water, to nurture the world economic food supply chain. The latter dam constructions proliferated in the region and were trapped in a discourse of “the multipurposes”.

This statement of “multipurpose dams” referred to dams that were built and equipped with power plant facilities to generate electricity, or even built in favor, or as a sign of development itself,  whether the dam is finished or under construction.

The construction of the hydropower dam was first inaugurated in Bhumibol Dam, formerly known as Yanhee Dam. The project is located in the Central region of Thailand and started in 1957 by an American construction company. It is a giant hydro-power dam (779 Megawatts) funded through the direct investment from the World Bank and multiple financial institutions from various countries^[viii].

At the same time, the Thai government’s development incentives served to play a part in the US-led anti-communist operations by advancing economic development from the center to the peripheries of Thailand’s rural areas where the Communist Party of Thailand was operating. For the US army, the people and the environment being seen as underdeveloped were somewhat what they have been relying on. Across the northeastern plateau, Khon Isaan or Esaan^[ix] had been sustaining the G.I. troops’ well-being^[x], operating in the area.

And with those interactions, the lives of Isaan people perceived as poor people living in a dry and harsh land of the “Khorat plateau,”^[xi] wanting to get married to a White man to ascend their economic and social ladder were being told in stories and folk songs and heard by both the westerners and the Bangkok people.^[xii]

This plays a part alongside the myth of saying these poor Issan people could be manipulated with money, with implications especially on vote buying from politicians. This image of underdeveloped Issan and the “unsophisticated peasants”^[xiii] has become a major driver of the Thai government’s trajectory for their development agendas as a means to channel more funds or loans from international financial institutions in the name of rural development.

This journey had led us to document Thai dam movements in Ubon Ratchathani and Sisaket provinces, whose mobilizations were intensifying during the time that the Communist Party of Thailand was still operating in the peripheral rural areas in 1980-90s. The anti-dam activism continues to expand even after the party was disbanded at the end of the Cold War.The series also highlights why the Cold War’s context has been linked to the infrastructure development in Thailand, arguably from the mandate of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) – a political body of the Thai military still operating until nowadays and whose  mission goes beyond counterinsurgency and intelligence  to maintain and protect  infrastructure developments.^[xiv]

The legacy of the Cold War remains deeply rooted in Thailand’s development path. What began as an anti-communist campaign became a long-standing framework of control over land, rivers, and people. The next article of this series turns to the communities who have lived through these changes and how their struggles shaped new movements for justice.

^[i] General George C. Marshall, who was the US Secretary of State, launched this foreign affairs campaign during 1947-1952 to rehabilitate 17 West European countries affected by the war as well as to deal with the communist proliferation.
^[ii] Harry S. Truman, the US president, had signed and provided a speech at the Congress in 1949 on the Foreign-Aid Program,  the Point Four Program, which was the first time the term ‘underdeveloped areas’ had been spoken.
^[iii] Also known as “the Red Scare”.
^[iv] such as to exercise its military technologies namely photogrammetry or mapping in the South East Asia region,  A series of maps from the 1960s to late-70s continue to be used by the Thai military  for  its military operations. .  The mapping process was also leading to multiple survey missions of rural communities, as the plain map could not contain the socio-economic aspect within. The origin of Thailand’s anthropological epistem was accordingly established by American academics from universities such as the Cornell University and others. This was described in “Mapping the Region”  “แผนที่สร้างชาติ” available in Thai, and following by “Writing the rurals as a Nation” “เขียนชนบทให้เป็นชาติ” available in Thai, by  Kengkij Kitirianglarp
^[v] During the mid-1980s, the Thai economy had been facing a downturn. World Bank back then promoted export-based economic model to  the government quoted ‘open the country, reform certain  state enterprises, attracting more foreign investors’, also  “2.9 millions risk of losing jobs by December”, Bangkok Post, 1 September 1997, mentioned by Bello, Walden,1998, Siamese Tragedy. p. 20.
^[vi] Ibid, pp. 20-21
^[vii] World Bank, ‘Social Aspect of the Crisis’, p. 5, Ibid. p. 21
^[viii] The ‘multipurpose dam’ terms is indicated even in the loaning document from World Bank to Thai government. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/646031586930415093/pdf/Announcement-of-Six-Million-Dollar-Power-Loan-in-Thailand-on-March-10-1965.pdf; https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/pt/961651468118475069/pdf/multi0page.pdf
^[ix] Isaan or Esaan is a Thai word to describe the people in the northeastern region
^[x] Editorial team. (2020, August 31). The Good Daughters of Isaan (7) – A wife to rent: Recollections from the gates of a US airbase in Udon Thani. The Isaan Record. https://theisaanrecord.co/2020/08/31/the-good-daughters-of-isaan-7/
^[xi] Khorat is the name of Nakhon Ratchasima province, and considered as the gateway to Isaan
^[xii] Such as illustrated in ‘a love letter from a rented wife’ song “จดหมายรักจากเมียเช่า” written by Arjint Panjaphan (อาจิณต์ ปัญจพรรค์) the lyrics describes a desperate life of an Esaan woman who used to be in love with an American GI troop operating in northeastern Thai plateau until he had to go back to America afterward.
^[xiii] As in Keyes, Charles. 2014. Finding their voice: Northeastern Villagers and The Thai State
^[xiv] Their mission, as indicated in their governmental websites, is to maintain any form of national security regardless of the national security threats, internal and external conflicts, as well as  the security of natural resources which plays an important role in the state’s development. It is stated clearly by them that they are obliged to the National Economic and Social Development Plan(s) which has changed throughout the years, and also complying to the recent National Strategy initiated by the recent coup d’etat by the NCPO. https://oia.coj.go.th/th/content/category/detail/id/8/cid/5885/iid/93993

*This series of analyses was conducted by CUSRI and Focus on the Global South, drawing from an exposure visit co-organized by Project SEVANA South East Asia, Ubon Ratchathani Activists, Laos Dam Investment Monitor coalition (LDIM), representatives of indigenous Dayak Punan from Kalimantan, youth activists and scholars from West Papua and Indonesia, and delegates from Latin America representing the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAR) during 22 to 25 February 2025.