If There’s Going to Be a Thai Civil War, Isaan Will Be Its Front Line

Red Shirt supporters practice self-defense as they attend a Democracy Protection Volunteers Group camp in Udon Thani province, in Isaan region of Thailand, on April 3, 2014 Pornchai Kittiwongsakul—AFP/Getty Images

If There’s Going to Be a Thai Civil War, Isaan Will Be Its Front Line

 TIME | 2 July 2014

Resentment toward Thailand’s latest military coup is palpable in the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand, reinforcing a long-standing sense of ethnic separateness among its Lao-speaking people 

The folk music of Thailand’s northeastern Isaan region is known as morlum and it follows a familiar theme. Typically, a young, wet-behind-the-ears girl or boy leaves the emerald rice paddies to move to the big city. Once there, facing exploitation, social estrangement, and heartbreak, the protagonist yearns for the pastoral wholesomeness of their birthplace.

It’s a tale many in Thailand’s largest region can relate to. “When you live in upcountry Thailand, everywhere you go — your neighbor’s house, restaurants, the market, taxis — that’s the music that they play,” says singer Christy Gibson, who grew up listening to morlum and its close relative luk thung after moving to Isaan with her parents at the age of 6, and is one of the few foreign musicians to have made it in the Thai mainstream.

But despite making up a third of the population, the people of Isaan — who share a culture and language closer to neighboring Laos — have for centuries been second-class citizens to the inhabitants of Bangkok and central provinces, who often are descended from Chinese stock. And although it is the rice-bowl of a country that, until recently, was the world’s largest exporter of the grain, the region has historically suffered from chronic underdevelopment.

As a result, local people traditionally headed south to Bangkok or the country’s tourist zones to work as taxi drivers or construction workers, often returning home to help at harvest time. Many women, weary of toiling under the hot sun for a pittance, ended up working in the sex industry.

In recent times, though, Isaan has experienced a comparative upturn in fortunes, with new investment transforming the area into a manufacturing hub. In the villages, rickety wooden houses are being rebuilt in concrete, with shiny pickup trucks parked outside. In the cities, glitzy shopping malls, boasting ice-skating rinks and global coffee chains, are the hangouts of spiky-haired teens in fashionable streetwear.

The upshot? “Isaan people have become cosmopolitan villagers who have sophisticated understandings of themselves as Thai and as participants in a global labor force,” says Charles Keyes, professor emeritus at the University of Washington and author of a recent book on Thailand’s northeast.

But not is all well. The successive ousting of Isaan-backed governments by the Bangkok-based political establishment is reinforcing the sense of ethnic difference and consolidating a political identity for Isaan alongside its cultural and linguistic ones. And following Thailand’s latest military coup on May 22, many Isaan people are calling for greater autonomy — even independence.