ABSTRACT
In the rugged mountains in the northeast of Laos, close to the Vietnamese border, the Vieng Xay Caves are being transformed into a tourist attraction. During the 1960s and 1970s these caves served as the base area for the Lao communist movement, the Pathet Lao. Today they are the centrepiece for a tourism development strategy designed to alleviate poverty in one of the poorest parts of this very poor nation. I have been integrally involved in the project, especially in the interpretation of the site and the management of its artefact collections. In the process, I have come to understand the complex place of heritage in communist states. Heritage – of both the non-communist and communist periods – is bound up in processes of political and ideological legitimation and economic development in ways that have some parallels to the incorporation of it into the national project in more plural societies, but also in ways that are unique to communist states. To understand the role of heritage in communist states, it is necessary to acknowledge the deeply ideological nature of officially endorsed heritage in all societies – in the sense that official heritage expresses the cultural, social and political beliefs of the politically powerful. It is thus necessary to understand the way that communist ideology interacts with the main currencies of heritage – the past, modernity and development.
