Vietnam: Joys and Misfortunes of the High Plateaus

Coveted for their natural resources, the High Plateaus of Vietnam today provide shelter for helpless populations.

Da Teh is nearby one of the “new economic zones” of Vietnam.  A creation which aimed to open up the refugee populations in South Vietnam after the war, by sending them onto exploitable fields where they could develop an economic activity.  Today, many are still suffering the disastrous consequences of these displacements.   The administrators are often granted the better fields, leaving the sterile plots to the farmers.   No solid measure has been established to allow the villagers to regain a viable economic activity.

Why such economic stagnation in a province where the soil seems so rich, where tea and coffee plants crown every hill?  Here, little by little farmers are losing the right to the better fields.  Nguyen Thi Tuyen’s father and her family have been displaced onto a dry and rocky field in the new economic zone.   The fields there have been redistributed unfairly whereas the initial project asked the provinces to offer rice fields or fallow fields to the refugees.  Even cassava doesn’t come up there.  “In 20 years, no progress has been made”, states this disillusioned farmer.

Some kilometers away, local authorities have rehabilitated a woodlot by forbidding its exploitation by the native people.   The project should have rebounded to benefit them:  it consisted of planting some rubber trees and putting the villagers to work there.   But once the wood was cleared, nothing more was heard about it.  In reality, the forest was exploited for wood for construction, at the same time the small farmers were forbidden from cutting it for ecological reasons.  Yet, the industrial exploitation which was carried out under terms of a secret agreement between the local government and its clients is far more dangerous for the environment than individual cutting.

Rampant Sinicization

For years, Tuyen’s grandfather has lived off of the resources of the forest.  Despite his great age, he must go farther and farther to cut the wood of small trees and bamboos, since the cutting of large trees is forbidden to him.  Tuyen is in grade 9.  Next year, she must go to high school, 10 km from her home, and follow supplementary courses which are indispensible to this level of study.  But today, she doesn’t have the means to do this.  In her village, most of the children quit school at the end of middle school because of lack of resources.  Tuyen’s parents are on a waiting list to obtain a “house of kindness”:  a small durable house financed by a charity or, partly, by the local authorities.  Reserved for the poorest families, this aid aims to respond to the goal set by the government to remove the huts.

Behind the incapacity or the lack of determination to develop long-term projects, also is hiding a form of sinicization of the High Plateaus.  Twenty kilometers from Bao Loc, in the direction of Dalat, a town has sprung up that is 100 percent Chinese.  If mixed marriages contribute to regional sinicization, more and more Vietnamese neighboring the Chinese town are moving, uncomfortable with an arrogant working class largely composed of former ex-convicts, according to what is said around Bao Loc.  For local populations, there is no benefit.  In this context, it’s difficult not to see the High Plateaus as the poor relation of a Vietnam whose growth is bragged about everywhere with hue and cry.

By Anh Duongm, originally published in French in Enfants du Mekong Magazine n°170, translated by Boulderwords.