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- ประวัติศาสตร์
FRESNO, California -Making her way
FRESNO, California -Making her way through hundreds of Indochinese refugees waiting for English class to begin, Barbara Christl shakes her head as she holds out the morning newspaper. "Here. This is the problem," she says, heaving the paper on her desk. The day's front page feature is a ten-years-after look at refugees from the Vietnam War. The headline says, "Indochinese Refugees Adapt Quickly in U.S." The story opens describing a Vietnamese man in Houston who came to the United States a decade ago with nothing. Today he is on his way to becoming a "Texas tycoon." The piece quotes a former official of the U.S. Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy as saying Indochinese refugees have "shown a remarkable ability to enter into mainstream American economic life." Christl, director of English as a Second Language programs for Fresno County, looks like she is ready to scold a child. "You see, people think the problem has gone away. Or if not, that things are moving in that direction."
Here, the problem has just begun. Since 1979 the counties of California's Central Valley have become home to 30,000 displaced foot soldiers from the Vietnam War. Fresno County alone is refuge for 15,000 of them. But they are not the soon-to-be tycoon success stories. They are mountain dwellers from the jungle peaks of Laos, primitive tribes, trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency to collect intelligence on North Vietnamese troop movements in Laos, disrupt communist supply lines headed for South Vietnam and rescue downed U.S. flyers shot down just east of their mountain home in North Vietnam. They call themselves the Hmong. To those who knew of their existence during the Vietnam War they are known as the CIA's "secret army" in Laos.
Before coming to the United States their contact with the outside world had been through CIA operatives and other military men who armed them and directed their forays into the jungle. Before the CIA they had fought for the French when they were the dominant military might in the region. For generations before the war the Hmong (pronounced Mung) stuck closely to their mountain tops, relying on the labor of large families and tightly knit clans to survive on subsistence farming and the export of their only cash crop, opium. The Chinese, who harassed the Hmong out of Southern China near the end of the 1800s, called them Miao -barbarians -and later the Lao called them Meo, a different word with the same meaning.
Ten years ago, as North Vietnamese troops took control of Saigon and communist Pathet Lao soldiers prepared to subdue the government of Laos, the Hmong began to stumble out of the jungle and swim the Mekong River to Thailand. They had gained a reputation as fierce fighters attempting to protect their mountain redoubt and their association with the CIA sealed their fate in the eyes of the communist victors. They knew they would not escape the wrath of the Pathet Lao and their benefactors, the North Vietnamese.
Since 1975, the United States has brought some 700,000 Indochinese refugees into the country. The 65,000 Hmong, like all the refugees, were placed wherever sponsors could be found. Within the space of 72 hours these mountain people were taken from bamboo-thatched huts in refugee camps along the Mekong River and put into 2- and 3-bedroom apartments in Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other major American cities. They were unaware of how to deal with the simplest of tasks for Americans: turning on and off lights; using the refrigerator, stove or oven; paying bills.
"It's just like a dream, like a movie Imagine you go to the Moon some way and when you wake up you are on the Moon somewhere and you have to live by that society you don't know where you are, you don't really know," says Kou Yang, now a social worker in Fresno.
Rev. Norman Johnshoy, who often finds himself explaining the Hmong to perplexed locals, says, "One of the best descriptions is to think of them as a people who made one airplane flight from the 16th century to the 21st. And if you can conceive of something like that happening in a time machine, then you have a pretty good notion of the perplexity that these people must have experienced."
The cultural disorientation the Hmong face on arrival in the United States is shared by the other Indochinese refugees, but the Hmong bring a special history that makes their long-term settlement much more difficult. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, the Hmong are a "preliterate" people, which means most are unable to read and write in their own language. Actually, until 30 years ago when Christian missionaries standardized the language and wrote it down, the Hmong had no written language. Unlike European immigrants and many Indochinese, the Hmong have a simple, agrarian vocabulary. Europeans and Vietnamese pick up the English language in months of study, Hmong take years to learn.
"We see (Europeans) in ESL classes as well and they can zip through ESL in no time because you simply substitute what a word means in your language and you learn what that word means in this language. For (the Hmong) there is no word in their language that means the word they're trying to learn," Barbara Christl says.
While a very small number of Hmong are educated and have become teachers, businessmen, engineers and farmers, the great majority -estimates run 80 to 95 percent -do not have jobs and do not have skills to work in the United States. When Christl reads that the Vietnamese Texas tycoon "isn't unique among the 700,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians" in the United States she fears the secret soldiers of Laos will become the hidden refugees in America whose wrenching cultural assimilation will be overshadowed by the success stories of those Indochinese more able to cope. It is a fate the Hmong should not suffer, she says, because of the crucial role they played for the United States in the Vietnam era. Lionel Rosenblatt, refugee coordinator for the United States in Thailand just after the war and again in 1978-81, explains that the Hmong became pivotal for the U.S. military strategy in Laos because "according to the Geneva Accords of 1960 there were no foreign troops to be stationed in Laos."
"Of course the Vietnamese Army was there in abundance, but the American military did not put ground combat troops into Laos and the Hmong really formed our army -a very unique relationship with the Hmong, therefore, that we didn't have with any other group on the ground in Indochina."
Because of that relationship many of the Hmong who arrived in the United States after two decades of war knew nothing else but fighting and nothing else but the support of the U.S. military. Moua Geu, who runs the Long Chien market in Fresno -namesake of the secret CIA operations center in Laos -remembers his relationship with the Americans this way: "They had a lot of powers and they were the ones who brought us guns, gold, clothes, food."
"CIA is the one who helped us, supported us a lot and we consider them as a mother and father," he says in a sing-song English, marked by the tonal sounds of his native tongue.
Because of that relationship, the Hmong expected more than they got when they arrived in America. In 1981, during a trip to Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, many refugees responded to the question, "What will you do in the United States?" with the answer, "Whatever the government tells me to do." It was a great shock to Moua Geu and his comrades when they arrived and the government they had known, that had supported them all their lives, could not be found. "Even if we lost, they promised they would take us to the United States, but when we got here, we have no idea who the CIA is, we don't know where they went."
If the Hmong were unprepared for the United States, Americans were also unready for them. In almost every aspect of their lives the Hmong rely on an entirely different set of beliefs and values than their new neighbors. They are a polygamous people. Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to support. The more children they had the richer they could become because they could cultivate more land. Hmong men were told before coming to the United States that they would have to divorce all but one wife and on paper they did so. But Hmong leaders in Fresno admit that, once here, the traditional family unit is preserved often with the husband living again with all his wives. Also, while Christian missionaries did write down the Hmong language, they were less successful converting them to the Western God. Most of the Hmong are still animistic, worshipers of good and evil spirits and the spirits of their dead ancestors, all who must be revered with complex rituals and animal sacrifices.
Some benign incidents have been the unavoidable result of these differences. Fresno Police Officer Marvin Reyes swallows hard when he recounts the first time he was invited to a Hmong celebration in a downtown apartment complex. Several women were butchering a live pig in the kitchen. Next to the carcass, beside a blood-soaked wall, the head of the animal stuck out of a bucket, waiting to be cooked as the centerpiece of the meal.
Diana Carter, a clerk at a thrift bakery frequented by the Hmong, said she mistrusted them at first because they would not directly look at her. Later, she learned the Hmong cast their eyes down as a sign of respect.
Another incident was described by Elaine Perez, a Fresno County family planning official. A Hmong couple taught to use condoms through the creative use of a broom handle returned to the birth control clinic after the woman became pregnant. They followed the instructions to the letter, they said. The broom handle had been put in the cornner of the bedroom dutifully covered with the birth control device.
Some cultural misunderstandings have led to more solemn consequences. A Hmong man ran a stop sign in a van filled with Hmong workers headed for
Here, the problem has just begun. Since 1979 the counties of California's Central Valley have become home to 30,000 displaced foot soldiers from the Vietnam War. Fresno County alone is refuge for 15,000 of them. But they are not the soon-to-be tycoon success stories. They are mountain dwellers from the jungle peaks of Laos, primitive tribes, trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency to collect intelligence on North Vietnamese troop movements in Laos, disrupt communist supply lines headed for South Vietnam and rescue downed U.S. flyers shot down just east of their mountain home in North Vietnam. They call themselves the Hmong. To those who knew of their existence during the Vietnam War they are known as the CIA's "secret army" in Laos.
Before coming to the United States their contact with the outside world had been through CIA operatives and other military men who armed them and directed their forays into the jungle. Before the CIA they had fought for the French when they were the dominant military might in the region. For generations before the war the Hmong (pronounced Mung) stuck closely to their mountain tops, relying on the labor of large families and tightly knit clans to survive on subsistence farming and the export of their only cash crop, opium. The Chinese, who harassed the Hmong out of Southern China near the end of the 1800s, called them Miao -barbarians -and later the Lao called them Meo, a different word with the same meaning.
Ten years ago, as North Vietnamese troops took control of Saigon and communist Pathet Lao soldiers prepared to subdue the government of Laos, the Hmong began to stumble out of the jungle and swim the Mekong River to Thailand. They had gained a reputation as fierce fighters attempting to protect their mountain redoubt and their association with the CIA sealed their fate in the eyes of the communist victors. They knew they would not escape the wrath of the Pathet Lao and their benefactors, the North Vietnamese.
Since 1975, the United States has brought some 700,000 Indochinese refugees into the country. The 65,000 Hmong, like all the refugees, were placed wherever sponsors could be found. Within the space of 72 hours these mountain people were taken from bamboo-thatched huts in refugee camps along the Mekong River and put into 2- and 3-bedroom apartments in Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other major American cities. They were unaware of how to deal with the simplest of tasks for Americans: turning on and off lights; using the refrigerator, stove or oven; paying bills.
"It's just like a dream, like a movie Imagine you go to the Moon some way and when you wake up you are on the Moon somewhere and you have to live by that society you don't know where you are, you don't really know," says Kou Yang, now a social worker in Fresno.
Rev. Norman Johnshoy, who often finds himself explaining the Hmong to perplexed locals, says, "One of the best descriptions is to think of them as a people who made one airplane flight from the 16th century to the 21st. And if you can conceive of something like that happening in a time machine, then you have a pretty good notion of the perplexity that these people must have experienced."
The cultural disorientation the Hmong face on arrival in the United States is shared by the other Indochinese refugees, but the Hmong bring a special history that makes their long-term settlement much more difficult. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, the Hmong are a "preliterate" people, which means most are unable to read and write in their own language. Actually, until 30 years ago when Christian missionaries standardized the language and wrote it down, the Hmong had no written language. Unlike European immigrants and many Indochinese, the Hmong have a simple, agrarian vocabulary. Europeans and Vietnamese pick up the English language in months of study, Hmong take years to learn.
"We see (Europeans) in ESL classes as well and they can zip through ESL in no time because you simply substitute what a word means in your language and you learn what that word means in this language. For (the Hmong) there is no word in their language that means the word they're trying to learn," Barbara Christl says.
While a very small number of Hmong are educated and have become teachers, businessmen, engineers and farmers, the great majority -estimates run 80 to 95 percent -do not have jobs and do not have skills to work in the United States. When Christl reads that the Vietnamese Texas tycoon "isn't unique among the 700,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians" in the United States she fears the secret soldiers of Laos will become the hidden refugees in America whose wrenching cultural assimilation will be overshadowed by the success stories of those Indochinese more able to cope. It is a fate the Hmong should not suffer, she says, because of the crucial role they played for the United States in the Vietnam era. Lionel Rosenblatt, refugee coordinator for the United States in Thailand just after the war and again in 1978-81, explains that the Hmong became pivotal for the U.S. military strategy in Laos because "according to the Geneva Accords of 1960 there were no foreign troops to be stationed in Laos."
"Of course the Vietnamese Army was there in abundance, but the American military did not put ground combat troops into Laos and the Hmong really formed our army -a very unique relationship with the Hmong, therefore, that we didn't have with any other group on the ground in Indochina."
Because of that relationship many of the Hmong who arrived in the United States after two decades of war knew nothing else but fighting and nothing else but the support of the U.S. military. Moua Geu, who runs the Long Chien market in Fresno -namesake of the secret CIA operations center in Laos -remembers his relationship with the Americans this way: "They had a lot of powers and they were the ones who brought us guns, gold, clothes, food."
"CIA is the one who helped us, supported us a lot and we consider them as a mother and father," he says in a sing-song English, marked by the tonal sounds of his native tongue.
Because of that relationship, the Hmong expected more than they got when they arrived in America. In 1981, during a trip to Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, many refugees responded to the question, "What will you do in the United States?" with the answer, "Whatever the government tells me to do." It was a great shock to Moua Geu and his comrades when they arrived and the government they had known, that had supported them all their lives, could not be found. "Even if we lost, they promised they would take us to the United States, but when we got here, we have no idea who the CIA is, we don't know where they went."
If the Hmong were unprepared for the United States, Americans were also unready for them. In almost every aspect of their lives the Hmong rely on an entirely different set of beliefs and values than their new neighbors. They are a polygamous people. Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to support. The more children they had the richer they could become because they could cultivate more land. Hmong men were told before coming to the United States that they would have to divorce all but one wife and on paper they did so. But Hmong leaders in Fresno admit that, once here, the traditional family unit is preserved often with the husband living again with all his wives. Also, while Christian missionaries did write down the Hmong language, they were less successful converting them to the Western God. Most of the Hmong are still animistic, worshipers of good and evil spirits and the spirits of their dead ancestors, all who must be revered with complex rituals and animal sacrifices.
Some benign incidents have been the unavoidable result of these differences. Fresno Police Officer Marvin Reyes swallows hard when he recounts the first time he was invited to a Hmong celebration in a downtown apartment complex. Several women were butchering a live pig in the kitchen. Next to the carcass, beside a blood-soaked wall, the head of the animal stuck out of a bucket, waiting to be cooked as the centerpiece of the meal.
Diana Carter, a clerk at a thrift bakery frequented by the Hmong, said she mistrusted them at first because they would not directly look at her. Later, she learned the Hmong cast their eyes down as a sign of respect.
Another incident was described by Elaine Perez, a Fresno County family planning official. A Hmong couple taught to use condoms through the creative use of a broom handle returned to the birth control clinic after the woman became pregnant. They followed the instructions to the letter, they said. The broom handle had been put in the cornner of the bedroom dutifully covered with the birth control device.
Some cultural misunderstandings have led to more solemn consequences. A Hmong man ran a stop sign in a van filled with Hmong workers headed for
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เฟรสโน แคลิฟอร์เนีย-ทำให้ทางของเธอผ่านร้อยอินโดจีนผู้ลี้ภัยรอภาษาอังกฤษระดับเริ่มต้น Barbara Christl สั่นศีรษะของเธอขณะที่เธอแสดงออกหนังสือพิมพ์ตอนเช้า "ที่นี่ นี่คือปัญหา เธอกล่าว heaving กระดาษบนโต๊ะของเธอ คุณลักษณะของวันหน้าจะดูสิบปีหลังจากที่ผู้ลี้ภัยจากสงครามเวียดนาม การพาดหัวข่าวว่า "อินโดจีนผู้ลี้ภัยที่ปรับเปลี่ยนอย่างรวดเร็วในสหรัฐอเมริกา" เรื่องเปิดอธิบายคนเวียดนามในฮูสตันที่มาสู่สหรัฐอเมริกาในทศวรรษที่ผ่านมา มีอะไร วันนี้เขาอยู่เขาจะกลายเป็น การ "เท็กซัสผู้ประกอบการ " ชิ้นส่วนใบเสนอราคาเป็นอดีตกรรมการสหรัฐตรวจคนเข้าเมืองและนโยบายผู้ลี้ภัยอินโดจีนว่า ผู้ลี้ภัยได้ "แสดงความสามารถโดดเด่นเข้าสู่ชีวิตเศรษฐกิจอเมริกันหลัก" Christl ผู้อำนวยการภาษาอังกฤษเป็นโปรแกรมภาษาที่สองสำหรับเขตเฟรสโน ดูเหมือนเธอจะพร้อมด่าเด็ก "คุณเห็น คนคิดปัญหาได้หายไปจากการ หรือ ไม่ สิ่งใช้เคลื่อนไหวในทิศทางที่ "ที่นี่ ปัญหาก้าว ตั้งแต่ปีค.ศ. 1979 เป็นเขตของเซ็นทรัลวัลเลย์แคลิฟอร์เนียเป็นบ้านของทหารหน่วย 30000 จากสงครามเวียดนาม เฟรสโนเขตเดียวเป็นกำบังสำหรับ 15000 ของพวกเขา แต่พวกเขาไม่ได้เรื่องราวความสำเร็จของผู้ประกอบการโดยเร็วเพื่อเป็น มีชาวเขาจากลาว ชนเผ่าดั้งเดิม การฝึกอบรม โดยสำนักข่าวกรองกลางอเมริกันเพื่อรวบรวมข่าวกรองเกี่ยวกับความเคลื่อนไหวของกองทหารเวียดนามเหนือในลาว รบกวนรายการจัดหาคอมมิวนิสต์หัวหน้าในเวียดนามใต้และกู้ภัยแห่งป่า downed ใบปลิวสหรัฐยิงลงเพียงตะวันออกของภูเขาบ้านเวียดนามเหนือ พวกเขาเรียกตัวเองม้ง ผู้ที่รู้เรื่องของการดำรงอยู่ของพวกเขาในระหว่างสงครามเวียดนาม พวกเขาจะเรียกว่าของ CIA "ลับกองทัพ" ในลาวก่อนมาถึงสหรัฐอเมริกา การติดต่อกับโลกภายนอกได้ผ่าน CIA นั่นเองและคนอื่น ๆ ทหารอาวุธเหล่านั้น และโดยตรงของพวกเขา forays ในป่า ก่อน CIA จะได้สู้ในฝรั่งเศสเมื่อพวกเขาอาจทหารหลักในภูมิภาค สำหรับรุ่นก่อนสงคราม ม้ง (ออกเสียงมุง) ติดอย่างใกล้ชิดเพื่อความเท่ท็อปส์ อาศัยแรงงานของครอบครัวขนาดใหญ่ และแน่นถักสมัครพรรคพวกเพื่อความอยู่รอดในการเลี้ยงชีพและการส่งออกของตนเฉพาะพืช ฝิ่น ภาษาจีน คนม้งจากภาคใต้ของจีนใกล้สิ้นสุดเพราะการข่ม เรียกพวกเขาว่าเมียโอ-อนารยชน- และหลังจากลาวเรียกพวกเขาว่าแม้ว คำความหมายเดียวกันแตกต่างกันสิบปีที่ผ่านมา เป็นเวียดนามเหนือ ทหารเอาควบคุมไซ่ง่อน และคอมมิวนิสต์ Pathet ลาวทหารเตรียมที่จะปราบรัฐบาลลาว ม้งเริ่มสะดุดจากป่า และว่ายน้ำโขงในประเทศไทย พวกเขาได้รับชื่อเสียงเป็นนักรบที่ดุร้ายพยายามป้องกันการเสื่อภูเขา และเชื่อมโยงกับ CIA ปิดผนึกชะตากรรมของพวกเขาในสายตาของนวิคเตอร์คอมมิวนิสต์ พวกเขารู้พวกเขาจะไม่หนีการลงโทษ Pathet ลาวและของนอนด์ เวียดนามเหนือพ.ศ. 1975 สหรัฐอเมริกาได้นำผู้ลี้ภัยอินโดจีนบาง 700000 ในประเทศ ม้ง 65000 เช่นทั้งหมดผู้ลี้ภัย ถูกวางที่ใดพบผู้สนับสนุน ภายในพื้นที่ของ 72 ชั่วโมง คนเหล่านี้เขาได้มาจากกระท่อมไม้ไผ่มุงจากในค่ายผู้ลี้ภัยตามแนวริมแม่น้ำโขง และใส่ลงใน 2 และ 3-ห้องนอนอพาร์ทเมนท์ในฟิลาเดลเฟีย มิ และเมืองหลักอื่น ๆ พวกเขาไม่รู้วิธีจัดการกับงานง่ายสำหรับชาวอเมริกัน: เปิด และ ปิด ไฟ ใช้ตู้เย็น เตา หรือเตา อบ จ่ายบิล"มันไม่เหมือนความฝัน เช่นภาพยนตร์ Imagine ไปดวงจันทร์บางวิธีและเมื่อคุณปลุกคุณอยู่แถงไหนและคุณต้องอยู่ โดยที่คุณไม่ทราบที่ สังคมคุณไม่ทราบจริง ๆ, " กล่าวว่า ยางโข่ว ตอนนี้สังคมสงเคราะห์ในเฟรสโนรายได้นอร์แมน Johnshoy ผู้ที่มักจะพบตัวเองอธิบายม้งชาวบ้านแกะ กล่าวว่า "คำอธิบายที่ดีที่สุดคือการคิดว่า พวกเขาเป็นคนทำเครื่องบินเที่ยวบินจากศตวรรษ 16 กับ 21 และถ้าคุณสามารถตั้งครรภ์ของบางสิ่งเช่นเดียวกับที่เกิดขึ้นในเครื่องเวลา แล้วคุณมีความคิดที่ดีของ perplexity ที่คนเหล่านี้ต้องมีประสบการณ์"Disorientation วัฒนธรรมหน้าม้งมาในสหรัฐอเมริกาก็อพยพอินโดจีนอื่น ๆ แต่ม้งนำประวัติศาสตร์พิเศษที่ทำให้การชำระเงินระยะยาวของยากมาก ซึ่งแตกต่างจากเวียดนาม ชาวกัมพูชา และลาว ม้งจะเป็นคน "preliterate" ซึ่งหมายความว่า ส่วนใหญ่ไม่สามารถอ่าน และเขียนภาษาของตนเอง จริง จนถึง 30 ปีเมื่อคริสเตียนนั้นมาตรฐานภาษา และเขียนลง ม้งที่มีภาษาเขียนไม่ ซึ่งแตกต่างจากผู้อพยพชาวยุโรปและอินโดจีนมาก ม้งมีศัพท์ง่าย ๆ เทคโนโลยี ชาวยุโรปและเวียดนามรับภาษาอังกฤษเดือนศึกษา ม้งใช้ปีการศึกษา"เราดู (ยุโรป) ในชั้นเรียน ESL เช่นพวกเขาสามารถไปรษณีย์ผ่าน ESL ในเวลาไม่นาน เพราะคุณเพียงแค่ทดแทนคำที่หมายในภาษาของคุณ และคุณได้เรียนรู้ว่าคำนั้นหมายความว่า ในภาษานี้ (ม้ง) เป็นคำไม่มีในภาษาที่เป็น คำที่พวกเขากำลังพยายามที่จะเรียนรู้ Barbara Christl กล่าวว่าจำนวนน้อยมากของม้งได้ศึกษา และได้กลายเป็น ครู นักธุรกิจ วิศวกร และเกษตรกร มหาราชส่วนใหญ่ - วิ่งประมาณ 80-95 เปอร์เซ็นต์ - ไม่มีงาน และมีทักษะในการทำงานในสหรัฐอเมริกา เมื่อ Christl อ่านว่า ไทคูนเท็กซัสเวียดนาม "ไม่เฉพาะเวียดนาม 700000 ชาวกัมพูชา และลาว" ในสหรัฐอเมริกา เธอกลัวทหารลับของลาวจะกลายเป็น ผู้ลี้ภัยที่ซ่อนอยู่ในอเมริกาที่ผสมกลมกลืนวัฒนธรรม wrenching จะเป็น overshadowed โดยเรื่องราวความสำเร็จของอินโดจีนที่มากขึ้นสามารถรับมือ มันเป็นชะตากรรมที่ม้งควรไม่ทรมาน เธอบอก เนื่องจาก มีบทบาทสำคัญที่พวกเขาเล่นในสหรัฐอเมริกาในยุคเวียดนาม Lionel Rosenblatt ผู้ลี้ภัยผู้ประสานงานสำหรับสหรัฐอเมริกาในประเทศไทย หลังสงคราม และอีกครั้ง ในปี 1978-81 อธิบายว่า ม้งที่เป็นวัตถุสำหรับกลยุทธ์ทางการทหารสหรัฐในลาวเนื่องจาก "ตาม Accords เจนีวาของ 1960 มีกองทหารต่างประเทศไม่สามารถอยู่ในลาว""แน่นอนว่ากองทัพเวียดนามอยู่ในความอุดมสมบูรณ์ แต่ทหารอเมริกันไม่ได้ใส่ดินต่อสู้ทหารลาวและม้งกองทัพพักความสัมพันธ์ของเรากับม้ง ดังนั้น ที่เราไม่ได้ทำกับกลุ่มอื่น ๆ ในอินโดจีน ที่เกิดขึ้นจริงๆ"Because of that relationship many of the Hmong who arrived in the United States after two decades of war knew nothing else but fighting and nothing else but the support of the U.S. military. Moua Geu, who runs the Long Chien market in Fresno -namesake of the secret CIA operations center in Laos -remembers his relationship with the Americans this way: "They had a lot of powers and they were the ones who brought us guns, gold, clothes, food.""CIA is the one who helped us, supported us a lot and we consider them as a mother and father," he says in a sing-song English, marked by the tonal sounds of his native tongue.Because of that relationship, the Hmong expected more than they got when they arrived in America. In 1981, during a trip to Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, many refugees responded to the question, "What will you do in the United States?" with the answer, "Whatever the government tells me to do." It was a great shock to Moua Geu and his comrades when they arrived and the government they had known, that had supported them all their lives, could not be found. "Even if we lost, they promised they would take us to the United States, but when we got here, we have no idea who the CIA is, we don't know where they went."If the Hmong were unprepared for the United States, Americans were also unready for them. In almost every aspect of their lives the Hmong rely on an entirely different set of beliefs and values than their new neighbors. They are a polygamous people. Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to support. The more children they had the richer they could become because they could cultivate more land. Hmong men were told before coming to the United States that they would have to divorce all but one wife and on paper they did so. But Hmong leaders in Fresno admit that, once here, the traditional family unit is preserved often with the husband living again with all his wives. Also, while Christian missionaries did write down the Hmong language, they were less successful converting them to the Western God. Most of the Hmong are still animistic, worshipers of good and evil spirits and the spirits of their dead ancestors, all who must be revered with complex rituals and animal sacrifices.Some benign incidents have been the unavoidable result of these differences. Fresno Police Officer Marvin Reyes swallows hard when he recounts the first time he was invited to a Hmong celebration in a downtown apartment complex. Several women were butchering a live pig in the kitchen. Next to the carcass, beside a blood-soaked wall, the head of the animal stuck out of a bucket, waiting to be cooked as the centerpiece of the meal.Diana Carter, a clerk at a thrift bakery frequented by the Hmong, said she mistrusted them at first because they would not directly look at her. Later, she learned the Hmong cast their eyes down as a sign of respect.Another incident was described by Elaine Perez, a Fresno County family planning official. A Hmong couple taught to use condoms through the creative use of a broom handle returned to the birth control clinic after the woman became pregnant. They followed the instructions to the letter, they said. The broom handle had been put in the cornner of the bedroom dutifully covered with the birth control device.Some cultural misunderstandings have led to more solemn consequences. A Hmong man ran a stop sign in a van filled with Hmong workers headed for
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FRESNO, California -Making her way through hundreds of Indochinese refugees waiting for English class to begin, Barbara Christl shakes her head as she holds out the morning newspaper. "Here. This is the problem," she says, heaving the paper on her desk. The day's front page feature is a ten-years-after look at refugees from the Vietnam War. The headline says, "Indochinese Refugees Adapt Quickly in U.S." The story opens describing a Vietnamese man in Houston who came to the United States a decade ago with nothing. Today he is on his way to becoming a "Texas tycoon." The piece quotes a former official of the U.S. Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy as saying Indochinese refugees have "shown a remarkable ability to enter into mainstream American economic life." Christl, director of English as a Second Language programs for Fresno County, looks like she is ready to scold a child. "You see, people think the problem has gone away. Or if not, that things are moving in that direction."
Here, the problem has just begun. Since 1979 the counties of California's Central Valley have become home to 30,000 displaced foot soldiers from the Vietnam War. Fresno County alone is refuge for 15,000 of them. But they are not the soon-to-be tycoon success stories. They are mountain dwellers from the jungle peaks of Laos, primitive tribes, trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency to collect intelligence on North Vietnamese troop movements in Laos, disrupt communist supply lines headed for South Vietnam and rescue downed U.S. flyers shot down just east of their mountain home in North Vietnam. They call themselves the Hmong. To those who knew of their existence during the Vietnam War they are known as the CIA's "secret army" in Laos.
Before coming to the United States their contact with the outside world had been through CIA operatives and other military men who armed them and directed their forays into the jungle. Before the CIA they had fought for the French when they were the dominant military might in the region. For generations before the war the Hmong (pronounced Mung) stuck closely to their mountain tops, relying on the labor of large families and tightly knit clans to survive on subsistence farming and the export of their only cash crop, opium. The Chinese, who harassed the Hmong out of Southern China near the end of the 1800s, called them Miao -barbarians -and later the Lao called them Meo, a different word with the same meaning.
Ten years ago, as North Vietnamese troops took control of Saigon and communist Pathet Lao soldiers prepared to subdue the government of Laos, the Hmong began to stumble out of the jungle and swim the Mekong River to Thailand. They had gained a reputation as fierce fighters attempting to protect their mountain redoubt and their association with the CIA sealed their fate in the eyes of the communist victors. They knew they would not escape the wrath of the Pathet Lao and their benefactors, the North Vietnamese.
Since 1975, the United States has brought some 700,000 Indochinese refugees into the country. The 65,000 Hmong, like all the refugees, were placed wherever sponsors could be found. Within the space of 72 hours these mountain people were taken from bamboo-thatched huts in refugee camps along the Mekong River and put into 2- and 3-bedroom apartments in Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other major American cities. They were unaware of how to deal with the simplest of tasks for Americans: turning on and off lights; using the refrigerator, stove or oven; paying bills.
"It's just like a dream, like a movie Imagine you go to the Moon some way and when you wake up you are on the Moon somewhere and you have to live by that society you don't know where you are, you don't really know," says Kou Yang, now a social worker in Fresno.
Rev. Norman Johnshoy, who often finds himself explaining the Hmong to perplexed locals, says, "One of the best descriptions is to think of them as a people who made one airplane flight from the 16th century to the 21st. And if you can conceive of something like that happening in a time machine, then you have a pretty good notion of the perplexity that these people must have experienced."
The cultural disorientation the Hmong face on arrival in the United States is shared by the other Indochinese refugees, but the Hmong bring a special history that makes their long-term settlement much more difficult. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, the Hmong are a "preliterate" people, which means most are unable to read and write in their own language. Actually, until 30 years ago when Christian missionaries standardized the language and wrote it down, the Hmong had no written language. Unlike European immigrants and many Indochinese, the Hmong have a simple, agrarian vocabulary. Europeans and Vietnamese pick up the English language in months of study, Hmong take years to learn.
"We see (Europeans) in ESL classes as well and they can zip through ESL in no time because you simply substitute what a word means in your language and you learn what that word means in this language. For (the Hmong) there is no word in their language that means the word they're trying to learn," Barbara Christl says.
While a very small number of Hmong are educated and have become teachers, businessmen, engineers and farmers, the great majority -estimates run 80 to 95 percent -do not have jobs and do not have skills to work in the United States. When Christl reads that the Vietnamese Texas tycoon "isn't unique among the 700,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians" in the United States she fears the secret soldiers of Laos will become the hidden refugees in America whose wrenching cultural assimilation will be overshadowed by the success stories of those Indochinese more able to cope. It is a fate the Hmong should not suffer, she says, because of the crucial role they played for the United States in the Vietnam era. Lionel Rosenblatt, refugee coordinator for the United States in Thailand just after the war and again in 1978-81, explains that the Hmong became pivotal for the U.S. military strategy in Laos because "according to the Geneva Accords of 1960 there were no foreign troops to be stationed in Laos."
"Of course the Vietnamese Army was there in abundance, but the American military did not put ground combat troops into Laos and the Hmong really formed our army -a very unique relationship with the Hmong, therefore, that we didn't have with any other group on the ground in Indochina."
Because of that relationship many of the Hmong who arrived in the United States after two decades of war knew nothing else but fighting and nothing else but the support of the U.S. military. Moua Geu, who runs the Long Chien market in Fresno -namesake of the secret CIA operations center in Laos -remembers his relationship with the Americans this way: "They had a lot of powers and they were the ones who brought us guns, gold, clothes, food."
"CIA is the one who helped us, supported us a lot and we consider them as a mother and father," he says in a sing-song English, marked by the tonal sounds of his native tongue.
Because of that relationship, the Hmong expected more than they got when they arrived in America. In 1981, during a trip to Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, many refugees responded to the question, "What will you do in the United States?" with the answer, "Whatever the government tells me to do." It was a great shock to Moua Geu and his comrades when they arrived and the government they had known, that had supported them all their lives, could not be found. "Even if we lost, they promised they would take us to the United States, but when we got here, we have no idea who the CIA is, we don't know where they went."
If the Hmong were unprepared for the United States, Americans were also unready for them. In almost every aspect of their lives the Hmong rely on an entirely different set of beliefs and values than their new neighbors. They are a polygamous people. Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to support. The more children they had the richer they could become because they could cultivate more land. Hmong men were told before coming to the United States that they would have to divorce all but one wife and on paper they did so. But Hmong leaders in Fresno admit that, once here, the traditional family unit is preserved often with the husband living again with all his wives. Also, while Christian missionaries did write down the Hmong language, they were less successful converting them to the Western God. Most of the Hmong are still animistic, worshipers of good and evil spirits and the spirits of their dead ancestors, all who must be revered with complex rituals and animal sacrifices.
Some benign incidents have been the unavoidable result of these differences. Fresno Police Officer Marvin Reyes swallows hard when he recounts the first time he was invited to a Hmong celebration in a downtown apartment complex. Several women were butchering a live pig in the kitchen. Next to the carcass, beside a blood-soaked wall, the head of the animal stuck out of a bucket, waiting to be cooked as the centerpiece of the meal.
Diana Carter, a clerk at a thrift bakery frequented by the Hmong, said she mistrusted them at first because they would not directly look at her. Later, she learned the Hmong cast their eyes down as a sign of respect.
Another incident was described by Elaine Perez, a Fresno County family planning official. A Hmong couple taught to use condoms through the creative use of a broom handle returned to the birth control clinic after the woman became pregnant. They followed the instructions to the letter, they said. The broom handle had been put in the cornner of the bedroom dutifully covered with the birth control device.
Some cultural misunderstandings have led to more solemn consequences. A Hmong man ran a stop sign in a van filled with Hmong workers headed for
Here, the problem has just begun. Since 1979 the counties of California's Central Valley have become home to 30,000 displaced foot soldiers from the Vietnam War. Fresno County alone is refuge for 15,000 of them. But they are not the soon-to-be tycoon success stories. They are mountain dwellers from the jungle peaks of Laos, primitive tribes, trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency to collect intelligence on North Vietnamese troop movements in Laos, disrupt communist supply lines headed for South Vietnam and rescue downed U.S. flyers shot down just east of their mountain home in North Vietnam. They call themselves the Hmong. To those who knew of their existence during the Vietnam War they are known as the CIA's "secret army" in Laos.
Before coming to the United States their contact with the outside world had been through CIA operatives and other military men who armed them and directed their forays into the jungle. Before the CIA they had fought for the French when they were the dominant military might in the region. For generations before the war the Hmong (pronounced Mung) stuck closely to their mountain tops, relying on the labor of large families and tightly knit clans to survive on subsistence farming and the export of their only cash crop, opium. The Chinese, who harassed the Hmong out of Southern China near the end of the 1800s, called them Miao -barbarians -and later the Lao called them Meo, a different word with the same meaning.
Ten years ago, as North Vietnamese troops took control of Saigon and communist Pathet Lao soldiers prepared to subdue the government of Laos, the Hmong began to stumble out of the jungle and swim the Mekong River to Thailand. They had gained a reputation as fierce fighters attempting to protect their mountain redoubt and their association with the CIA sealed their fate in the eyes of the communist victors. They knew they would not escape the wrath of the Pathet Lao and their benefactors, the North Vietnamese.
Since 1975, the United States has brought some 700,000 Indochinese refugees into the country. The 65,000 Hmong, like all the refugees, were placed wherever sponsors could be found. Within the space of 72 hours these mountain people were taken from bamboo-thatched huts in refugee camps along the Mekong River and put into 2- and 3-bedroom apartments in Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other major American cities. They were unaware of how to deal with the simplest of tasks for Americans: turning on and off lights; using the refrigerator, stove or oven; paying bills.
"It's just like a dream, like a movie Imagine you go to the Moon some way and when you wake up you are on the Moon somewhere and you have to live by that society you don't know where you are, you don't really know," says Kou Yang, now a social worker in Fresno.
Rev. Norman Johnshoy, who often finds himself explaining the Hmong to perplexed locals, says, "One of the best descriptions is to think of them as a people who made one airplane flight from the 16th century to the 21st. And if you can conceive of something like that happening in a time machine, then you have a pretty good notion of the perplexity that these people must have experienced."
The cultural disorientation the Hmong face on arrival in the United States is shared by the other Indochinese refugees, but the Hmong bring a special history that makes their long-term settlement much more difficult. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, the Hmong are a "preliterate" people, which means most are unable to read and write in their own language. Actually, until 30 years ago when Christian missionaries standardized the language and wrote it down, the Hmong had no written language. Unlike European immigrants and many Indochinese, the Hmong have a simple, agrarian vocabulary. Europeans and Vietnamese pick up the English language in months of study, Hmong take years to learn.
"We see (Europeans) in ESL classes as well and they can zip through ESL in no time because you simply substitute what a word means in your language and you learn what that word means in this language. For (the Hmong) there is no word in their language that means the word they're trying to learn," Barbara Christl says.
While a very small number of Hmong are educated and have become teachers, businessmen, engineers and farmers, the great majority -estimates run 80 to 95 percent -do not have jobs and do not have skills to work in the United States. When Christl reads that the Vietnamese Texas tycoon "isn't unique among the 700,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians" in the United States she fears the secret soldiers of Laos will become the hidden refugees in America whose wrenching cultural assimilation will be overshadowed by the success stories of those Indochinese more able to cope. It is a fate the Hmong should not suffer, she says, because of the crucial role they played for the United States in the Vietnam era. Lionel Rosenblatt, refugee coordinator for the United States in Thailand just after the war and again in 1978-81, explains that the Hmong became pivotal for the U.S. military strategy in Laos because "according to the Geneva Accords of 1960 there were no foreign troops to be stationed in Laos."
"Of course the Vietnamese Army was there in abundance, but the American military did not put ground combat troops into Laos and the Hmong really formed our army -a very unique relationship with the Hmong, therefore, that we didn't have with any other group on the ground in Indochina."
Because of that relationship many of the Hmong who arrived in the United States after two decades of war knew nothing else but fighting and nothing else but the support of the U.S. military. Moua Geu, who runs the Long Chien market in Fresno -namesake of the secret CIA operations center in Laos -remembers his relationship with the Americans this way: "They had a lot of powers and they were the ones who brought us guns, gold, clothes, food."
"CIA is the one who helped us, supported us a lot and we consider them as a mother and father," he says in a sing-song English, marked by the tonal sounds of his native tongue.
Because of that relationship, the Hmong expected more than they got when they arrived in America. In 1981, during a trip to Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, many refugees responded to the question, "What will you do in the United States?" with the answer, "Whatever the government tells me to do." It was a great shock to Moua Geu and his comrades when they arrived and the government they had known, that had supported them all their lives, could not be found. "Even if we lost, they promised they would take us to the United States, but when we got here, we have no idea who the CIA is, we don't know where they went."
If the Hmong were unprepared for the United States, Americans were also unready for them. In almost every aspect of their lives the Hmong rely on an entirely different set of beliefs and values than their new neighbors. They are a polygamous people. Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to support. The more children they had the richer they could become because they could cultivate more land. Hmong men were told before coming to the United States that they would have to divorce all but one wife and on paper they did so. But Hmong leaders in Fresno admit that, once here, the traditional family unit is preserved often with the husband living again with all his wives. Also, while Christian missionaries did write down the Hmong language, they were less successful converting them to the Western God. Most of the Hmong are still animistic, worshipers of good and evil spirits and the spirits of their dead ancestors, all who must be revered with complex rituals and animal sacrifices.
Some benign incidents have been the unavoidable result of these differences. Fresno Police Officer Marvin Reyes swallows hard when he recounts the first time he was invited to a Hmong celebration in a downtown apartment complex. Several women were butchering a live pig in the kitchen. Next to the carcass, beside a blood-soaked wall, the head of the animal stuck out of a bucket, waiting to be cooked as the centerpiece of the meal.
Diana Carter, a clerk at a thrift bakery frequented by the Hmong, said she mistrusted them at first because they would not directly look at her. Later, she learned the Hmong cast their eyes down as a sign of respect.
Another incident was described by Elaine Perez, a Fresno County family planning official. A Hmong couple taught to use condoms through the creative use of a broom handle returned to the birth control clinic after the woman became pregnant. They followed the instructions to the letter, they said. The broom handle had been put in the cornner of the bedroom dutifully covered with the birth control device.
Some cultural misunderstandings have led to more solemn consequences. A Hmong man ran a stop sign in a van filled with Hmong workers headed for
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เฟรสโน แคลิฟอร์เนีย - การทำทางของเธอผ่านร้อยของผู้ลี้ภัยอินโดจีนรอเรียนภาษาอังกฤษเริ่มต้น บาร์บาร่า christl เขย่าหัวของเธอขณะที่เธอถือหนังสือพิมพ์ฉบับเช้า . ที่นี่ ปัญหานี้ , " เธอกล่าว , ส่งสัญญาณกระดาษบนโต๊ะของเธอ คุณลักษณะหน้าของวันเป็นสิบปีหลังจากที่มองผู้ลี้ภัยจากสงครามเวียดนาม พาดหัวว่า
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ภาษาอื่น ๆ
การสนับสนุนเครื่องมือแปลภาษา: กรีก, กันนาดา, กาลิเชียน, คลิงออน, คอร์สิกา, คาซัค, คาตาลัน, คินยารวันดา, คีร์กิซ, คุชราต, จอร์เจีย, จีน, จีนดั้งเดิม, ชวา, ชิเชวา, ซามัว, ซีบัวโน, ซุนดา, ซูลู, ญี่ปุ่น, ดัตช์, ตรวจหาภาษา, ตุรกี, ทมิฬ, ทาจิก, ทาทาร์, นอร์เวย์, บอสเนีย, บัลแกเรีย, บาสก์, ปัญจาป, ฝรั่งเศส, พาชตู, ฟริเชียน, ฟินแลนด์, ฟิลิปปินส์, ภาษาอินโดนีเซี, มองโกเลีย, มัลทีส, มาซีโดเนีย, มาราฐี, มาลากาซี, มาลายาลัม, มาเลย์, ม้ง, ยิดดิช, ยูเครน, รัสเซีย, ละติน, ลักเซมเบิร์ก, ลัตเวีย, ลาว, ลิทัวเนีย, สวาฮิลี, สวีเดน, สิงหล, สินธี, สเปน, สโลวัก, สโลวีเนีย, อังกฤษ, อัมฮาริก, อาร์เซอร์ไบจัน, อาร์เมเนีย, อาหรับ, อิกโบ, อิตาลี, อุยกูร์, อุสเบกิสถาน, อูรดู, ฮังการี, ฮัวซา, ฮาวาย, ฮินดี, ฮีบรู, เกลิกสกอต, เกาหลี, เขมร, เคิร์ด, เช็ก, เซอร์เบียน, เซโซโท, เดนมาร์ก, เตลูกู, เติร์กเมน, เนปาล, เบงกอล, เบลารุส, เปอร์เซีย, เมารี, เมียนมา (พม่า), เยอรมัน, เวลส์, เวียดนาม, เอสเปอแรนโต, เอสโทเนีย, เฮติครีโอล, แอฟริกา, แอลเบเนีย, โคซา, โครเอเชีย, โชนา, โซมาลี, โปรตุเกส, โปแลนด์, โยรูบา, โรมาเนีย, โอเดีย (โอริยา), ไทย, ไอซ์แลนด์, ไอร์แลนด์, การแปลภาษา.
- That sounds fun
- Samples were collected from open-water z
- ผู้หญิง
- subjected
- โพลีเอสเตอร์
- ให้เนื่องในวันปีใหม่
- กลับบ้านดีดีนะ
- พุทธบูชา
- Business governed by various laws
- مشغل
- So what I’m doing now is I’ll just check
- ฟิล์ม
- พุทธบูชา
- ความจำเป็นในการดำเนินโครงการดังที่กล่าวม
- مكتب بريد
- เด็กที่เกิด
- Die mittleren Wiener Jahre, vom Beethove
- Personal Father
- ฉันหวังว่าฉันจะมีช่วงเวลาที่ดีแบบนั้นอีก
- คือความจริง
- อัดโช๊ค แข็ง
- ดอกเบี้ย
- I'm not contact you
- Samples were collected from open-water z
