In a sense, Laos remains closer to a conglomeration of tribes than it does to a conventional state composed of a unified people. It is for this reason that the Laotian government is intent on making the upland tribes aware of themselves as part of a nation, to transfer their allegiances from the villages to the nation.
Indeed, due to their differences from the lowland Lao, the hill tribes have always been viewed with a degree of suspicion. They seem a law unto themselves -- difficult to both tame and tax. At the same time, they have shown -- whether under the French, the Japanese or the Pathet Lao -- a remarkable degree of flexibility. As Stephen Mansfield writes, at the end of this informed account, "it is a tribute to the resilience of the hill tribes of Laos that they are still with us today."
At the same time, because they have been marginalized as well as often ignored, little has been written about them. In the literature, these peoples have been classified into four ethnolinguistic gatherings, but this simplifies the reality, ignoring the true natures of the many groupings. Coming up with a fair, faithful and balanced account of these tribes was the task facing Mansfield -- and it is one he has fully accomplished.
His is superior anthropology in three ways: in it, the subject remains more important than the system; it avoids the journalistic by being thoroughly detailed and scrupulously fair; and it is completely persuasive because it is so well-written. Those familiar with Mansfield's work know him as a stylist and one of the finest travel writers in this area. In this, his latest work (he also has another book on Laos to his credit), we are given an objective and candid view that renders a highly complicated subject understandable.
One problem facing the student of this region is that its written history begins very late; as Mansfield phrases it, this is "a culture without monuments." Further, successive conquerors have never examined even those folkways through which the culture is maintained. As one French observer confided to her diary in 1909, the hill-tribe people "would have potential as coolies if one could succeed in taming their savagery."
Consequently, the observer must do as Mansfield did: go to the tribes themselves, live among them, be their guest, observe, inquire. He will then discover that each hill tribe organizes its village according to its own traditions. Here the rule is that the individual's duty is toward the larger social unit. This unit is obviously not the government, but rather the clan itself. The placing of the interests of the group above those of the individual became very clear to Mansfield when he was told the Hmong proverb that goes: "All fish follow the river, no river follows the fish."
Community is personified on many levels in hill-tribe society. One example is the community of spirits that influence or control Lao life. As the French scholar Lefevre-Pontalis observed over 100 years ago, "The inanimate world, which they fills with spirits and ghosts, engenders, in their imagination, an abundance of figures and thoughts of which we can have scarcely an inkling."
These continue to be almost as influential as they were a century ago. For example, soil depletion might be a common reason for the pragmatic Lao minorities to relocate, but just as likely would be a move predicated upon a shaman's prediction that misfortune will visit the village if it stays where it is. Animal sacrifice is still common, paddies are not built within sight of graveyards, spirits leave the body or return to it. Indeed, this entire spiritual construct (different for each tribe) might well be called a part of this culture without monuments.
So, too, with the various crafts for which the Lao hill tribes are best known -- the woven cloth, the jewelry, the music. So, too, the various folk patterns through which each of these hill societies is organized. The beautiful courtship games, the mock elopements, the sexual freedom before marriage, the penalties for adultery after it: All of this is examined in detail by Mansfield and candidly described.
But one wonders for just how how long such fragile cultures can last. Not only were have there been the various occupiers, but there was also that covert American operation in the region, the CIA-backed "secret army." Members were drawn largely from the Hmong tribe; they supported the royalist side, which lost. One result was a massive diaspora, as tens of thousands abandoned their lands and farms to flee across the Mekong River and find their way elsewhere. Some 80,000 Hmong alone resettled in the United States. By the time the Paris peace accord was signed, ending the Vietnam War, some three-quarters of a million Laotians of different ethnic complexions had been forced to flee.
Since 1975, when the Pathet Lao came to power, the name of the country has changed from Kingdom of Laos to the Lao People's Democratic Republic. It remains, however, less a politically unified nation that what Mansfield shows us to be "a fascinating human map, one that, for all the formidable changes of the last few decades, remains as ethnically diverse and as fractured as ever." With such resiliency, the Lao hill tribes may indeed continue, at least for a time. In any event, Mansfield's account shows them precisely as they are.
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