When I fist started writing this post, I wanted to talk about coffee farming in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. There certainly is no lack of interesting things to say about it and no doubt I could pull a couple of graphs from our class readings to help illustrate my point, but then I realized that what I found most interesting about our trip to the mountains was the minority groups living there. They are themselves intertwined with the coffee industry because their land is constantly shrinking due to the growing demand for Vietnamese coffee. I want to know about these minority groups (which if you combine all the minority groups in Vietnam, collectively they comprise of roughly 10% of the total population) and what kind of public attention they are getting.
From what I learned, minority groups are generally frowned upon by the Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese (I have been told) do not handle difference well and are prone to generalize and stereotype other cultures (I have witnessed this to some degree with their opinions about Americans). I asked one of my professors if these minorities considered themselves Vietnamese, and I was given a “No” without hesitation. Most of them do not speak Vietnamese or have the same spiritual beliefs or the same traditions. Does this justify why the government actively tried to eradicate their ways of life?
Of course it doesn’t.
Does it explain why the government is unconcerned about reducing their land in order to boost production?
Of course it does.
In Doutriaux’s article, she discusses the major development in the highlands of Vietnam and how this is creating an economical divide between ethnic groups. Despite the fact that the coffee boom in Vietnam has most likely affected most groups in a positive way, many have been displaced by the expansion of crop land (which increased 20-fold in 20 years) and thus a reduction of their own traditional lands.
The The Kihn on the other hand make up 90% of the Vietnamese population and are respected for being hard-working in the rice paddies compared to the “land-wasteful, unpredictable and lazy minorities”. In order for any sort of political action protecting minority groups to take place, a great deal of the general social attitude needs to change.