Word: montagnard
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...Patricia Smith, 46, has lived and worked in the Highlands capital of Kontum for 14 years. A graduate of the University of Washington Medical School, she has spent that time working with the Montagnard tribesmen, operating an 87-bed hospital that is funded by contributions from the U.S. Soft-spoken and portly, she drives about Kontum in a red Honda sedan. Dr. Smith has survived many minor disasters and at least two major ones. In 1968, her hospital was badly shot up during the Communist Tet offensive; four years later, the ARVN 23rd Division set up a fire base...
...into the countryside to supervise the still shaky truce in South Viet Nam, an inspection team from the Four Party Joint Military Commission (the U.S., South Viet Nam, North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong) alighted from American helicopters in a soccer field at Ban Me Thuot, the Montagnard capital in the Central Highlands. Suddenly they were surrounded by a milling crowd of several hundred people, who threw stones and roughed up eight of the Communist representatives. A Saigon spokesman later apologized for the incident but claimed that the people had been "infuriated by Communist violations of the cease-fire...
Stuck in Camps. In the past ten years, the Montagnards have been forced-either by the encroaching Communists or by the professedly protective South Vietnamese-to leave 85% of their villages and towns. Some have started new communities, though sometimes far from their old ones; last April 883 Montagnard families were airlifted from Quang Tri province and each given 25 acres of new land to till in Darlac province, 300 miles to the south. Many far less fortunate hill-tribe refugees are still stuck in so-called resettlement camps, waiting for a chance to re-establish themselves...
...Montagnards, most of whom did not want to leave their elaborately carved "long houses" and their sacred burial grounds, suspect some of the moves were engineered simply to dispossess them of their own land. In fact, South Vietnamese settlers have already taken over some of the vacated farmland areas. South Viet Nam's Minister for the Development of Ethnic Minorities, Nay Luett, says that he will move fast after a cease-fire to stake out land for the hill tribes. But local Vietnamese officials are not likely to cooperate. SaysLuett, himself a Montagnard: "We will continue to have very...
Shortchanging the hill people is common even outside resettlement camps. Montagnard farmers are regularly cheated when selling their produce. Admits a village official in Tuyen Duc province: "If there are ten kilos of mushrooms, the Vietnamese will usually tell the Montagnard there are only six." Buying food is no better. In Dalat, a can of corn that costs a Vietnamese 40 piasters will cost a Montagnard...