Hmong Ethnic Minority Scattered, Hardship, French Guiana, Caribbean

Hmong’s New Lives in Caribbean. “Asia’s Hmong ethnic minority has been scattered by hardship and warfare for centuries, but one of its most unusual destinations was French Guiana in the Caribbean.”

Hmong’s New Lives in Caribbean

By Bethan Jinkinson | BBC’s East Asia Today, in French Guiana | News.Bbc.Co.Uk

Hardship and warfare have scattered Asia’s Hmong ethnic minority for centuries, but one of its most unusual destinations was French Guiana in the Caribbean. “The Hmong people have never had a country before,” says Txong Fong Moua, one of the founding members of the Hmong village of Cacao, inland from the capital Cayenne. “All we ever needed was a forest, somewhere to produce vegetables. We built everything from scratch, all our houses, our farms, everything, until it became our new home.”

The French Guiana link goes back to the 1970s, after Hmong refugees were left behind when their US allies pulled out of South East Asia. Many fled to Thailand, and some were later resettled overseas by France and the US. The first group of 45 Hmong arrived in Cayenne in 1977. They were transferred to a new plot of land in the Amazonian jungle, which they called Cacao. Since then, nearly 2,000 Hmong have settled in French Guiana. Txong Fong Moua arrived with 13 members of his family. Thanks to Hmong traditions of marrying young and having large families, he now has 84 living descendants. He lives with his wife, his daughter and son-in-law, and their two children, in a traditional Laos-style wooden house. Like most of Cacao’s houses, it is sparsely furnished but also contains many hi-tech gadgets, like satellite dishes and a widescreen television – evidence that the Hmong in French Guiana have done extremely well for themselves.

Although they make up only 1% of the population of, they now control 70% of the country’s agriculture. “Before, in Laos, we grew food only for our own families to eat,” said Joseph Toh, one of Txong Fong Moua’s son-in-laws. The Hmong Have Been Running All Their Lives. Madame Ly Dao Ly. Village baker. “But when we came here, we needed money to live, and to make enough to sell. So, we moved from simple farming to more advanced farming technology,” he said, demonstrating an irrigation system he had set up on his land. Using these techniques, as well as pesticides and herbicides, the Hmong have managed to carve out pristine farms from the rainforest.