Jesus, Mickey Mouse and Steve Jobs in the Vietnamese Mountains

[Bảo Lộc, 1/22/25]

In 1975, Bảo Lộc had 84,000 people. Now, it’s around 200K. There are 26 ethnic groups, with the K’Ho second to Vietnamese. It was primarily their tribal land, but there were others before them, of course. No one is intrisic to anywhere. First Nation is an idiotic term. All maps are provisional. Montana might as well be called Manitoba, Siberia, Yunan or Lâm Đồng. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gulf of Mexico will become Tik Tok Sea in the near future. Those who disdain killing for land won’t have any. Cowards welcome invaders.

Having fled to the mountains, the K’Ho had nowhere to run as overbreeding Vietnamese, swarming from the lowland, overwhelmed them. A hundred miles north, the Rade suffered the same fate. They were still fighting into the late 1980’s. Coming to Bảo Lộc, I had expected to see K’Ho everywhere, but most folks in town are Viets from hundreds of miles north. I have heard almost no Central or Southern accents. Yesterday, I asked a motorbike taxi guy to take me to any K’Ho village. The closest was Lộc Tân (pop 8,000), 16 miles from downtown. On the way, we glimpsed a K’Ho street, then a small neighborhood of Viets who had returned from Cambodia in the mid 1970’s. Khmers had chased them away. Many Viets were decapitated then thrown into rivers. This wasn’t done by the Khmer Rouge, mind you. Just five years later, Viets deported thousands of Chinese. Each inch of land has witnessed countless population displacements, often enough bloody.