Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat:

The Hmong people, also known as Miao or Meo, are active participants in and tragicvictims of modern nation formation and the Cold War. Quincy (Hmong: History of a People), an established scholar of Laos and the Hmong, energetically relates their experience and the history of Laos over the last century with deep feeling, telling detail, and occasional dark humor, using written sources, personal observation, and interviews. The Hmong started as a tribal society in the south of China, where contending Hmong family leaders fought both against each other and the outsiders who tried to dominate, co-opt, or exterminate them. Eventually, they migrated to Laos, where they established themselves by force. French colonialists enlisted Hmong leaders as allies. Then American Cold Warriors took over the murderous battle against the Vietnamese and their revolution, until finally the remaining Hmong fled to Thailand and the United States. This sad but colorful story will appeal both to general readers interested in Cold War history and to scholars.
        -- Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

The 13-year covert, American-run war against North Vietnam and the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos ended in 1973. Quincy’s dense but rewarding study — which takes its title from a messianic Hmong farmer who led an armed rebellion against the French in the early 1920s — gives a detailed history of political upheavals and wars in the region, beginning in the 14th century, but the focus is on the upland Hmong tribespeople who were U.S. allies for the Laotian campaign.  Several other well-researched books have covered much of the same territory in depth.  Quincy, chair of the department of government at Eastern Washington University, adds more voices to that research, using hundreds of interviews he conducted with the Hmong (many of whom now live in the U.S.) in the 1980s and 1990s to bring the corruption and brutality among the group’s leadership further to light. (One researcher involved with the project has received death threats.)  By 1977, more than 100,000 Laotian refugees, not all of whom were Hmong, had crowded into camps on the Thai border.  Some remained for 15 years, Quincy argues, because agents of the exiled Hmong leadership “were able to persuade, cajole, and intimidate most refugees to forego resettlement... to provide guerrillas for the Neo Hom resistance, the magnet for financial contributions.”  This well-written narrative clearly shows that the secret war’s biggest losers were the Hmong, who did most of the fighting — and dying — against the North Vietnamese. (July)

In Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat: The Hmong & America’s Secret War In Laos, Keith Quincy reveals the American military’s involvement in Southeast Asia in what came to be called the Laotian “secret war” and its tragic consequences for the America’s allies, the Hmong people and their culture.  By the early 1980s, the entire Hmong society had fled out of Laos and into Thailand and the United States, making them a people in exile from their ancestral homeland.  Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat is a seminal work explaining how and why this terrible outcome came about, and is a chilling reminder that even after the fighting stops, the devastations of war continue on.  Also available in a hardcover edition, Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat is highly recommended reading for students of Hmong history, the Vietnamese conflict, and American foreign policy.

On June forth of 2007, former Maj. General Vang Pao and eight other men were arrested and charged by McGregor Scott, an attorney for the Department Justice, with conspiring to overthrow the government of Laos.  Vang Pao and the others were alleged to have collected funds, purchased weapons, and made plans to assassinate Lao officials and blow up buildings in Vientiane, Laos’ capital city.

Newspapers and public radio contacted me.  They said they wanted my comments on the arrest. As so often happens, the story had taken on a life of its own.  The reporters didn’t want to know what I thought, but were interested only in the reaction of the Hmong community to Vang Pao’s arrest. I said the Hmong should speak for themselves.  But I had my own view, if they wanted to listen. 

I told them what I thought important was to inquire about Washington’s motives for arresting Vang Pao.  Did the reporters know, I asked, that through the late 1970s, 1980s, and the early 1990s Washington had supported Vang Pao’s efforts to overthrow Laos’ communist government?  And that the Reagan crowd had honed their skills on laundering money for illegal operations by first laundering money to Vang Pao’s guerrillas.  It was no coincidence that the names that came up in the Iran-Contra investigations were former Vietnam War era cold warriors that had worked with Vang Pao.  I had documented this in Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat.  I invited the reporters to give the evidence a look, and perhaps pick up the torch and ask why, given this history, Washington had suddenly turned on Vang Pao.

What were the motives?  Well, consider this.  The Bush administration has shown time and again its main purpose in life is to make the world safe for corporate America.  To do away with regulations at home.  And make it possible for our corporations to set up shop anywhere in the world. 

My guess is that Vang Pao is being sacrificed to corporate interests eager to invest in Laos.  The country’s tyrannical leaders were willing to give the corporations a free hand, but only for a price.  The price is that Washington must remove pesky Vang Pao from the scene so that Laos’ despots can sleep soundly knowing the old general is no longer around to be their boogeyman.

So far, none of the reporters has followed up. 

Harvesting Pa Chay’s Wheat may be in your local bookstore.  If not, your bookstore can order it.  You can also get the book from Amazon.com, or from the publisher, EWU Press, either by calling toll free:

If you want to know about the history of the Hmong, read Hmong: History of a People. 
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And just out, there is the fascinating true story of DER.
Click DER to purchase.

Der was born just before the start of the Secret War.  His birth was prophesied two years earlier by the great shaman Yashao.  Yashao said the baby would not be hard to find.  He would be the only Hmong with blond hair and blue eyes.  Yashao said Der’s birth was a sign.  First, of a great war that would nearly destroy the Hmong.  Second, a promise that a remnant would survive. 

How were the Hmong actually saved?  Learn what, until now, only a few Hmong elders knew, that Hmong spirits reached into the White House to seize Nixon and make him save the Hmong.  In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger admitted something strange had happened.  Read DER to find out what it was.

Through the saga of Der the reader sees Hmong as never before.  There is Der’s remarkable family.  His father was the greatest horseman in Laos.  His mother was independent, strong, and linked to Der through spirit in addition to blood.  Through Der, the reader enters the Hmong spirit world.  Sees ghosts, has visions.  And shares Der’s rebellion, made possible because Der can never get sick. 

Go with Der to reform school, first in Laos, then in China.  Watch as monks turn Der into a dangerous fighter.  See Der hone his fighting skills in secret matches in Vientiane, the perfect these skills in China, and become an urban legend as a street fighter in America.

Go with Der to a faraway university where an Arabian princess changes his life. 

Be with Der as he becomes a leader of Hmong.  Watch Der work with the police, and appear in court to keep Hmong out of jail.  Go with him to prisons to visit Hmong inmates, and learn the details a horrible murder and discover the ghastly punishment for this crime.  Be with Der as he finds husbands for pregnant Hmong girls.  See him negotiate Hmong disputes to prevent revenge killings.  Witness the remarkable passing of Der’s father Xaycha, and how it changed Der’s life. 

And be there to learn the answer to the great shaman’s riddle, told to Der when he was a boy.  Why is never getting sick not only a blessing but also a curse?  Only by reading the book will you know the answer.