Escape is the oldest story of freedom, and it is among the simplest. [1]
Half a century ago, an anarchist scholar decided to write a heroic story of peasants.When bodies started piling up in Vietnam, he was intrigued that people actually cared about peasants for once. But even then, his task was not easy, given that peasants serve as the stage upon which more dramatic disputes between nationalists and colonizers are performed. But in the archives he uncovered books and records to wield against those who had discounted his humble peasants.
The heroic peasants were a good start for the scholar. But after national liberation struggles began claiming that the heart of the nation beat within the peasant, the scholar found an even more elusive class of people: hill peoples, those who buck authorities with a run to the hills. Through diligent scholarship, he was able to bring together an impressive array of theories and terms to describe why certain peoples are poor materials for state-making.
What the scholar loved most about the hill people was their slash-and-burn culture. Dismissed by others as hillbilly backwardness, he knew that their whole way of life was an elaborate trick that they used to be left alone. But everything is different now, he reluctantly admitted; it had all changed after World War II. Most States developed technologies, both mechanical and human, that eliminated their ‘dark twins’ hiding in the mountains. Space was spanned and the hill sanctuaries were found, he said. The few peoples still in the hills were the last ones to escape; but even they are on the verge on disappearing, he lamented.
Not far away, a similar discovery was made. (more…)
