Planting Seeds in a New Land

Agricultural Development and the Formation of a Hmong Diaspora in the Guianas Since 1977

Bibliographic Data

ID4223533
AuthorsA M Greene (0000-0003-4164-1579, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) https://dx.doi.org/27051 Cayenne French Guiana, France, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume98
Issue1-2
Pages40-58
Publication date2024-04-12
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1382-2373 • E-ISSN: 2213-4360
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/22134360-bja10030
OpenAlexW4404248410
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

Around 1,000 Hmong refugees arrived in French Guiana in the late 1970s to found two agricultural communities. They were members of an emerging global diaspora of survivors fleeing the violence of the Laotian Civil War. From the perspective of the French government, the relocation became linked with the contemporaneous "Plan Vert" to develop the agricultural potential of the overseas territories. At that time, a significant percentage of the produce consumed in French Guiana was imported from Suriname. Within a few decades, government support helped the Hmong communities of Cacao and Javouhey to develop into critically important agricultural producers. Today they supply more than half of French Guiana's produce, which has helped to eliminate dependence on imports from Suriname. In the early 2010s, the Surinamese government collaborated with Hmong leaders from French Guiana to bring a new wave of Hmong immigrants from Laos to Suriname. Their project, mirroring that of the French government nearly 40 years before, was to reinvigorate the agricultural sector by reclaiming land abandoned during the Surinamese Interior War of 1986-92. These waves of Hmong agricultural immigration are part of a long and ongoing history of displacements and mobilizations of groups of people by colonial and postcolonial governments in the Guianas. At the same time, the ongoing success of Hmong communities in the Guianas cannot be wholly attributed to government support: it is as much due to the dynamism and initiative of the Hmong themselves

Agroforestry · Agronomy · Biology · Sowing · Environmental Science · Plant Taxonomy and Phylogenetics

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