Memory, Tourism, And Development: Changing Sociocultural Configurations and Upland-Lowland Relations in Houaphan Province, Lao Pdr (Special Focus) (Lao People's Democratic Republic) (Essay‪)‬

The cave where the late secretary general Kaysone Phomvihane (1920-92) established a secret party base during the "American War" (1964-73) is nowadays the key exhibit of the increasingly popular Viengxay Caves Tour. This tour explores the history of the Second Indochinese War in the remote and mountainous province of Houaphan (NE Laos), one of the first "liberated zones" of the Lao revolutionary struggle. Large groups of Lao visitors and the occasional Western traveller dive into the ambiguous past of modern Laos, at the time when it was drawn into the maelstrom of Cold War antagonisms and witnessed a fierce civil war stoked by both North Vietnamese and U.S. forces. The guides, most of them from the Hmong ethnic minority, take the visitors through a complex of caves that were enlarged and equipped to shelter Kaysone's residence, his office, and a large meeting room for the politburo. It is not uncommon for groups of Western mountain bikers in colourful sports clothes to mix with a Lao delegation from some ministry in Vientiane while strolling through the narrow walkways and stairs in the depths of the karst mountains. Sometimes they meet again in the few guesthouses and noodle soup stalls of the small town of Viengxay. What makes these encounters so remarkable is the fact that not long ago Viengxay was a so-called khet phiset (special zone), strictly off limits for any visitors and even a site where re-education camps mushroomed after the revolution of 1975. Viengxay thus stands emblematically for changes taking place in the socio-political climate of Laos. In addition to the growing tourism market, globalizing influences are evident as well in the economic domain. Upland development projects supported by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and the integration of the Lao periphery into a transnational market economy entail considerable changes for the livelihoods of the local population. Despite these tendencies towards economic liberalization, the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) maintains its strict control over the political domain and utilizes sites of memory such as Viengxay to foster its legitimacy. This article seeks to explore some of the recent developments of Lao late-socialist modernity from a peripheral perspective--how the state manifests itself in different fields of everyday life and how state activities are perceived on the margins. Three aspects of globalization and state intervention will be explored in Houaphan Province: state-controlled memory and historiography in the context of ideological nation building, transnational tendencies as represented by the tourism sector, and upland development politics directed by the state and international agencies. My findings are based on conversations and observations from field trips in 2008 and 2010.