China (was Mike Hawash)

[Bill Stewart]

At 02:27 AM 05/02/2003 +0000, Justin wrote:
>At 2003-05-02 00:25 +0000, Bill Stewart wrote:
> > Interesting.  I've recently been reading a book by a guy who spent
> > much of the mid-90s illegally tramping around the ethnic areas of
> > western China (particularly the Tibet/Burma borders with Sichuan and
> > Yunnan) trying not to get thrown out of the country too often.
>
>Is that sort of like documented immigrants (not undocumented _citizens_
>like Mexicans who live within earshot of the border, speak no english,
>pay no taxes, and think they're part of Aztlan

No, it's more like the US in ~1870 or 1890 - the big neighboring territory
had pretty much been conquered, though a lot of them still spoke Spanish,
and the other big neighboring territory had been reconquered,
but a lot of larger minority ethnic groups like the Navajo hadn't been
totally wiped out, though the smaller tribes were gradually getting
killed off or having their land stolen and getting forced onto smaller
reservations and having US military forts put in the middle to govern them
(which was bad) or whatever the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent out to
"help" them and "civilize" them (which was ultimately more devastating),
and there was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the local economy
(there's no real equivalent to killing off the buffalo,
but periodically "taxing" all their livestock is sort of similar.)