Intercountry Cultural Contact
and Exchange: The Philippine-Lao Nexus
Penélope V. Flores
San Francisco State University
California, USA
Abstract:
In 2004, The Mekong Circle International initiated a book project where
Filipinos who served in Laos told their stories for publication. There was a
huge response for the call for personal stories. The first work of Filipinos in
Laos existed in the field of humanitarian and socioeconomic fields represented
by Operation Brotherhood, a private Jaycee (Junior Chamber of Commerce)
organization. By the 1960s the population of the Filipino community in Laos
increased and many Filipinos served under USAID and many affiliated
corporations.
This paper is a content analysis of the personal stories told by Filipinos who
served in Laos from 1956 to 1973. Using the ethnographic strategies of Emic and
Etic strategies the analysis of this paper derives the contextual and negotiated
meanings and interpretations among the Filipinos’ work experience in Laos. This
conceptualization brings out the interconnections of cultural experiences
between separate, discrete, yet similar groups of people.
The analysis of fifty narratives told by personnel from Operation Brotherhood
(OB), Eastern Construction Company Operations in Laos (ECCOIL), United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), and Air Continental reveal
regional differences among Filipinos and cultural differences between Filipinos
and Laotians, yet an underlying richness of common life experience strengthened
the complicated nexus.
Very few people realize that the Filipinos’ intercultural contact and exchange
with the Laotian people brought about a particularity among the Lao villagers
who they served. The Laotians defined the Filipinos as “thanmos” or doctors who
treated patients on their Mobile Clinic boat that plied the Mekong River. In
other words, all Filipinos were seen as medical doctors. Storytellers indicated
how the Lao experience changed them.
This transformative power of the Philippine-Lao nexus is fully developed in this
paper using the personal untold stories. The stories are anthologized under the
title Goodbye Vientiane: The Untold Stories of Filipinos in Laos, published by
the Philippine AmericanWriters and Artists and will be available at the
conference.