Word: nguyens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ambivalence, indeed, seemed to be a keynote of the celebrations. Just before the parade got under way, Nguyen Van Linh, Communist Party secretary for Ho Chi Minh City, rose to celebrate Viet Nam's place "among the vanguard fighters for mankind's lofty ideals" and to extol its success in "overturning the global counterrevolutionary strategy of U.S. imperialism." But even Linh could not overlook the signs of decay around him. In Ho Chi Minh City (pop. 3.5 million) the walls of many houses are cracked, and the electricity supply is a sometime thing. Thousands sleep on the unswept sidewalks...
...preserves much of the resourcefulness of the Saigon of old, like a fading madam who still has jewelry to sell. Pedicab drivers offer Western passengers "beautiful young girls," while street entrepreneurs compete to buy dollars at several times the official (100 to 1) rate. In the black market along Nguyen Hue Street, a few trendsetters wearing body shirts, designer jeans and modish sunglasses wander among stalls crammed with the latest in color TVs and stereo systems...
During the anniversary celebrations, some journalists were entertained at the home of Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh, who was briefly Deputy Chief of Staff of the South Vietnamese army, though rumored to have ties with the Viet Cong Communist insurgents. Under the new regime he enjoys a token position, but no power. Now he ruminated about shortages--food and gasoline and electricity--in a grand old house that was half empty, thick with dust, and stifling under a broken...
...tend not to talk much about the travails that hardened their commitment. Some of their relatives share that strength. At Cu Chi, where entire families once lived in a Viet Cong-built labyrinth of tunnels that snaked along for more than 100 miles beneath U.S. bases, Nguyen Thi Tu, 60, sells fruit to visitors. "I feel better than before," says the bony woman. "We have complete freedom. We can work anywhere. We are not afraid of anything...
...source of their income. Vo Van Canh, 49, a former Viet Cong, points to his 17-year-old son, who has the arrested development of a two-year-old, the result, says Vo, of dioxin poisoning. At the Tu Du Women's Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc says her studies, though not conclusive, suggest that women exposed to the defoliants have 15 times as many fetal deaths as those who were not exposed...