Assignment Vietnam

After reading Professor Schroeder’s article on the Vietnam War Oral History Project [summer ’04 issue], I couldn’t help but be disappointed in its limited content. Not a single interviewed vet or student was of Vietnamese heritage. It is surely valuable to learn from the narratives of American vets, but doesn’t the Vietnamese perspective also deserve attention? I know that there are many Vietnamese-heritage families in the UC Davis community, and numerous refugees and veterans live in Northern California. If those sources of oral history were not consulted during this course, I feel that the students’ comprehension of the war period is lacking.

We can’t begin to comprehend a topic as complex as Vietnam without first consulting the people on whose land we waged that costly war.

Tim C. Cao
Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group

Eric Schroeder responds: It is perhaps unfortunate that I didn’t have Vietnamese veterans come to my class, but I did include the Vietnamese perspective a number of ways: Andrew Lam, a nationally known Vietnamese American journalist and short-story writer, spoke to the class for an entire period; I assigned Bao Ninh’s Sorrow of War, one of the classic Vietnamese texts on the war, and also a number of short stories by both Vietnamese and Vietnamese American writers; and I showed a documentary film about an art exhibition of works by Vietnamese and American artists depicting their respective visions of the war. If Mr. Cao would like to volunteer to speak to one of my classes in the future, I’d be honored to invite him.

I teach the fall freshman core course at Merrill College at UC Santa Cruz and we do a unit on Vietnam. . . . It is surprising how many students from even the best high schools and AP U.S. history courses are taught nothing or little about the Vietnam War. Part of the problem, I have been told, is that high school history courses are so overloaded with curricula to prepare students for testing that classes always fall behind, and students get shorted on the most recent U.S. history, which is also the most interesting to young people.

Tom Turrentine, M.A. ’91, Ph.D. ’94
Aptos
Research Anthropologist, UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

Big Fish

I was in Vietnam and Cambodia, but I had no idea that the Mekong River had fish as large as the ones the article discussed [summer ’04 issue]. However, you may be mistaken concerning the world’s largest fish. The pirarucu (pee-rah-ROO-koo), found in the Amazon River, can weigh over 100 kilograms and be longer than the average man is tall. If you are lucky, you can see one of them very early in the morning at the historic Ver O Peso Market in Belém, Brasil.

Jeff Rothman
Los Angeles

Zeb Hogan responds: The pirarucu is indeed one of the world’s largest freshwater fish. I list the Mekong giant catfish as the largest because the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes it as such. And while the Mekong giant catfish grows to at least 300 kilograms, there have been some reports that another Mekong species, the giant freshwater stingray, can grow as large as 500 kilograms.

Cuba Backstage

As a recent solo traveler to Cuba where I lived with a Cuban family, I’d like to add a few comments on Dave Webb’s fine article [summer ’04 issue]. In no way is there “food and jobs for all.” Many Cubans are without employment, and those who do work earn on average $12 a month. There is a very poor selection of rationed foods in the government-run stores, through the private markets have abundance. There is not “a doctor on every block.” Health care in theory is free but in reality is not that available, and medicine is definitely in short supply. In closing, it must be remembered that millions have fled this island nation and millions more want to. Any romanticizing of this failed state is a pipe dream.

Abe Greene
Mill Valley

I appreciate Mr. Webb’s report on the various music groups that he heard and his appreciation for some of the gains made by the Cuban government in health care and education. However, Mr. Webb’s understanding of Department of Treasury regulations on licensing travel to Cuba were not quite accurate. Mr. Webb went to Cuba under a cultural exchange or “people to people” exception to the Cuba travel ban, not the “education” exception. . . . The Bush administration ended [the cultural] exception because it was afraid that more Americans would find out about the misery that the U.S. embargo i s causing in Cuba.

However, students from UC Davis and other accredited university programs can currently travel to Cuba under the still valid education exception in Treasury Department regulations. Professors, researchers and other professionals can still travel to Cuba under the “research” exception—if they have a fully planned schedule conducting research with a probability of publishing upon return.

Edward Yates ’81
Larkspur

Editor’s note: Thanks for clarifying the opportunities for Cuban travel for university affiliates. Dave Webb traveled to Cuba under a “people to people educational license,” which, as both he and the letter writer note, is no longer allowed. Travel is still permitted under the university exemption, though Ana Perez of Global Exchange points out that in the last year the Bush administration has severely limited this license, too: “In March, they did not allow a group of brain surgeons who were going to Cuba to a neurological surgery conference because going to a conference is not considered research.”

Sierra Club Criticism

I was disappointed to see an interview of the Sierra Club president in our magazine [winter 2004 issue]. The Sierra Club, although it may have started out as a responsible organization with commendable goals, is now one of the worst “special interests” in this country, imposing its skewed views and usurping the rights of our citizens at every turn.

Rory R. Davis ’79, M.S. ’80, Ph.D. ’89
Gardnerville, Nev.

Correction

In “Backstage Cuba” in our summer 2004 issue, we misspelled the name of the photographer. Credit should go to William Bronston