Les amis de Cazaux - Debat Hautes Pyrénées, France

Sur ce site, des informations sur l'actualité de l'association, l'histoire du village, celles des Vietnamiens ouvriers coloniaux décédés pendant la première guerre mondiale, celle des Autrichiens résistants de la seconde guerre mondiale, et quelques communes de tous les pays situés à la même latitude que le village

In memorie of Rosie Bouygard

par amisdecazaux 22 Décembre 2023, 23:12

Rosie Bouygard passed away on December 12, 2023. A member of the Association of Friends of Cazaux-Debat, she had written the text in English reproduced on the three tables in front of the stele of the Vietnamese

Who are the Annamites ?

They are Vietnamese people born in Annam,an area in central Vietnam. In 1987 the French colonized the region to have access to the Chinese market and also take advantage of the cultivated lands. Annam was a component of the French Indochina under protectorate status.

From1916 onwards, 50000 Vietnamese, mainly from Annam and Tonkin, left their countries either out of necessity or because they were compelled to. They were recruited to work in the armament industry. Because they left from Tourane Harbour ( DaNang) they were named « Annamites ».

Annam and Tonkin were protectorates,therefore not subject to requisition wheras Cochinchina,nearby, was a colony but the settlers wanted the Cochinchinese to cultivate hevea though , at the time, the people in the north of the country were starving.

How is it Annamites found themselves in the Louron valley ?

During WW1(1914-1918)because of the general mobilization , Indochinese workers from Annam and Tonkin were needed in France to work in armament plants, for example in Tarbes arsenal and Toulouse gunpowder factory.

140 workers from Toulouse, weakened by chemical fumes and the racial riots of February 1918, were sent to the hydroelectric sites of the Louron in April 1918. The living and working conditions were very hard. The workers had to build an enormous , concrete pipe 7 kilometers long. 19 men died of the Spanish flu’between the 15th and 30th of August 1918. The epidemic killed 28000 people in France and 30 million throughout the world.

In those days, the Vietnamese who had been brought from Tonkin or Annam inhabited mountainous areas and lived on what the land yielded. Mechanisation had not yet reached those regions and the people relied on Asiatic buffaloes for their work.

Due to climatic differences, the types of cultures were different here and there. The Annamites mostly grew rice and many fruits and vegetables ; over here,people lived on vegetables, wheat,potatoes and bred cows and sheep. In the Pyrenees, the Annamites dis covered other methods of farming and breeding and snow was new to them.

They did not go unnoticed by the villagers who were little used to seeing strangers let alone foreigners from so far away.

Their camp was on that very spot on the district of Cazaux Debat and near their working site.

Hydroelectricity in the Aure and louron valleys.

In these valleys, the construction of hydroelectric plants started in 1917.

In 1912, The Southern Railways Company had initiated a vast project to electrify its net thanks to dams built in the Pyrenees.

Several plants are still exploited to-day by E D F, 8 of them are nearby, Londenvielle, Beyrede,Bordere, near Arreau, Guchen, St Lary, Fabian, Eget, Maison Blanche in Rioumajou.

The water was stored behind the dams then transported in big pipes, some of them underground, towards waters chambers and then to penstocks used to turn turbines inside the plants.

The Arreau plant was meant to supply the powder mill near Lannemezan where they made munitions for the war . Electricity was needed to produce nitrogen, a chemical component used in the making of explosives.