Self-Determination is Liberation

Self Determination is Liberation

Governor Eddie Baza Calvo
The Pacific Daily News
June 17, 2011

Editor's note: The following remarks will be delivered on Gov. Eddie Calvo's behalf to the United Nation's Special Committee on Decolonization.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the United Nations, the people of Guam need your help. We are bearing a great burden. Colonialism has weighed down upon our people for nearly 500 years. This half millennium of external rule has taken its toll.

Our Chamorro ancestors came to Guam centuries before the Polynesians arrived in Hawaii. Our chiefs held law over the land before the kings of Europe. Our latte stones were built as the Mayans built their pyramids. Yet the only written history of this advanced and unique people are the accounts of foreigners -- of Spanish conquistadors and priests.

Our island suffered over 230 years of Spanish colonial rule. Chamorros were devastated by new diseases, war and oppression. After the Spanish-American War, the United States claimed Guam, and rule began under the naval government. Once again, Chamorros had no representation, and no say in their future.
Japan's foray into imperialism during World War II was especially brutal for Guam, when Chamorros suffered atrocities from the Japanese army. Our women were raped. Our men were beheaded. Chamorro families were marched into caves and exterminated like vermin.

After three years of pain and suffering, America finally stormed the beaches of our island on July 1944 to take back the island. The occasion is known as Liberation Day, but while we were liberated from slavery and war, the Chamorros were still suppressed under colonialism. One of Guam's liberators, a brave American, Darrell Doss, said it best:
"Fifty-nine years ago, on July 21, 1944, I and more than 57,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors came ashore on the beaches of Asan and Agat, and were honored to be referred to as 'liberators.' But in the end, we failed to accomplish what we had come to do -- liberate you. More correctly, our government failed both of us by not granting the people of Guam full citizenship. Another injustice is not allowing Guam to have equal say, as we in the states do, in governing your island home. Please remember, we men who landed on your shores July 21, 1944, shall never be fully satisfied until you are fully liberated."
Worse yet, the Chamorro people have yet to even receive reparations for the atrocities they suffered. The United States has already acknowledged the need to address wrongdoings during World War II, which is why Japanese-Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes during the war have been compensated. These reparations were justified.
Thousands of Japanese-Americans underwent forced internment, the motivations racist and ignorant. But what of our greatest generation on Guam? The Chamorros of World War II endured slavery, occupation, murder, and genocide. Yet the U.S. government is silent in its obligations to war reparations. Our island anxiously awaits the day when our people can receive the same amount of respect as fellow Americans who endured unimaginable evil during that time. The silence from the administering power on this issue reinforces the point that Guam can no longer remain a colony in perpetuity.

Ladies and gentlemen, for nearly half a millennium the Chamorro people have been unable to reach their full socio-economic potential because of our political status. Now, more than ever, it is important to move forward, while there are still Chamorros left to express our right to self-determination.
I am thankful our administering power, the United States, recognizes this right and need. The Obama administration has agreed to match local funding I have allocated for our decolonization efforts. The government of Guam is committed to a plebiscite. I personally would like to see a vote taken in the next General Election or the election after. What's most important is to make sure our Chamorros make an educated decision on the political status they want to move toward.
To say, "exercising this human right is long overdue" is a gross understatement. For far too long, the Chamorro people have been told to be satisfied with a political status that doesn't respect their wishes first. For far too long the native people of Guam have been dealing with inequality of government. We have been dealing with taxation without full representation, with quasi-citizenship and partial belonging.

Now it is time for us to realize our full political destiny, so we can take control and lead and live the way that is best for our people. I am urging this body to support our human rights as citizens of this world, to help us become citizens of a place -- of our place in this world.

Kao siña un ayuda ham ni' manChamoru. Siña un rikoknisa i direchon-måmi para dinitetminan maisa. Ayuda ham humago' i guinifen-måmi. Manespisiåt ham. Mambanidosu ham. ManChamoru ham.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people of Guam.

Reagan’s Third-World Reign of Terror

Published on Tuesday, February 8, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Dennis Hans

As the nation pays tribute to Ronald "Dutch" Reagan on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, media coverage is every bit as laudatory as when he turned 90. I wrote in 2001 about PBS's fawning tributes on the Charlie Rose show and the Jim Lehrer NewsHour. Then, as now, one of the most glaring omissions was the human cost of his foreign policies. In the interest of filling out the Reagan portrait, let us consider a few regions unfortunate enough to capture his attention, starting with Central America.

In January 1981, the newly inaugurated Reagan inherited Jimmy Carter's policy of supporting a Salvadoran government controlled by a military that, along with the security forces and affiliated death squads, killed about 10,000 civilians in 1980. In the first 27 months of the Reagan administration, perhaps another 20,000 civilians were killed. El Salvador's labor movement was decimated, the opposition press exterminated, opposition politicians murdered or driven into exile, the church martyred.

In April 1983, seeking to shore up shaky public and congressional support for continued aid to El Salvador, Reagan went on national television before a joint session of Congress and -- with a straight face -- praised the Salvadoran government for "making every effort to guarantee democracy, free labor unions, freedom of religion, and a free press." The Great Communicator/Prevaricator achieved his objective; aid -- and blood -- continued to flow.

In neighboring Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship slaughtered perhaps 40,000 civilians from 1977 to 1979 in a desperate bid to hold power. Candidate Reagan was sad to see Somoza go, and once in office his administration turned to officers from Somoza's hated National Guard to spearhead a "liberation" movement. Known as the contras, they never managed to hold a single Nicaraguan town in their eight years as Reagan's proxy army, though they were quite proficient at raping, torturing and killing defenseless civilians. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died in a war that never would have been were it not for good ol' Dutch.

A common criticism of Reagan is that this self-proclaimed fighter against the scourge of terrorism traded with a designated "terrorist state" -- the hostage-holding fundamentalist regime in Iran -- to generate funds for the contras after Congress turned off the tap. That's true as far as it goes. But the contras themselves were terrorists, as were those elements of the Honduran army that the CIA and Ollie North employed to help the contras, as was the notorious Salvadoran air force that assisted in the contra resupply effort. All murdered noncombatants to achieve political objectives. If they were "terrorists" -- and if words have meaning, they were -- what does that make their paymaster and cheerleader in the Oval Office?

In Guatemala, after the "born-again butcher" Efrain Rios Montt implemented in 1982 a scorched-earth military campaign that left thousands of Indian civilians dead, Reagan was furious. Not at our blood-soaked ally, but at Amnesty International and others who documented his depridations. Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap," Reagan whined.

In Southeast Asia, Reagan picked up where President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski left off in collaborating with the Chinese government to support Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge, which had been driven from power in 1979 by a Vietnamese government that had grown weary of the Khmer Rouge atttacking villages on Vietnam's side of the border. Along with two hapless non-communist Cambodian guerrilla groups, the ousted Khmer Rouge utilized neighboring Thailand -- with the blessing and backing of the U.S. and China -- as a base from which to launch attacks inside Cambodia.

A bit odd, Reagan backing communist mass murderers. But he did so for a high-minded principle: self-determination. So strongly did he believe in this principle that he instructed his U.N. Ambassador to recognize the deposed Khmer Rouge, rather than the regime imposed by Vietnam, as the legitimate government of Cambodia.

Alas, it was all an act. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Indonesia continued to occupy East Timor, the island it had invaded in 1975 with the blessing of the Ford administration. In this case, Reagan chose to oppose the Timorese resistance and support the Indonesian occupiers. Hey, what good are principles if they're not flexible - or disposable?

To give Reagan his due, a crucial difference between the occupations must be noted: Vietnam's (which he opposed) ended a bloodbath; Indonesia's (which he supported) constituted a bloodbath.

In southern Africa, Reagan was an enthusiastic champion of South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia and vicious destabilization of Angola and Mozambique. He considered the apartheid government a card-carrying member of the "Free World" and thus worthy of a "constructive engagement" policy. Like Dick Cheney, he dismissed Nelson Mandela's African National Congress as communist terrorists.

Reagan's African heroes were Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko and Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. When Savimbi's horrific human rights record could no longer be denied, even some conservatives who had once sung his praises turned against him. Reagan stood steadfast. He had earlier hailed Savimbi as a "freedom fighter," just as he had elevated the Nicaraguan contras and the extremist Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (many of whom are now fighting us in alliance with the Taliban) to "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers."

By providing apologetics, diplomatic support and/or military aid to some of the worst governments, rebel forces and terror-prone proxy armies of the 1980s, Reagan was an accomplice in hundreds of thousands of deaths. That's a big part of his legacy, and it's no cause for celebration.

Dennis Hans is a former adjunct professor of American foreign policy and mass communications. His essays on those topics as well as basketball and other matters can be found at http://dennishans.blogspot.com; he can be reached at hans_d@mail.firn.edu.

Published on Thursday, January 6, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire

What It Means When We Say We Have the World’s Finest Fighting Force

by William Astore

Words matter, as candidate Barack Obama said in the 2008 election campaign. What to make, then, of President Obama's pep talk last month to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known"? Certainly, he knew that those words would resonate with the troops as well as with the folks back home.

In fact, this sort of description of the U.S. military has become something of a must for American presidents. Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, for example, boasted of that military as alternately "the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world" and "the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known." Hyperbolic and self-promoting statements, to be sure, but undoubtedly sincere, reflecting as they do an American sense of exceptionalism that sits poorly with the increasingly interconnected world of the twenty-first century.

I'm a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a historian who teaches military history. The retired officer in me warms to the sentiment of our troops as both unparalleled fighters and selfless liberators, but the historian in me begs to differ.

Let's start with the fighting part of the equation. Are we truly the world's greatest fighting force, not only at this moment, but as measured against all militaries across history? If so, on what basis is this claim made? And what does such triumphalist rhetoric suggest not just about our national narcissism, but Washington's priorities? Consider that no leading U.S. politician thinks to boast that we have the finest educational system or health-care system or environmental policies "that the world has ever known."

Measured in terms of sheer destructive power, and our ability to project that power across the globe, the U.S. military is indeed the world's "finest" fighting force. Our nuclear arsenal remains second to none. Our air forces (including the Navy's carrier task forces, the Army's armada of helicopter gunships, and the CIA's fleet of unmanned aerial drones prosecuting a "secret" war in Pakistan) dominate the heavens. Our Navy ("a global force for good," according to its new motto) rules the waves -- even more so than old Britannia did a century ago. And well should we rule the skies and seas, given the roughly one trillion dollars a year we spend on achieving our vision of "full spectrum dominance."

But this awesome ability to exercise "global reach, global power" hardly makes us the finest military force ever. After all, "finest" shouldn't be measured by sheer strength and reach alone. First and foremost, of course, should come favorable results set against the quality of the opponents bested. To use a sports analogy, we wouldn't call the Pittsburgh Steelers "the finest team in NFL history" simply because they annihilated Penn State in football. Similarly, we can't measure the success of today's U.S. military solely in terms of amazingly quick (if increasingly costly and ultimately dismal) "victories" over the Taliban in 2001 or Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces in 2003.

To carry the football analogy a few yards further, one might ask when our "finest fighting force" had its last Super Bowl win. Certainly, 1918 and 1945 (World Wars I and II) were such wins, even if as part of larger coalitions; 1953 (Korea) was a frustrating stalemate; 1973 (Vietnam) was a demoralizing loss; 1991 (Desert Storm in Iraq) was a distinctly flawed win; and efforts like Grenada or Panama or Serbia were more like scrimmages. Arguably our biggest win, the Cold War, was achieved less through military means than economic power and technological savvy.

To put it bluntly: America's troops are tough-minded professionals, but the finest fighting force ever? Sir, no, sir.

We're Number One!

Americans often seem to live in the eternal now, which makes it easier to boast that our military is the finest ever. Most historians, however, are not so tied to nationalistic rhetoric or the ceaseless present. If asked to identify the finest fighting force in history, my reaction -- and I would hardly be alone in the field -- would be to favor those peoples and empires which existed for war alone.

Examples immediately spring to mind: the Assyrians, the Spartans, the Romans, the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Nazis. These peoples elevated their respective militaries and martial prowess above all else. Unsurprisingly, they were bloodthirsty and ruthless. Unstinting ambition for imperial goals often drove them to remarkable feats of arms at an unconscionable and sometimes difficult to sustain cost. Yes, the Spartans defeated the Athenians, but that internecine quarrel paved the way for the demise of the independent Greek city states at the hands of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander (soon enough to be known as "the Great").

Yes, the Romans conquered an empire, but one of their own historians, Tacitus, put in the mouth of a Celtic chieftain this description of being on the receiving end of Roman "liberation":

"The Romans' tyranny cannot be escaped by any act of reasonable submission. These brigands of the world have exhausted the land by their rapacity, so they now ransack the sea. When their enemy is rich, they lust after wealth; when their enemy is poor, they lust after power. Neither East nor West has satisfied their hunger. They are unique among humanity insofar as they equally covet the rich and the poor. Robbery, butchery, and rapine they call 'Empire.' They create a desert and call it 'Peace.'"

Talk about tough love.

The Romans would certainly have to be in the running for "finest military" of all time. They conquered many peoples, expanded far, and garrisoned vast areas of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and what would become Europe, while their legions marched forth, often to victory (not to speak of plunder), for hundreds of years. Still, the gold medal for the largest land empire in history -- and the finest fighting force of all time -- must surely go to the thirteenth century Mongols.

Led by Genghis Khan and his successors, Mongol horsemen conquered China and the Islamic world -- the two most powerful, sophisticated civilizations of their day -- while also exerting control over Russia for two and a half centuries. And thanks to a combination of military excellence, clever stratagem, fleetness of foot (and far more important, hoof), flexibility, and when necessary utter ferocity, they did all this while generally being outnumbered by their enemies.

Even the fighting power of the finest militaries waxed and waned, however, based in part on the quality of those leading them. The Macedonians blossomed under Philip and Alexander. It was not simply Rome that conquered Gaul, but Julius Caesar. The Mongols were at each other's throats until Genghis Khan united them into an unstoppable military machine that swept across a continent. The revolutionary French people in their famed levée en masse had martial fervor, but only Napoleon gave them direction. History's finest fighting forces are associated closely with history's greatest captains.

Measure that against the American military today. General David Petraeus is certainly a successful officer who exhibits an enviable mastery of detail and a powerful political sense of how to handle Washington, but a Genghis Khan? An Alexander? A Caesar? Even "King David," as he's been called both by admirers and more than a few detractors, might blush at such comparisons. After all, at the head of the most powerfully destructive force in the Middle East, and later Central Asia, he has won no outright victories and conquered nothing. His triumph in Iraq in 2006-2007 may yet prove more "confected" than convincing.

As for our armed forces, though most Americans don't know it, within U.S. military circles much criticism exists of an officer corps of "tarnished brass" that is deficient in professionalism; of generals who are more concerned with covering their butts than leading from the front; of instruction at military academies that is divorced from war's realities; of an aversion "to innovation or creativity... [leading to] an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism" that undermines strategy and makes a hash of counterinsurgency efforts. Indeed, our military's biting criticism of itself is one of the few positive signs in a fighting force that is otherwise overstretched, deeply frustrated, and ridiculously overpraised by genuflecting politicians.

So I'm sorry, President Obama. If you wish to address the finest fighting force the world has ever known, you'll need a time machine, not Air Force One. You'll have to doff your leather Air Force-issue flight jacket and don Mongolian armor. And in so doing, you'll have to embrace mental attitudes and a way of life utterly antithetical to democracy and the rights of humanity as we understand them today. For that is the price of building a fighting force second to none -- and one reason why our politicians should stop insisting that we have one.

"The Greatest Force for Human Liberation"

Two centuries ago, Napoleon led his armies out of France and brought "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to much of the rest of ancien régime Europe -- but on his terms and via the barrel of a musket. His invasion of Spain, for example, was viewed as anything but a "liberation" by the Spanish, who launched a fierce guerrilla campaign against their French occupiers that sapped the strength of Napoleon's empire and what was generally considered the finest fighting force of its moment. British aid to the insurgency helped ensure that this campaign would become Napoleon's "Spanish ulcer."

The "Little Corporal" ultimately decided to indirectly strike back at the British by invading Russia, which was refusing to enforce France's so-called continental blockade. As Napoleon's army bled out or froze solid in the snows of a Russian winter, the Prussians and the Austrians found new reasons to reject French "fraternity." Within years, Napoleon's empire was unsaddled and destroyed, a fate shared by its leader, sent into ignominious exile on the island of Saint Helena.

Like Napoleon's fired up revolutionary troops, the American military also sees itself as on a mission to spread democracy and freedom. Afghans and Iraqis have, however, proven no more eager than the Spaniards of two centuries ago to be "liberated" at gun (or "Hellfire" missile) point, even when the liberators come bearing gifts, which in today's terms means the promise of roads, jobs, and "reconstruction," or even cash by the pallet.

Because we Americans believe our own press releases, it's difficult to imagine others (except, of course, those so fanatic as to be blind to reality) seeing us as anything but well-intentioned liberators. As journalist Nir Rosen has put it: "There's... a deep sense among people in the [American] policy world, in the military, that we're the good guys. It's just taken for granted that what we're doing must be right because we're doing it. We're the exceptional country, the essential nation, and our role, our intervention, our presence is a benign and beneficent thing."

In reporting on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rosen and others have offered ample proof for those who care to consider it that our foreign interventions have been anything but benign or beneficent, no less liberating. Our invasion of Iraq opened the way to civil war and mayhem. For many ordinary Iraqis, when American intervention didn't lead to death, destruction, dislocation, and exile, it bred "deep humiliation and disruption" as well as constant fear, a state of affairs that, as Rosen notes, is "painful and humiliating and scary."

In Afghanistan, Rosen points out, most villagers see our troops making common cause with a despised and predatory government. Huge infusions of American dollars, meanwhile, rarely trickle down to the village level, but instead promote the interests of Afghan warlords and foreign businesses. Small wonder that, more than nine years later, a majority of Afghans say they want to be liberated from us.

If the U.S. military is not "the greatest force for human liberation" in all history, what is? Revealingly, it's far easier to identify the finest fighting force of history. If put on the spot, though, I'd highlight the ideas and ideals of human dignity, of equality before the law, of the fundamental value of each and every individual, as the greatest force for human liberation. Such ideals are shared by many peoples. They may sometimes be defended by the sword, but were inscribed by the pens of great moralists and thinkers of humanity's collective past. In this sense, when it comes to advancing freedom, the pen has indeed been mightier than the sword.

Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire

The historian John Lukacs once noted: "There are many things wrong with the internationalist idea to Make the World Safe for Democracy, one of them being that it is not that different from the nationalist idea that What Is Good for America Is Good for the World."

In our post-9/11 world, whatever our rhetoric about democratizing the planet, our ambitions are guided by the seemingly hardheaded goal of making Americans safe from terrorists. A global war on terrorism has, however, proven anything but consistent with expanding liberty at home or abroad. Indeed, the seductive and self-congratulatory narrative of our troops as selfless liberators and the finest freedom fighters around actually helps blind us to our violent methods in far-off lands, even as it distances us from the human costs of our imperial policies.

Though we officially seek to extinguish terrorists, our actions abroad serve as obvious accelerants to terror. To understand why this is so, ask yourself how comforted you would be if foreign military "liberators" kicked in your door, shouted commands in a language you didn't understand, confiscated your guns, dragged your father and brothers and sons off in cuffs and hoods to locations unknown, all in the name of "counterterror" operations? How comforted would you be if remotely piloted drones hovered constantly overhead, ready to unleash Hellfire missiles at terrorist "targets of opportunity" in your neighborhood?

Better not to contemplate such harsh realities. Better to praise our troops as so many Mahatma Gandhis, so many freedom fighters. Better to praise them as so many Genghis Khans, so many ultimate warriors.

At a time of feared national decline, our leaders undoubtedly prescribe military action in part to comfort us (and themselves) and restore our sense of potency and pride. In doing so, they violate the famous phrase long associated with the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

© 2011 William Astore

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. His books and articles focus mainly on the military, technology, and society. He welcomes reader comments at wjastore@gmail.com.

Things We Must Remember

ben’s Pen: The things we remember today
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 03:14 by Sen. Ben Pangelinan
Marianas Variety


EACH year, for the past 65 years, this day rolls around and we remember.

At Sumay, we remember the place where our parents made their homes and buried their parents, brothers, sisters and family. We mark this with a mass at the Sumay cemetery; not for those buried there who died during the war, but those buried there before they took the land away and now need permission to return to honor and pay respect at that hallowed place.

At Fena, we remember the pain and the memories, and for some the unspeakable guilt they carry with them for surviving, while others did not, the brutality and atrocity of the enemy-- an enemy not of our own making.

At Manengon, we remember the suffering of the children left to the care of young new mothers with babies exposed to the risk of disease and sickness, because a fire could not be built to boil water from the river, the same river they used to wash clothes and bathe in.

We remember mothers, wives and children who watched husbands, brothers and fathers, walk away from the camp, obedient to the enemy’s order to come with them. And they never looked back. The wives, mothers and children watched never knowing; if the husbands, brothers and fathers did not obey, it would be they who would be beaten or killed.

At Tinta and Faha, we remember the deaths and the fact that our people knew their fate as they were forced into the caves. The explosion of the grenades and the sound of bayonets piercing flesh, looking for the kill left unfinished by the force of the explosion and the shrapnel as clear today as it was 65 years ago.

And we remember the brave men of the Malesso rebellion, those who knew that no amount of cooperation or compliance with the enemy’s orders would spare their innocent loved ones pain or death, who summoned the courage, and who rose up to overpower the enemy. Facing death, they fought and some lost their lives, and their sacrifice and gallantry saved the lives of countless loved ones.

And we remember, the over 45 strong young Chamorro men found at Chi gi’an, with their hands tied behind their backs and be-headed, after they carried the enemy’s provisions to Yigo for their last stand.

Each year, for the past 65 years, this day rolls around and we celebrate.

We celebrate liberation from the hands of a brutal enemy. We celebrate the return of the Americans, who say they gave us democracy and self-government. And they stayed, a kind and generous occupier, but an occupier nonetheless.

Last year, this day rolled around and amidst the remembrance and the celebration we chose to actively embrace a full democracy and freedom as a people. We chose to act to bring about decolonization, move forward our destiny, and fulfill our human right to self-determination.

It is a right that a liberator does not bestow to the liberated. It is a right that a just and moral authority recognizes belongs to those peoples denied such right.

It is a right that can, only by the action of those who have yet to exercise such right, bring about real freedoms and true liberation.

Abiba self-determination! Biba Liberation!

Sharing Guam's History With Our Children

Letter to the editor: Sharing Guam’s history with our children
The Marianas Variety
12/12/07

A FEW months ago, I had the pleasure of taking my then four-month-old daughter Sumåhi around the island, and photographed her at different historic sites. I took photos of her atop a canon at Fort Soledad, in front of the Protestant Church her great great grandfather helped build in Inarajan, and helped find the names of her relatives on the memorial wall at the Asan overlook. Each site was accompanied by a boring but informative lecture on the importance of this location, and what lessons Chamorros today can gather from each site. Oftentimes the lessons would be difficult, especially around issues of Spanish violence, Japanese imperial brutality and American colonial racism.

People told me that it was silly to be dragging her around the island and teaching her the island’s history when she’s too young to remember any of it. But the value of this first trip as I see it, isn’t in what is happening now, but rather the way this “silly” trip would hopefully help start a dialogue between my daughter and me, about the history of her island and people, which will last the rest of our lives.

My hope is that she will grow up to be well informed and clear eyed about the world around her, and therefore be willing to make difficult decisions about its future. Our island is in such difficult times right now because so many of us refuse to pay close attention to our island’s history over the past 100 years.

This is most noticeable with regards to the proposed military increases on Guam, and the reactions of most people on Guam. These increases are celebrated with almost frightening optimism, hope and trust.

Whatever the military says must be true, what they are doing must be good for Guam. And the only way in which this could be bad is if we do not take advantage of the tidal wave of opportunities which are already flooding Guam. This dangerous optimism and trust is made possible because of how a lack of knowledge of Guam history supports a number of prevailing fictions.

The American return in 1944 was a liberation. The military downsizing in the 1990’s happened because we hurt the military’s feelings and scared them away. More military means more security. The military does not damage people’s health or the environment. The military as an institution, cares about Guam and is our partner.

A clear-eyed view of our history complicates or proves false all of these points and demands that we approach the proposed military buildup with caution and be prepared to make very serious and substantive demands of the United States military and federal government. I see a tremendous everyday fear however in investigating the past because of the ways such inquiries might complicate the Americaness of Guam, by revealing the ways its regularly just Guam and not Guam U.S.A. and how those who live on Guam are oftentimes formally and informally second class citizens.

I see fear in taking our historical relationship with the United States seriously, because once we do, degrading phrases such as “the tip of America’s spear” won’t be celebrations of how useful we are to the United States, but rather traumatic sobering revelations of how we have been and continue to be used by them.

It is imperative that our children today, who will inherit both our successes and failures, perceive their history, their present and then plan for their future with clear eyes, no matter how difficult or critical of the United States, such a vision may be.

To not do this will just continue the cycle of dependency, where we will hate ourselves for our hopeless dependency, yet whenever anything can be done to change it, we scream that without the United States we will starve, we will die, without them we are nothing. The history of our island teaches something different however, if we are brave enough to learn it, to learn from it, and then pass on its lessons to our children.



MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA

Chumalamlam, Guam