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.
Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts
Friday, July 22, 2011
Monday, May 10, 2010
Don't Let Guam Sink into Oblivion
“Do Not Allow Guam to Sink into Oblivion”
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference 2010 NYC
by: Melvin Won Pat-Borja,
Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice/We Are Guahan
During a congressional hearing on the Guam military buildup in early April, US Representative Hank Johnson said that he feared the Military Relocation on Guam would cause our tiny island to capsize and sink. The comment, though not meant to be taken literally, caused an uproar among Chamorus everywhere. People were so outraged at his perceived ignorance that they continually bashed him in the media and all over the internet. The sad truth however is that Guam WILL sink. It will sink under the weight of tons of toxic waste dumped by the military each year, sink under the pressure of contaminated drinking water, sink under the weight of overpopulated schools, massive amounts of traffic, inadequate health care, and extreme over population. If this military expansion goes as planned, the people of Guam will surely sink to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and become nothing more than a footnote in America's colonial history.
Our story began centuries ago when we first sailed from the coast of south east asia and made this beautiful chain of islands our home, but for the sake of time, THIS story will begin when the DEIS (draft environmental impact statement) for Guam and the military buildup was released in November of last year. The document laid the blueprint for the transfer of 8,000 marines and their 9,000 dependents from Okinawa to Guam. It was an 11,000 page document that held our future in the margins of the paper it was printed on and the public was only given 90 days to comment on it. The plans suggested that Guam was the best alternative to right the wrongs that America's armed forces had imposed on the people of Okinawa. The Department of Defense had chosen Guam because South Korea, the Philipines, California, and Hawaii all said "no." But the sad reality is that Guam was never offered that same courtesy. We are an unincorporated territory of the United States, leaving us victim to whatever decision America makes, whether it is beneficial for us or not. Guam is America's dirty little secret, the step child that no one ever talks about. We are affectionately referred to as the place "where America's day begins," but no one likes to admit that America starts each day with injustice. We have traditionally been loyal servants, patriots, and second class citizens, enlisting more soldiers per capita than anywhere else in the world. It makes me wonder if America could even have a military without people like us. We are as American as apple pie and baseball when there is war on the horizon or when strategic positioning in the Pacific is needed, but we are not American when it is time to vote in congress or the senate or when it is time to elect a new president.
When you read about the military buildup on Guam, many media sources portray the move as positive on all sides, hailing economic benefits as its saving grace. The people of Guam have been sold the idea of 33,000 new jobs that will stimulate our suffering economy, providing work for families in desperate need of some kind of income.
Our government has been sold the idea that millions of federal dollars will go to fund desperately needed infrastructural upgrades. And the rest of the nation has been sold ideas of potential business ventures that promise them desperately needed money and success.
Indeed, the global economy has created desperate times for all of us and it seems that selling Guam to the highest bidder is the answer.
Thousands of jobs and millions of dollars have a way of sounding too good to be true and upon reading the massive 11,000 page document it has become clear that it is indeed a wolf in sheep's clothing. Nothing is what it seems and all of their promises are empty. Like their promise of 33,000 new jobs predicting an economic upturn for Guam in reality, a mere 17 percent of those jobs will go to the local community while the vast majority of jobs will go to the foreign work force from around the region. As we speak, people from all over the world and the US are making preparations to move to Guam in search of business opportunities. They promise financial prosperity to the people, but even the measly 17 percent of total jobs they will offer are mostly temporary construction work, which will cause unemployment to sky-rocket once the construction is completed. The DEIS even states that they predict a "recession-like atmosphere" after the construction phase is over. They say that there are incredible gains for our local government, which will absorb millions of dollars from the federal government, but nowhere in the DEIS does the federal government make any kind of commitment to support infrastructure outside the fence. In fact, of the billions of dollars coming from the federal government and the Japanese Diet, a vast majority is earmarked for infrastructural upgrades on base only. The DEIS suggests that the government of Guam will reap its financial benefits from an increase in tax dollars as a result of the population boom, but it doesn't take into account the amount of money we will also have to spend in order to service all these people. They predict that Guam's population will increase by almost 80,000 people. On an island that is only 31 miles long and 7 miles wide with a current population of 170,000 people it's not hard to imagine Guam sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor. When you translate these numbers into social services, it becomes clear that the Government of Guam will find itself in dire straits trying to maintain an acceptable level of community care. The DEIS predicts that our hospital, which sees a shortage of beds on a daily basis, will see an increase of over 41,000 patients. Yet the DEIS only has plans to upgrade Naval Hospital, a facility that not only denies health services to our general public, but consistently fails to care for our local veterans as well. They predict that the Department of Public Health and Social Services along with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse will see an increase of nearly 23,000 more patients. Our Public School system will see 8,000 new students and the DEIS recommends that we build 5 new public schools. We will also require 532 new teachers in our public school system, which already has to fill 300 vacancies each year. There are a number of infrastructural upgrades that Guam will require in order to cope with the demands that 80,000 more people bring to our community, but there is no commitment by the Military or the Federal Government to support us financially. We are being forced to bear the burden of this buildup on our own. Once again, America has found a way to make a mess and the people of Guam will be forced to clean up after them.
Of course with any massive change in population we must also take into account the impact that such changes will have on our environment. Two major proposals in the DEIS are the dredging of 71 acres of coral reef in Apra Harbor to make room for a nuclear aircraft carrier and the acquisition of ancestral land for a live firing range.
The military plans to dock their nuclear aircraft carrier in our local harbor instead of using their own Kilo Wharf, the harbor that they already occupy. The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that this dredging project is unprecedented and that the impact on the biologically diverse ecosystem cannot be mitigated. DoD experts claim that most of the reef in the area they want to dredge is already dead and that there isn't much wildlife that will be adversely impacted, but our local marine biologists have found species of coral that have not yet been identified and could be endemic to this region. Furthermore, the way in which they propose to dredge the reef may have lasting impact on surrounding reefs and ecosystems as a result of sediment which could suffocate and destroy the species of coral down current. The plans for Apra Harbor in the DEIS demonstrate the military's lack of concern and insensitivity to the issues facing Guam; in fact, it was just recently discovered by a local marine biologist that certain sections in the DEIS (particularly the sections on Apra Harbor) were plagiarized!
The land that the military wishes to acquire for their firing range is rich in cultural history and significance, containing ancient artifacts and ancestral remains that cannot be mitigated or replaced by any sum of money.
Some parcels of land are owned by local residents who refuse to sell or lease, but the military insists on applying pressure to these private land owners as the threat of eminent domain hangs in the balance like it did after world war II, when residents were given a "take it or lose it" option when it came to private property. Most of the land that the military currently occupies was "purchased" for little to nothing in most cases and not selling was not an option.
Upon review of the DEIS, the US Environmental Protection Agency rated it "insufficient" and "environmentally unsatisfactory," giving it the lowest possible rating for a DEIS. Among other things, the US EPA's findings suggest that Guam's water infrastructure cannot handle the population boom and that our fresh water resources will be at high risk for contamination. Our waste water system is in desperate need of upgrades and the population increase threatens to cause overflow and run off which could permanently pollute our fresh water lens. The increase in demand for fresh water will require that we dig up 22 new water wells especially to serve the military population up north, but several experts believe that digging so many new wells in close proximity to each other puts us at high risk of salt water contamination. Once a fresh water well is contaminated by salt water, the effects are irreversible. Officials at the Guam Waterworks Authority claim that we have more than enough water to handle the burden of 80,000 additional people, but the DEIS has plans for a desalinization plant, which is normally only used if fresh water resources are limited or jeopardized. In addition, the US EPA predicts that without infrastructural upgrades to our water system, the population outside the bases will experience a 13.1 million gallon water shortage per day in 2014. And this is where the battle gets interesting.
Though it seems that the odds are already stacked against us and that we can rely on no one but ourselves, we have found that special interest groups like the Guam Chamber of Commerce and the Guam Visitors Bureau have been avid proponents of the military buildup. They target our marginalized population enticing them with dreams of economic prosperity. Over 25 percent of Guam's population lives below the poverty line and poverty is possibly the most powerful weapon in conquering a people.
These special interest groups and even some government officials including our Governor and our representative in congress prey on our people, dangling money over their heads while unemployment looms in the background like the Gestapo. These house slaves promise that life will be so much better with the buildup and threaten that foreign countries will invade if the buildup does not happen. We are being subjugated by US imperialism and dependency and our own people have become our own worst enemy. Right now, our representative in congress claims that the people of Guam welcome this buildup with open arms and that we will gladly "take one for the team." But we have never really been a part of America's Team. We are like the black athletes of the 30's and 40's whose accolades on the field were heralded, but couldn't even get a cab off the field.
We, the people, have found ourselves backed into a corner, deserted on the battlefield, left to fight the world's largest superpower. It is truly a case of David vs. Goliath. Though the military buildup on Guam seems like a losing battle, this terroristic threat to our homeland has caused an uprising among the youth and many have stepped up to fight and defend our island and its people. But we cannot win this alone, so we are calling on our brothers and sisters from across the globe; those of you who know the bitter taste of oppression, we urge you fight alongside us in solidarity. We want this buildup no more than Okinawa wants the Marines to stay put. The military has already stolen almost 30 percent of the total land mass in Guam. We cannot allow them to take even more from us. We have sacrificed time and again for a country that has led us astray with empty promises and half-truths; who have held us hostage with US citizenship, fear, and economic dependency. We need your help. We need environmental law experts to help us take this issue to court. We need media support to get our message out to the rest of the world. We need more representation and influence to help us fight in congress and the senate. We need the international community to help us stay afloat and not allow us to sink into a sea of indifference, ignorance, and apathy. I pray that these words do not fall on deaf ears and that the world will come to the aid of a people and an island who have been mistreated for over 500 years of uninterrupted colonization. Please do not allow Guam to sink into oblivion.
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference 2010 NYC
by: Melvin Won Pat-Borja,
Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice/We Are Guahan
During a congressional hearing on the Guam military buildup in early April, US Representative Hank Johnson said that he feared the Military Relocation on Guam would cause our tiny island to capsize and sink. The comment, though not meant to be taken literally, caused an uproar among Chamorus everywhere. People were so outraged at his perceived ignorance that they continually bashed him in the media and all over the internet. The sad truth however is that Guam WILL sink. It will sink under the weight of tons of toxic waste dumped by the military each year, sink under the pressure of contaminated drinking water, sink under the weight of overpopulated schools, massive amounts of traffic, inadequate health care, and extreme over population. If this military expansion goes as planned, the people of Guam will surely sink to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and become nothing more than a footnote in America's colonial history.
Our story began centuries ago when we first sailed from the coast of south east asia and made this beautiful chain of islands our home, but for the sake of time, THIS story will begin when the DEIS (draft environmental impact statement) for Guam and the military buildup was released in November of last year. The document laid the blueprint for the transfer of 8,000 marines and their 9,000 dependents from Okinawa to Guam. It was an 11,000 page document that held our future in the margins of the paper it was printed on and the public was only given 90 days to comment on it. The plans suggested that Guam was the best alternative to right the wrongs that America's armed forces had imposed on the people of Okinawa. The Department of Defense had chosen Guam because South Korea, the Philipines, California, and Hawaii all said "no." But the sad reality is that Guam was never offered that same courtesy. We are an unincorporated territory of the United States, leaving us victim to whatever decision America makes, whether it is beneficial for us or not. Guam is America's dirty little secret, the step child that no one ever talks about. We are affectionately referred to as the place "where America's day begins," but no one likes to admit that America starts each day with injustice. We have traditionally been loyal servants, patriots, and second class citizens, enlisting more soldiers per capita than anywhere else in the world. It makes me wonder if America could even have a military without people like us. We are as American as apple pie and baseball when there is war on the horizon or when strategic positioning in the Pacific is needed, but we are not American when it is time to vote in congress or the senate or when it is time to elect a new president.
When you read about the military buildup on Guam, many media sources portray the move as positive on all sides, hailing economic benefits as its saving grace. The people of Guam have been sold the idea of 33,000 new jobs that will stimulate our suffering economy, providing work for families in desperate need of some kind of income.
Our government has been sold the idea that millions of federal dollars will go to fund desperately needed infrastructural upgrades. And the rest of the nation has been sold ideas of potential business ventures that promise them desperately needed money and success.
Indeed, the global economy has created desperate times for all of us and it seems that selling Guam to the highest bidder is the answer.
Thousands of jobs and millions of dollars have a way of sounding too good to be true and upon reading the massive 11,000 page document it has become clear that it is indeed a wolf in sheep's clothing. Nothing is what it seems and all of their promises are empty. Like their promise of 33,000 new jobs predicting an economic upturn for Guam in reality, a mere 17 percent of those jobs will go to the local community while the vast majority of jobs will go to the foreign work force from around the region. As we speak, people from all over the world and the US are making preparations to move to Guam in search of business opportunities. They promise financial prosperity to the people, but even the measly 17 percent of total jobs they will offer are mostly temporary construction work, which will cause unemployment to sky-rocket once the construction is completed. The DEIS even states that they predict a "recession-like atmosphere" after the construction phase is over. They say that there are incredible gains for our local government, which will absorb millions of dollars from the federal government, but nowhere in the DEIS does the federal government make any kind of commitment to support infrastructure outside the fence. In fact, of the billions of dollars coming from the federal government and the Japanese Diet, a vast majority is earmarked for infrastructural upgrades on base only. The DEIS suggests that the government of Guam will reap its financial benefits from an increase in tax dollars as a result of the population boom, but it doesn't take into account the amount of money we will also have to spend in order to service all these people. They predict that Guam's population will increase by almost 80,000 people. On an island that is only 31 miles long and 7 miles wide with a current population of 170,000 people it's not hard to imagine Guam sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor. When you translate these numbers into social services, it becomes clear that the Government of Guam will find itself in dire straits trying to maintain an acceptable level of community care. The DEIS predicts that our hospital, which sees a shortage of beds on a daily basis, will see an increase of over 41,000 patients. Yet the DEIS only has plans to upgrade Naval Hospital, a facility that not only denies health services to our general public, but consistently fails to care for our local veterans as well. They predict that the Department of Public Health and Social Services along with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse will see an increase of nearly 23,000 more patients. Our Public School system will see 8,000 new students and the DEIS recommends that we build 5 new public schools. We will also require 532 new teachers in our public school system, which already has to fill 300 vacancies each year. There are a number of infrastructural upgrades that Guam will require in order to cope with the demands that 80,000 more people bring to our community, but there is no commitment by the Military or the Federal Government to support us financially. We are being forced to bear the burden of this buildup on our own. Once again, America has found a way to make a mess and the people of Guam will be forced to clean up after them.
Of course with any massive change in population we must also take into account the impact that such changes will have on our environment. Two major proposals in the DEIS are the dredging of 71 acres of coral reef in Apra Harbor to make room for a nuclear aircraft carrier and the acquisition of ancestral land for a live firing range.
The military plans to dock their nuclear aircraft carrier in our local harbor instead of using their own Kilo Wharf, the harbor that they already occupy. The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that this dredging project is unprecedented and that the impact on the biologically diverse ecosystem cannot be mitigated. DoD experts claim that most of the reef in the area they want to dredge is already dead and that there isn't much wildlife that will be adversely impacted, but our local marine biologists have found species of coral that have not yet been identified and could be endemic to this region. Furthermore, the way in which they propose to dredge the reef may have lasting impact on surrounding reefs and ecosystems as a result of sediment which could suffocate and destroy the species of coral down current. The plans for Apra Harbor in the DEIS demonstrate the military's lack of concern and insensitivity to the issues facing Guam; in fact, it was just recently discovered by a local marine biologist that certain sections in the DEIS (particularly the sections on Apra Harbor) were plagiarized!
The land that the military wishes to acquire for their firing range is rich in cultural history and significance, containing ancient artifacts and ancestral remains that cannot be mitigated or replaced by any sum of money.
Some parcels of land are owned by local residents who refuse to sell or lease, but the military insists on applying pressure to these private land owners as the threat of eminent domain hangs in the balance like it did after world war II, when residents were given a "take it or lose it" option when it came to private property. Most of the land that the military currently occupies was "purchased" for little to nothing in most cases and not selling was not an option.
Upon review of the DEIS, the US Environmental Protection Agency rated it "insufficient" and "environmentally unsatisfactory," giving it the lowest possible rating for a DEIS. Among other things, the US EPA's findings suggest that Guam's water infrastructure cannot handle the population boom and that our fresh water resources will be at high risk for contamination. Our waste water system is in desperate need of upgrades and the population increase threatens to cause overflow and run off which could permanently pollute our fresh water lens. The increase in demand for fresh water will require that we dig up 22 new water wells especially to serve the military population up north, but several experts believe that digging so many new wells in close proximity to each other puts us at high risk of salt water contamination. Once a fresh water well is contaminated by salt water, the effects are irreversible. Officials at the Guam Waterworks Authority claim that we have more than enough water to handle the burden of 80,000 additional people, but the DEIS has plans for a desalinization plant, which is normally only used if fresh water resources are limited or jeopardized. In addition, the US EPA predicts that without infrastructural upgrades to our water system, the population outside the bases will experience a 13.1 million gallon water shortage per day in 2014. And this is where the battle gets interesting.
Though it seems that the odds are already stacked against us and that we can rely on no one but ourselves, we have found that special interest groups like the Guam Chamber of Commerce and the Guam Visitors Bureau have been avid proponents of the military buildup. They target our marginalized population enticing them with dreams of economic prosperity. Over 25 percent of Guam's population lives below the poverty line and poverty is possibly the most powerful weapon in conquering a people.
These special interest groups and even some government officials including our Governor and our representative in congress prey on our people, dangling money over their heads while unemployment looms in the background like the Gestapo. These house slaves promise that life will be so much better with the buildup and threaten that foreign countries will invade if the buildup does not happen. We are being subjugated by US imperialism and dependency and our own people have become our own worst enemy. Right now, our representative in congress claims that the people of Guam welcome this buildup with open arms and that we will gladly "take one for the team." But we have never really been a part of America's Team. We are like the black athletes of the 30's and 40's whose accolades on the field were heralded, but couldn't even get a cab off the field.
We, the people, have found ourselves backed into a corner, deserted on the battlefield, left to fight the world's largest superpower. It is truly a case of David vs. Goliath. Though the military buildup on Guam seems like a losing battle, this terroristic threat to our homeland has caused an uprising among the youth and many have stepped up to fight and defend our island and its people. But we cannot win this alone, so we are calling on our brothers and sisters from across the globe; those of you who know the bitter taste of oppression, we urge you fight alongside us in solidarity. We want this buildup no more than Okinawa wants the Marines to stay put. The military has already stolen almost 30 percent of the total land mass in Guam. We cannot allow them to take even more from us. We have sacrificed time and again for a country that has led us astray with empty promises and half-truths; who have held us hostage with US citizenship, fear, and economic dependency. We need your help. We need environmental law experts to help us take this issue to court. We need media support to get our message out to the rest of the world. We need more representation and influence to help us fight in congress and the senate. We need the international community to help us stay afloat and not allow us to sink into a sea of indifference, ignorance, and apathy. I pray that these words do not fall on deaf ears and that the world will come to the aid of a people and an island who have been mistreated for over 500 years of uninterrupted colonization. Please do not allow Guam to sink into oblivion.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
UN advisor tells Guam to stay focused
UN advisor tells Guam to stay focused
Monday, 09 November 2009 04:32 by Jude Lizama | Variety News Staff
THE military buildup should not distract Guam from its quest to achieve self-rule, according to Dr. Carlyle Corbin, United Nations advisor and expert on political self-determination.
“I think that the issue of the military is a reality,” Corbin said. “What is important is that it does not detract from the natural evolution of the territory to be self-governing and that the self-determination process will not be inordinately affected by what is taking place.”
Corbin discussed self-determination issues at the Chamorro Summit Workshop III on Saturday. The program was entitled “Chamorro Self-Determination: Strategically Planning for our Future.”
The workshops, hosted through the cooperation of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice and UOG’s Division of Social Work, focused on local efforts to achieve self determination relative to processes of the United Nations. Corbin addressed military initiatives amid efforts to achieve full self governance.
Additionally, Corbin stated governments that possess a firm base and more permanent status may possibly have greater opportunities to influence and negotiate with the military. He emphasized the importance of this aspect as a part of achieving self-determination.
Corbin told the Variety that “The U.N. essentially serves as the basis of authority for territories to move from colonial or dependency status to that of full self-governance.”
Additionally, the U.N. advisor explained the U.N. is the organization which “focuses intents and provides the parameters for moving forward” and that the UN has a listing of non-self governing territories that are placed by the countries which “administer them.”
The U.S. placed many of these territories on that list back in 1946. While a number of them have been removed by achieving self government; the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, New Caledonia and many others remain.
“My role was really to bring information on some of the experiences that I’ve had working with on the issue of self determination on behalf of my own territory, the U.S. Virgin Islands. Our relationship with the United States is virtually identical,” Corbin explained.
“We have an organic act, you have an organic act. We go through the United Nations; we fall on the same list of non-self governing territories. All of those things make it very important to engage one another.”
Monday, 09 November 2009 04:32 by Jude Lizama | Variety News Staff
THE military buildup should not distract Guam from its quest to achieve self-rule, according to Dr. Carlyle Corbin, United Nations advisor and expert on political self-determination.
“I think that the issue of the military is a reality,” Corbin said. “What is important is that it does not detract from the natural evolution of the territory to be self-governing and that the self-determination process will not be inordinately affected by what is taking place.”
Corbin discussed self-determination issues at the Chamorro Summit Workshop III on Saturday. The program was entitled “Chamorro Self-Determination: Strategically Planning for our Future.”
The workshops, hosted through the cooperation of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice and UOG’s Division of Social Work, focused on local efforts to achieve self determination relative to processes of the United Nations. Corbin addressed military initiatives amid efforts to achieve full self governance.
Additionally, Corbin stated governments that possess a firm base and more permanent status may possibly have greater opportunities to influence and negotiate with the military. He emphasized the importance of this aspect as a part of achieving self-determination.
Corbin told the Variety that “The U.N. essentially serves as the basis of authority for territories to move from colonial or dependency status to that of full self-governance.”
Additionally, the U.N. advisor explained the U.N. is the organization which “focuses intents and provides the parameters for moving forward” and that the UN has a listing of non-self governing territories that are placed by the countries which “administer them.”
The U.S. placed many of these territories on that list back in 1946. While a number of them have been removed by achieving self government; the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, New Caledonia and many others remain.
“My role was really to bring information on some of the experiences that I’ve had working with on the issue of self determination on behalf of my own territory, the U.S. Virgin Islands. Our relationship with the United States is virtually identical,” Corbin explained.
“We have an organic act, you have an organic act. We go through the United Nations; we fall on the same list of non-self governing territories. All of those things make it very important to engage one another.”
Monday, October 12, 2009
Guam and Its Three Empires
Guam and Its Three Empires
Few peoples in the world have had continued colonial status for the past 340 years. However, the Chamorro people can claim this unfortunate distinction. It all began when Ferdinand Magellan, and his three small ships stumbled upon the Mariana Islands March 13, 1521. Totally exhausted, sick with scurvy and half-starved, Magellan and his crew were fed and the ship’s stores replenished. Magellan stayed just long enough to take vengeance on the islanders’ for their theft of his ship’s skiff, and, reportedly, carve out human entrails for his sick crew.
It was a tragic beginning to colonization for the Chamorros.
Spanish take charge
Because of the Chamorros’ perceived aggressive ways, Magellan was not interested in claiming the islands for Spain. Sailing out of New Spain (Mexico), Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, a prosperous landowner from Mexico City, officially took Guam as a formal possession of Spain in 1565. But a continuous Spanish colonial presence did not begin on Guam until 1668, after King Philip IV of Spain approved Father Diego Luis de San Vitores’, S.J., mission to Guam. San Vitores needed several years of heavy-duty politicking and persuading to get his vision funded. For this he depended on Queen Mariana and her Jesuit confessor, Father J. E. Nithard.
Fr. San Vitores was Guam’s first governor (head of colony) and his main order of business was, of course, to Christianize the Chamorros. This led to the priest’s murder in 1672 by Chief Matapang and sixteen years of Chamorro resistance that was brutally put down by Spanish force of arms.
Three priests—Frs. Francisco Solano, Francisco Ezquerra, and Peter Coemans—followed San Vitores as head of colony till 1674 when the first military man, Captain Damian de Esplana, originally assigned to the Philippines was stranded on Guam. Because of his military rank, the Jesuits requested Esplana to serve as head of the mission.
It was not until 1681 that Captain Antonio Saravia was appointed the first official Military Head Commander (later governor) of Guam upon the authority of King Charles II of Spain. One of Saravia’s first acts was to persuade all the Chamorro leaders, then loyal to Spain, to take and sign an oath of allegiance. They promised to “abide by any law which His Majesty might be pleased to impose upon us.” This show of loyalty was celebrated with cannon and musket fire, shouts, and triton trumpet shell blasts. For the next 217 years and fifty-some foreign governors, the Chamorros would live as both citizens and subjects of Spain.
In 1684, after sixteen years of war, the Spanish had largely subdued the Chamorros and imposed a governing structure. A network of dirt tracks connected five districts each with a pueblo, or main village, and church. A priest and a soldier were assigned to each pueblo. Leading Chamorros were identified and designated as principales. The principales were assigned some village duties and used to persuade all the Chamorros in the surrounding area to take up residence in the main village.
The village priest headed both the church and school with upkeep being done by Chamorros. In 1680 Guam had nine priests and three lay brothers and a population of about 7,000. This was a considerable reduction from the 50,000 estimated at San Vitores’ arrival. The population, reduced by the Spanish-Chamorro War, was further reduced by epidemics in 1688 and 1693 that began from diseases brought by Spanish ships.
The 217 years of Spanish colonial rule on Guam was theocratic and autocratic. Toward the end of that period, however, a royal order of 1885 introduced an element of village-level democracy. The order allowed free use of crown land by Chamorros and the election of local officials called gobernadorcillo, or mayor, from among the principalia class. This was a major change for the islands, with elected officials replacing appointed ones.
Americans were next
Such a change, important as it was, had no impact on the continued decline of Spain’s empire, by 1898 but a shadow of its former self. Aggressive and ambitious, the United States had established itself as a player in the arena of world geopolitics. Irritated by Spain’s autocratic rule of Cuba and the mysterious explosion that destroyed the battleship, USS Maine, then in Havana’s harbor, the U.S. declared war on Spain in April 1898.
In June, Captain Henry Glass quickly took Guam and sailed on to the Philippines. In August a protocol was signed ending the fighting and in December the Treaty of Paris was agreed to whereby the U.S paid $20 million reparations for all the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
The transfer of Guam’s sovereignty did not involve the Chamorros and other than the assignment to the U.S. Congress the power to determine the civil rights and political status of the Chamorros, there was no explicit obligation placed on the U.S. to cultivate self-government or improve the political, social, or economic well-being of the indigenous people. The authority to administer Guam was soon transferred to the U.S. Navy, whose appointed governors would assume complete and unquestioned authority of Guam and its people. From the beginning, Guam was and still is but a piece of real estate needed by the American empire for its strategic purposes.
Guam’s first U.S. Naval governor arrived in August 1899 and the last one ended his term when the Organic Act was signed in 1949. As with the Spanish, American military rule was autocratic, the one-man rule of a commanding naval officer. Be that as it may, individual naval governors took initiatives to enlarge Chamorro participation in government.
Governor Roy Smith (1916-1918) established the first Guam Congress. This group of thirty-four members was made up of village commissioners, deputy commissioners and other prominent Chamorros, all appointed by the governor. However, the “legislators” were told in no uncertain terms that they were merely an advisory body with no authority to debate political rights or status issues.
Guam’s greatest naval governor was Willis W. Bradley, 1929-1931. Bradley worked to forward recommendations to Washington, D.C. that Guam’s people be granted U.S. citizenship and a bill of rights. While his efforts were ignored by U.S. leadership, he went ahead and established Guam citizenship and a Guam Bill of Rights. He reconstituted the Guam Congress as a bicameral elected body and called for the direct election of village commissioners. However, the Navy brass in Washington was not happy with Bradley’s initiatives in the area of expanded civil rights for Guam’s people and recalled him at the end of his term.
World War II brought Japanese
U.S. naval rule of Guam was violently interrupted by the 1941 attack of the Empire of Japan’s forces. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s 54th Naval Defense Guard ruled Guam for the purpose of establishing the Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. This ideology was intended to liberate Asian peoples from European colonialism and establish one political and economic bloc centered on Japan.
Japan’s grand vision resulted in repressive and harsh rule. Japanese forces would occupy Guam for nearly three years between December 1941 and July 1944. Attempts to implement the sphere ideology came crashing to the ground as an occupying military government had to immediately transform itself into a fighting force which was crushed in less than a month by the overwhelming power of the U.S. military. Guam then reverted to the American empire.
Americans come back
What remained steady and increasingly persistent both before and after the Pacific War was the Chamorro call for political rights and civilian rule. This began in 1901 with a petition calling for a permanent civilian government. In 1917 at the opening of the first Guam Congress, Tomas Calvo Anderson asserted:
It is high time that there be granted to the people, respectful, loyal and devoted to the Great American nation, the same rights that have been granted to the different states, territories and possessions… Our ideals are realized by the giving of that which by right should be granted, that is to say, the defining of the status of the Chamorro people.
Again in 1926 and 1929, the Guam Congress adopted and endorsed petitions for the grant of U.S. citizenship to Chamorros. A few years later, the Guam Recorder of 1933 contained two statements, one by congressmen Manuel F. Ulloa and Dr. Ramon M. Sablan and a second by Guam Postmaster James Underwood calling for American citizenship. In response, naval Governor Captain George A. Alexander endorsed this effort by transmitting the citizenship petition to the White House signed by 2,000 Chamorros.
Dead silence from Washington D.C.
In spite of dead silence from Washington, D.C. in response to all these petitions, the push for citizenship and civil rights continued with the efforts of local political leaders and men of prominence. In 1936, Baltazar J. Bordallo and Francisco Baza Leon Guerrero made the long trip to Washington using donations from school children and their own funds to personally lobby the U.S. Congress for a citizenship bill. Introduced into both the 75th and 76th Congresses of 1937 and 1939, the bill eventually failed because of navy opposition and the specter of war.
After the war—one during which Chamorros demonstrated great loyalty to the U.S. – some 600 Guamanian war veterans could and did become naturalized American citizens. In a January 1947 resolution the Guam Congress requested Governor Charles A. Pownall (a vice admiral) to ask the U.S. Congress to grant American citizenship to Guamanians and pass organic legislation establishing civilian government. The Navy Department postponed action on this request while it awaited the results of the Hopkins Study concerning Guam and American Samoa. That study had been commissioned by President Harry S. Truman’s secretary of defense to inspect and recommend changes in the government of American Samoa and Guam as well as one completed by a cabinet level committee.
Both groups made nearly identical recommendations. They proposed that congressional legislation provide civilian government via an organic act, American citizenship, a bill of rights, and local legislative powers be established by law. Friends of Guam on the U.S. mainland, including former Governor Willis W. Bradley, then a congressman from California, were lobbying for these changes and making Guam’s plight a national issue.
However, what really broke the navy opposition and got President Truman’s attention was the 1949 walkout of the Guam Congress over a serious disagreement with Governor Charles A. Pownall. Besides refusing to grant subpoena powers to the congress — the reason for the walkout — he also declared their seats vacant and stated that he would fill them by appointment.
The walkout and the heavy military hand were reported in both The New York Times and The Washington Post and caught Truman’s attention. In early 1949 the president ordered the Department of Interior to draft an organic act for Guam, approved it in May, and had it introduced into the 81st Congress. Hearings were held on Guam in late 1949 that led to numerous changes to the draft. Even the navy testified in favor of the organic legislation, after all it already had about thirty-six percent of Guam’s land under its control.
Organic Act signed
In mid-1950, the U.S. Congress passed the Guam Organic Act and President Truman signed it into law on August 1. Only one Chamorro was present at this event. This was former Guam Congressman Carlos P. Taitano, then an American citizen and student at the Georgetown University Law School. Taitano had been the key contact to the national press that got Guam’s plight into the newspaper headlines. At a 1998 celebration of the forty-eighth anniversary of the act, he publicly stated that the approval of the Organic Act:
...was the beginning of the decolonization of Guam. Unfortunately, almost half a century after… the Chamorros are still trying to set up an island government without the bounds or restraints of colonialism. It is our hope that before another fifty years have passed… we would see the passage of the Guam Commonwealth Act, now before the U.S. Congress.
The major provisions of Guam’s Organic Act provided American citizenship; a bill of rights; a civilian administration and local three branch government that included a civilian executive that retained many of the powers of the former naval governor and who, just as under the U.S. Navy, would be appointed by the U.S. president, a 21-seat unicameral legislature, and a judiciary.
The act also identified and reserved over thirty-six percent of Guam’s land for U.S. military use and declared Guam to be an unincorporated Territory of the U.S. The act has been amended numerous times by Congress since 1950; notable amendments included those for an elected governor and lieutenant governor, an elected delegate to the U.S. Congress, and most recently, a Guam Supreme court as a separate and pinnacle body of the island judiciary system. Although these changes improved the Organic Act, the government was not yet one of or by the people.
Still under United Nations watch
Chamorros certainly accepted the 1950 act as a large political step forward since it lifted the heavy yolk of military rule. Nevertheless, they did not have an opportunity to vote on it. Strictly speaking, an act of self-determination had not been taken and Guam remains on the United Nation’s list of non-self-governing territories. As an unincorporated territory, Guam continued as a strategically located piece of real estate belonging to the American empire.
The Organic Act of 1950 was a major step forward for Guam’s home rule and a model for the rest of the Pacific at that time. The act greatly accelerated political activity with the formal establishment of the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1960s, fierce competition (bi-annually) for legislature seats, and beginning in 1970, battles for the governor and lieutenant governor offices (every four years). Control of the legislature and governorship has oscillated between the Republicans and Democrats, stimulated by dynamic personalities such as Democrat Ricardo J. Bordallo and Republican Joseph F. Ada. The 1998 gubernatorial contest between Democrat Carl Gutierrez, the incumbent, and Ada, attempting to make a political come-back, culminated in an unprecedented post-election controversy that made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States for final resolution in favor of Gutierrez in 1999.
The same excitement evolved in the heated 2002 race between former Congressman Robert Underwood and his running mate, Senator Tom Ada, as they went nose-to-nose with Senators Felix Camacho and Kaleo Moylan, the sons of Guam’s first elected governor and lieutenant governor. In 2002, the sons won, but it took some underhanded campaign maneuvers to pull off an upset. Camacho and Underwood faced off again in 2006 with different running mates. Camacho won again by a slim margin.
Other islands of Micronesia unshackled
In contrast to Guam’s “status of no status,” the island peoples of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) surrounding Guam were not shackled by the unincorporated territory doctrine of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Insular Cases. According to this doctrine, the U.S. Congress retains plenary authority over all unincorporated territories (such territories were not recognized as integral parts of the United States) and could decide which Constitutional protections and rights it might (or might not) extend to such territories. In contrast, the peoples of the TTPI were governed by the 1947 Trusteeship Agreement which, unlike the Treaty of Paris, clearly delineated obligations of the U.S. government that included “the development of the inhabitants of the trust territory toward self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of the trust territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.”
Because of this fundamental difference in legal doctrine, the TTPI leaders could and did negotiate political status change with the U.S. on a more or less equal basis. In negotiations with the U.S., the TTPI leaders (excepting the Northern Mariana Islands) rejected both territorial status and commonwealth status. Finally, in the mid 1980s (1994 for Palau) the various TTPI entities approved and signed compacts of free association with the U.S. that resulted in political independence. In the case of the Northern Mariana Islands (also a part of the TTPI), the leadership there concluded a covenant agreement that established a commonwealth relationship with the U.S. in 1975.
All the while, the U.S. citizens on Guam stood by and watched amazed and even angered at how they were being ignored. Guam delegate to the U.S. Congress, Antonio Won Pat remarked:
Whatever the needs—whether real or imagined—of the Pentagon in the western Pacific, the willingness of Washington to deal so generously with non-citizens while denying their fellow Americans equal treatment can only be viewed with suspicion and resentment by the people of Guam.
Ford approves Commonwealth but plan shelved
The highest reaches of the U.S. government got wind of this suspicion and resentment. In response, the National Security Council commissioned a study in September 1973 of U.S. national objectives, policies and programs for Guam. After the resignation of President Richard Nixon, President Gerald Ford reviewed the study, approved it, and directed that:
The U.S. negotiator should seek agreement with Guamanian representatives on a commonwealth arrangement no less favorable than that which we are negotiating with the Northern Marianas.
President Ford’s directive of February 1, 1975, issued through Secretary State Henry A. Kissinger was never carried out and the Guam study and the directive remained secret for nearly thirty years. Furthermore, the Department of Interior essentially subverted President Ford’s directive by never informing Guam’s political leaders of the study or presidential action on it.
Throughout the period 1980-1997, Chamorro leaders embarked on a serious effort to improve Guam’s political status through the Commission on Self-Determination that was established by the Guam Legislature in 1980. Totally unaware of President Ford’s directive of 1975, the Commission wrote a draft commonwealth act that was approved by the Guam electorate. The draft was introduced into every session of the U.S. Congress during the tenures of delegates Vicente Blaz (1985-1992) and Robert Underwood (1993-2002).
Guam’s commonwealth quest came to a standstill in 1997. At Congressional hearings on the act, John Garamendi, representing the Clinton Administration, rejected the provisions to do with Chamorro self-determination as well as immigration and labor control in the commonwealth bill. Congress remained uncommitted. At the present time, Guam’s government and people remain a creature of the Organic Act and a piece of property of the American empire. Speaking very recently about the Organic Act and political change, former Congressman Underwood summarized the U.S.-Guam situation in these words:
Today, I think people want the relationship between the federal and Guam governments defined so that it can’t be changed arbitrarily. We hope to increase our autonomy and enhance our participation in federal decision making in a way that enhances our economy as well as our autonomy.
By Donald R. Shuster, Ed.D.
For further reading
Leibowitz, Arnold H. Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States Territorial Relation. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989.
McHenry, Donald F. Micronesia: Trust Betrayed New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1975.
Pacific Daily News, “Centennial Timeline,” June 21, 1998.
Rogers, Robert F. Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam. Honolulu:, University of Hawai`i Press, 1995.
Taitano, Carlos P. “American Citizenship: A Centennial Commemoration.” Keynote address at a public meeting during the centennial commemoration, Plaza de Espana, Hagåtña, GU, August 1, 1998.
“Trusteeship Agreement.” In the 1980 Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands 33rd Annual Report. Washington, D.C.: Department of State Publication 9181, 1981.
Underwood, Robert A. Brief remarks at a public meeting, the Guam Humanities Council Forum on the Organic Act, University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Lecture Hall, December 7, 2005.
Willens, Howard P. and Ballendorf, Dirk A. _The Secret Guam Study: How President Ford’s 1975 Approval of Commonwealth Was Blocked by Federal Officials. Mangilao, GU: University of Guam Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Division of Historic Preservation, 2004.
Few peoples in the world have had continued colonial status for the past 340 years. However, the Chamorro people can claim this unfortunate distinction. It all began when Ferdinand Magellan, and his three small ships stumbled upon the Mariana Islands March 13, 1521. Totally exhausted, sick with scurvy and half-starved, Magellan and his crew were fed and the ship’s stores replenished. Magellan stayed just long enough to take vengeance on the islanders’ for their theft of his ship’s skiff, and, reportedly, carve out human entrails for his sick crew.
It was a tragic beginning to colonization for the Chamorros.
Spanish take charge
Because of the Chamorros’ perceived aggressive ways, Magellan was not interested in claiming the islands for Spain. Sailing out of New Spain (Mexico), Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, a prosperous landowner from Mexico City, officially took Guam as a formal possession of Spain in 1565. But a continuous Spanish colonial presence did not begin on Guam until 1668, after King Philip IV of Spain approved Father Diego Luis de San Vitores’, S.J., mission to Guam. San Vitores needed several years of heavy-duty politicking and persuading to get his vision funded. For this he depended on Queen Mariana and her Jesuit confessor, Father J. E. Nithard.
Fr. San Vitores was Guam’s first governor (head of colony) and his main order of business was, of course, to Christianize the Chamorros. This led to the priest’s murder in 1672 by Chief Matapang and sixteen years of Chamorro resistance that was brutally put down by Spanish force of arms.
Three priests—Frs. Francisco Solano, Francisco Ezquerra, and Peter Coemans—followed San Vitores as head of colony till 1674 when the first military man, Captain Damian de Esplana, originally assigned to the Philippines was stranded on Guam. Because of his military rank, the Jesuits requested Esplana to serve as head of the mission.
It was not until 1681 that Captain Antonio Saravia was appointed the first official Military Head Commander (later governor) of Guam upon the authority of King Charles II of Spain. One of Saravia’s first acts was to persuade all the Chamorro leaders, then loyal to Spain, to take and sign an oath of allegiance. They promised to “abide by any law which His Majesty might be pleased to impose upon us.” This show of loyalty was celebrated with cannon and musket fire, shouts, and triton trumpet shell blasts. For the next 217 years and fifty-some foreign governors, the Chamorros would live as both citizens and subjects of Spain.
In 1684, after sixteen years of war, the Spanish had largely subdued the Chamorros and imposed a governing structure. A network of dirt tracks connected five districts each with a pueblo, or main village, and church. A priest and a soldier were assigned to each pueblo. Leading Chamorros were identified and designated as principales. The principales were assigned some village duties and used to persuade all the Chamorros in the surrounding area to take up residence in the main village.
The village priest headed both the church and school with upkeep being done by Chamorros. In 1680 Guam had nine priests and three lay brothers and a population of about 7,000. This was a considerable reduction from the 50,000 estimated at San Vitores’ arrival. The population, reduced by the Spanish-Chamorro War, was further reduced by epidemics in 1688 and 1693 that began from diseases brought by Spanish ships.
The 217 years of Spanish colonial rule on Guam was theocratic and autocratic. Toward the end of that period, however, a royal order of 1885 introduced an element of village-level democracy. The order allowed free use of crown land by Chamorros and the election of local officials called gobernadorcillo, or mayor, from among the principalia class. This was a major change for the islands, with elected officials replacing appointed ones.
Americans were next
Such a change, important as it was, had no impact on the continued decline of Spain’s empire, by 1898 but a shadow of its former self. Aggressive and ambitious, the United States had established itself as a player in the arena of world geopolitics. Irritated by Spain’s autocratic rule of Cuba and the mysterious explosion that destroyed the battleship, USS Maine, then in Havana’s harbor, the U.S. declared war on Spain in April 1898.
In June, Captain Henry Glass quickly took Guam and sailed on to the Philippines. In August a protocol was signed ending the fighting and in December the Treaty of Paris was agreed to whereby the U.S paid $20 million reparations for all the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
The transfer of Guam’s sovereignty did not involve the Chamorros and other than the assignment to the U.S. Congress the power to determine the civil rights and political status of the Chamorros, there was no explicit obligation placed on the U.S. to cultivate self-government or improve the political, social, or economic well-being of the indigenous people. The authority to administer Guam was soon transferred to the U.S. Navy, whose appointed governors would assume complete and unquestioned authority of Guam and its people. From the beginning, Guam was and still is but a piece of real estate needed by the American empire for its strategic purposes.
Guam’s first U.S. Naval governor arrived in August 1899 and the last one ended his term when the Organic Act was signed in 1949. As with the Spanish, American military rule was autocratic, the one-man rule of a commanding naval officer. Be that as it may, individual naval governors took initiatives to enlarge Chamorro participation in government.
Governor Roy Smith (1916-1918) established the first Guam Congress. This group of thirty-four members was made up of village commissioners, deputy commissioners and other prominent Chamorros, all appointed by the governor. However, the “legislators” were told in no uncertain terms that they were merely an advisory body with no authority to debate political rights or status issues.
Guam’s greatest naval governor was Willis W. Bradley, 1929-1931. Bradley worked to forward recommendations to Washington, D.C. that Guam’s people be granted U.S. citizenship and a bill of rights. While his efforts were ignored by U.S. leadership, he went ahead and established Guam citizenship and a Guam Bill of Rights. He reconstituted the Guam Congress as a bicameral elected body and called for the direct election of village commissioners. However, the Navy brass in Washington was not happy with Bradley’s initiatives in the area of expanded civil rights for Guam’s people and recalled him at the end of his term.
World War II brought Japanese
U.S. naval rule of Guam was violently interrupted by the 1941 attack of the Empire of Japan’s forces. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s 54th Naval Defense Guard ruled Guam for the purpose of establishing the Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. This ideology was intended to liberate Asian peoples from European colonialism and establish one political and economic bloc centered on Japan.
Japan’s grand vision resulted in repressive and harsh rule. Japanese forces would occupy Guam for nearly three years between December 1941 and July 1944. Attempts to implement the sphere ideology came crashing to the ground as an occupying military government had to immediately transform itself into a fighting force which was crushed in less than a month by the overwhelming power of the U.S. military. Guam then reverted to the American empire.
Americans come back
What remained steady and increasingly persistent both before and after the Pacific War was the Chamorro call for political rights and civilian rule. This began in 1901 with a petition calling for a permanent civilian government. In 1917 at the opening of the first Guam Congress, Tomas Calvo Anderson asserted:
It is high time that there be granted to the people, respectful, loyal and devoted to the Great American nation, the same rights that have been granted to the different states, territories and possessions… Our ideals are realized by the giving of that which by right should be granted, that is to say, the defining of the status of the Chamorro people.
Again in 1926 and 1929, the Guam Congress adopted and endorsed petitions for the grant of U.S. citizenship to Chamorros. A few years later, the Guam Recorder of 1933 contained two statements, one by congressmen Manuel F. Ulloa and Dr. Ramon M. Sablan and a second by Guam Postmaster James Underwood calling for American citizenship. In response, naval Governor Captain George A. Alexander endorsed this effort by transmitting the citizenship petition to the White House signed by 2,000 Chamorros.
Dead silence from Washington D.C.
In spite of dead silence from Washington, D.C. in response to all these petitions, the push for citizenship and civil rights continued with the efforts of local political leaders and men of prominence. In 1936, Baltazar J. Bordallo and Francisco Baza Leon Guerrero made the long trip to Washington using donations from school children and their own funds to personally lobby the U.S. Congress for a citizenship bill. Introduced into both the 75th and 76th Congresses of 1937 and 1939, the bill eventually failed because of navy opposition and the specter of war.
After the war—one during which Chamorros demonstrated great loyalty to the U.S. – some 600 Guamanian war veterans could and did become naturalized American citizens. In a January 1947 resolution the Guam Congress requested Governor Charles A. Pownall (a vice admiral) to ask the U.S. Congress to grant American citizenship to Guamanians and pass organic legislation establishing civilian government. The Navy Department postponed action on this request while it awaited the results of the Hopkins Study concerning Guam and American Samoa. That study had been commissioned by President Harry S. Truman’s secretary of defense to inspect and recommend changes in the government of American Samoa and Guam as well as one completed by a cabinet level committee.
Both groups made nearly identical recommendations. They proposed that congressional legislation provide civilian government via an organic act, American citizenship, a bill of rights, and local legislative powers be established by law. Friends of Guam on the U.S. mainland, including former Governor Willis W. Bradley, then a congressman from California, were lobbying for these changes and making Guam’s plight a national issue.
However, what really broke the navy opposition and got President Truman’s attention was the 1949 walkout of the Guam Congress over a serious disagreement with Governor Charles A. Pownall. Besides refusing to grant subpoena powers to the congress — the reason for the walkout — he also declared their seats vacant and stated that he would fill them by appointment.
The walkout and the heavy military hand were reported in both The New York Times and The Washington Post and caught Truman’s attention. In early 1949 the president ordered the Department of Interior to draft an organic act for Guam, approved it in May, and had it introduced into the 81st Congress. Hearings were held on Guam in late 1949 that led to numerous changes to the draft. Even the navy testified in favor of the organic legislation, after all it already had about thirty-six percent of Guam’s land under its control.
Organic Act signed
In mid-1950, the U.S. Congress passed the Guam Organic Act and President Truman signed it into law on August 1. Only one Chamorro was present at this event. This was former Guam Congressman Carlos P. Taitano, then an American citizen and student at the Georgetown University Law School. Taitano had been the key contact to the national press that got Guam’s plight into the newspaper headlines. At a 1998 celebration of the forty-eighth anniversary of the act, he publicly stated that the approval of the Organic Act:
...was the beginning of the decolonization of Guam. Unfortunately, almost half a century after… the Chamorros are still trying to set up an island government without the bounds or restraints of colonialism. It is our hope that before another fifty years have passed… we would see the passage of the Guam Commonwealth Act, now before the U.S. Congress.
The major provisions of Guam’s Organic Act provided American citizenship; a bill of rights; a civilian administration and local three branch government that included a civilian executive that retained many of the powers of the former naval governor and who, just as under the U.S. Navy, would be appointed by the U.S. president, a 21-seat unicameral legislature, and a judiciary.
The act also identified and reserved over thirty-six percent of Guam’s land for U.S. military use and declared Guam to be an unincorporated Territory of the U.S. The act has been amended numerous times by Congress since 1950; notable amendments included those for an elected governor and lieutenant governor, an elected delegate to the U.S. Congress, and most recently, a Guam Supreme court as a separate and pinnacle body of the island judiciary system. Although these changes improved the Organic Act, the government was not yet one of or by the people.
Still under United Nations watch
Chamorros certainly accepted the 1950 act as a large political step forward since it lifted the heavy yolk of military rule. Nevertheless, they did not have an opportunity to vote on it. Strictly speaking, an act of self-determination had not been taken and Guam remains on the United Nation’s list of non-self-governing territories. As an unincorporated territory, Guam continued as a strategically located piece of real estate belonging to the American empire.
The Organic Act of 1950 was a major step forward for Guam’s home rule and a model for the rest of the Pacific at that time. The act greatly accelerated political activity with the formal establishment of the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1960s, fierce competition (bi-annually) for legislature seats, and beginning in 1970, battles for the governor and lieutenant governor offices (every four years). Control of the legislature and governorship has oscillated between the Republicans and Democrats, stimulated by dynamic personalities such as Democrat Ricardo J. Bordallo and Republican Joseph F. Ada. The 1998 gubernatorial contest between Democrat Carl Gutierrez, the incumbent, and Ada, attempting to make a political come-back, culminated in an unprecedented post-election controversy that made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States for final resolution in favor of Gutierrez in 1999.
The same excitement evolved in the heated 2002 race between former Congressman Robert Underwood and his running mate, Senator Tom Ada, as they went nose-to-nose with Senators Felix Camacho and Kaleo Moylan, the sons of Guam’s first elected governor and lieutenant governor. In 2002, the sons won, but it took some underhanded campaign maneuvers to pull off an upset. Camacho and Underwood faced off again in 2006 with different running mates. Camacho won again by a slim margin.
Other islands of Micronesia unshackled
In contrast to Guam’s “status of no status,” the island peoples of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) surrounding Guam were not shackled by the unincorporated territory doctrine of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Insular Cases. According to this doctrine, the U.S. Congress retains plenary authority over all unincorporated territories (such territories were not recognized as integral parts of the United States) and could decide which Constitutional protections and rights it might (or might not) extend to such territories. In contrast, the peoples of the TTPI were governed by the 1947 Trusteeship Agreement which, unlike the Treaty of Paris, clearly delineated obligations of the U.S. government that included “the development of the inhabitants of the trust territory toward self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of the trust territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.”
Because of this fundamental difference in legal doctrine, the TTPI leaders could and did negotiate political status change with the U.S. on a more or less equal basis. In negotiations with the U.S., the TTPI leaders (excepting the Northern Mariana Islands) rejected both territorial status and commonwealth status. Finally, in the mid 1980s (1994 for Palau) the various TTPI entities approved and signed compacts of free association with the U.S. that resulted in political independence. In the case of the Northern Mariana Islands (also a part of the TTPI), the leadership there concluded a covenant agreement that established a commonwealth relationship with the U.S. in 1975.
All the while, the U.S. citizens on Guam stood by and watched amazed and even angered at how they were being ignored. Guam delegate to the U.S. Congress, Antonio Won Pat remarked:
Whatever the needs—whether real or imagined—of the Pentagon in the western Pacific, the willingness of Washington to deal so generously with non-citizens while denying their fellow Americans equal treatment can only be viewed with suspicion and resentment by the people of Guam.
Ford approves Commonwealth but plan shelved
The highest reaches of the U.S. government got wind of this suspicion and resentment. In response, the National Security Council commissioned a study in September 1973 of U.S. national objectives, policies and programs for Guam. After the resignation of President Richard Nixon, President Gerald Ford reviewed the study, approved it, and directed that:
The U.S. negotiator should seek agreement with Guamanian representatives on a commonwealth arrangement no less favorable than that which we are negotiating with the Northern Marianas.
President Ford’s directive of February 1, 1975, issued through Secretary State Henry A. Kissinger was never carried out and the Guam study and the directive remained secret for nearly thirty years. Furthermore, the Department of Interior essentially subverted President Ford’s directive by never informing Guam’s political leaders of the study or presidential action on it.
Throughout the period 1980-1997, Chamorro leaders embarked on a serious effort to improve Guam’s political status through the Commission on Self-Determination that was established by the Guam Legislature in 1980. Totally unaware of President Ford’s directive of 1975, the Commission wrote a draft commonwealth act that was approved by the Guam electorate. The draft was introduced into every session of the U.S. Congress during the tenures of delegates Vicente Blaz (1985-1992) and Robert Underwood (1993-2002).
Guam’s commonwealth quest came to a standstill in 1997. At Congressional hearings on the act, John Garamendi, representing the Clinton Administration, rejected the provisions to do with Chamorro self-determination as well as immigration and labor control in the commonwealth bill. Congress remained uncommitted. At the present time, Guam’s government and people remain a creature of the Organic Act and a piece of property of the American empire. Speaking very recently about the Organic Act and political change, former Congressman Underwood summarized the U.S.-Guam situation in these words:
Today, I think people want the relationship between the federal and Guam governments defined so that it can’t be changed arbitrarily. We hope to increase our autonomy and enhance our participation in federal decision making in a way that enhances our economy as well as our autonomy.
By Donald R. Shuster, Ed.D.
For further reading
Leibowitz, Arnold H. Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States Territorial Relation. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989.
McHenry, Donald F. Micronesia: Trust Betrayed New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1975.
Pacific Daily News, “Centennial Timeline,” June 21, 1998.
Rogers, Robert F. Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam. Honolulu:, University of Hawai`i Press, 1995.
Taitano, Carlos P. “American Citizenship: A Centennial Commemoration.” Keynote address at a public meeting during the centennial commemoration, Plaza de Espana, Hagåtña, GU, August 1, 1998.
“Trusteeship Agreement.” In the 1980 Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands 33rd Annual Report. Washington, D.C.: Department of State Publication 9181, 1981.
Underwood, Robert A. Brief remarks at a public meeting, the Guam Humanities Council Forum on the Organic Act, University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Lecture Hall, December 7, 2005.
Willens, Howard P. and Ballendorf, Dirk A. _The Secret Guam Study: How President Ford’s 1975 Approval of Commonwealth Was Blocked by Federal Officials. Mangilao, GU: University of Guam Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Division of Historic Preservation, 2004.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Masses in New Caledonia strike against French colonizers
By G. Dunkel
Published Sep 10, 2009 11:23 PM
Since the beginning of August, the struggle of oppressed workers and youth in New Caledonia has brought tensions to heights not seen since this South Pacific island had an armed rebellion against France in the late 1980s.
Marches and street sit-ins have brought protesters into direct conflict with the police. At least two cops have been shot, and RFI reported Aug. 6 that 30 had been wounded. The left-wing union leading the struggle is the USTKE, the Union of Kanak Workers and the Exploited (Union syndicale des travailleurs kanaks et des exploités).
Kanak is the official name of the Indigenous people of the island.
New Caledonia is in reality a colony of France, with some special privileges due to a sharp struggle in the 1980s. Its economy, based on the production of nickel, has done very well recently. Growth was 5 percent a year between 2004 and 2008, and Nouméa, its capital, has set a French record for the most luxury cars per person.
The economic stakes for France in New Caledonia are high. It is the world’s fifth largest producer of nickel, a vital ingredient for stainless steel, and has the world’s second largest reserves. Wages in the nickel industry are high. This is why 800 to 1,200 Europeans—mainly from France—move to the island each month.
The Kanaks, especially the youth, leave school early and live on what the French call “small jobs,” or temporary work at low wages, and on what they can grow in their gardens. They are shoved into ghettoes with tiny houses or buildings that need renovation, far from the better neighborhoods, and lack the education and skills needed for better-paying, full-time jobs.
USTKE has community organizers who travel around to these neighborhoods, especially to help families of those arrested in the protests. (Le Monde, Aug. 23) USTKE rejects charges that it has manipulated the youth into protest and points to “colonial police repression” as the cause of the violence New Caledonia has suffered during August.
The spark for the current conflict was the firing of an airline worker, a member of USTKE, for “incompetence.” The union vigorously defended him with marches, protests and runway blockades.
In the course of the struggle, Gérard Jodar, the leader of USTKE, and some of his comrades invaded Nouméa’s airport runway and took refuge in planes where they were attacked by the cops. His swift sentence of a year in prison took into account what the court called his “previous acts of vandalism and blockades.” (Le Figaro, Aug. 25)
Jodar’s sentence was recently confirmed, but he and a number of comrades have an appeal hearing scheduled on Sept. 15. The USTKE called a demonstration Aug. 22 to not only demand their leader’s freedom but also to protest the high cost of living and the “colonialism” the French state is exhibiting in Nouméa.
A demonstration was held in Paris on Aug. 24 where the French left expressed solidarity with USTKE. Corrine Perron, a representative of USTKE in France, told the protest, “We gather together to denounce the colonial justice in Nouméa and the unjustifiable condemnation of union militants in New Caledonia. It is necessary to alert the public that New Caledonia not only faces the threat of swine flu but also the threat of police and judicial repression.” (Libération, Aug. 24)
Published Sep 10, 2009 11:23 PM
Since the beginning of August, the struggle of oppressed workers and youth in New Caledonia has brought tensions to heights not seen since this South Pacific island had an armed rebellion against France in the late 1980s.
Marches and street sit-ins have brought protesters into direct conflict with the police. At least two cops have been shot, and RFI reported Aug. 6 that 30 had been wounded. The left-wing union leading the struggle is the USTKE, the Union of Kanak Workers and the Exploited (Union syndicale des travailleurs kanaks et des exploités).
Kanak is the official name of the Indigenous people of the island.
New Caledonia is in reality a colony of France, with some special privileges due to a sharp struggle in the 1980s. Its economy, based on the production of nickel, has done very well recently. Growth was 5 percent a year between 2004 and 2008, and Nouméa, its capital, has set a French record for the most luxury cars per person.
The economic stakes for France in New Caledonia are high. It is the world’s fifth largest producer of nickel, a vital ingredient for stainless steel, and has the world’s second largest reserves. Wages in the nickel industry are high. This is why 800 to 1,200 Europeans—mainly from France—move to the island each month.
The Kanaks, especially the youth, leave school early and live on what the French call “small jobs,” or temporary work at low wages, and on what they can grow in their gardens. They are shoved into ghettoes with tiny houses or buildings that need renovation, far from the better neighborhoods, and lack the education and skills needed for better-paying, full-time jobs.
USTKE has community organizers who travel around to these neighborhoods, especially to help families of those arrested in the protests. (Le Monde, Aug. 23) USTKE rejects charges that it has manipulated the youth into protest and points to “colonial police repression” as the cause of the violence New Caledonia has suffered during August.
The spark for the current conflict was the firing of an airline worker, a member of USTKE, for “incompetence.” The union vigorously defended him with marches, protests and runway blockades.
In the course of the struggle, Gérard Jodar, the leader of USTKE, and some of his comrades invaded Nouméa’s airport runway and took refuge in planes where they were attacked by the cops. His swift sentence of a year in prison took into account what the court called his “previous acts of vandalism and blockades.” (Le Figaro, Aug. 25)
Jodar’s sentence was recently confirmed, but he and a number of comrades have an appeal hearing scheduled on Sept. 15. The USTKE called a demonstration Aug. 22 to not only demand their leader’s freedom but also to protest the high cost of living and the “colonialism” the French state is exhibiting in Nouméa.
A demonstration was held in Paris on Aug. 24 where the French left expressed solidarity with USTKE. Corrine Perron, a representative of USTKE in France, told the protest, “We gather together to denounce the colonial justice in Nouméa and the unjustifiable condemnation of union militants in New Caledonia. It is necessary to alert the public that New Caledonia not only faces the threat of swine flu but also the threat of police and judicial repression.” (Libération, Aug. 24)
Friday, August 28, 2009
Snubs and Ifit
Let’s Fix It: Of snubs and Ifit
Thursday, 27 August 2009
by Sen. Judi Guthertz
Marianas Variety
JUST a few weeks ago, a congressional delegation came to Guam and the six members of the U.S. Congress met with members of the Guam Legislature more than once during their visit, and in general were friendly, open and welcoming to the local community. Their presence and their actions made the people of Guam feel as if we are an actual part of the American Union.
Fast-forward to this week and the Washington establishment presents its other face, and offers a totally different experience. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus was here on Guam, and unfortunately he hardly paid attention to anyone who was not in uniform. He made some of us remember what it feels like to live in a colony.
Repeated attempts by my office to set up a meeting were ignored, and the Navy reportedly eliminated a visit with the Guam Legislature because of time constraints. There wasn’t even a courtesy telephone call or e-mail to say that the Navy secretary was going to bypass us, because of a trip to the CNMI and a meeting with the governor and
legislators there.
Sometimes, when we hear the tremendous buzz about the buildup, and we hear about all of the dollars and yen that will potentially be spent on Guam, we fall back into our “wishful thinking” mode. We think, “maybe our federal government will treat us fairly. Maybe they won’t ignore us this time. Maybe they won’t forget us this time. The reality is that we are an unincorporated territory, which is just a nice way of saying “colony.” We have a lesser status than the CNMI just 75 miles to the north.
The feds don’t need to talk to us, and they know they don’t have to. It’s frustrating that the CNMI has indigenous fishing rights and we don’t; they have relief from high ocean shipping rates and we don’t; they have SSI and we don’t.
And their legislators met with Secretary Mabus, and we didn’t.
Instead, we received an e-mail hours after the meeting didn’t take place, with an apology attached. We all know how it feels to be so unimportant that we don’t even rate an advisory call or e-mail in advance.
Despite the snub, we must move forward. Sen. Respicio and I are working with the University of Guam’s School of Business and Public Administration to put on the “Island Conference on the Guam Military Buildup: the Guam Perspective,” on November 19 and 20. We have invited President Obama, President Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, and a host of others. We will also be inviting both Navy Secretary Ray Mabusand Admiral Douglass Biesel, who is Commander Joint Region Marianas.
What better way for them to make up for what didn’t happen on this visit, and what better way for them to learn how the real people of Guam feel about the buildup?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a related matter, I’ve written to Admiral Biesel about the Ifit trees on military property. It’s the Territorial Tree of Guam and its very hard wood was used in traditional construction. It’s a favorite of a number of traditional carvers.
Upcoming military construction may require cutting down some Ifit trees on military property. Although Guam law protects the Ifit, I’m not sure it has any federal protection. I’ve asked Admiral Biesel if he could ensure that if Ifit trees are to be cut down, they are properly harvested and their timber be offered to the local carvers.
This could generate good will in the community. It won’t make up for past wrongs, but every step forward, no matter how small, is worth the effort.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Judith Paulette Guthertz, DPA, chairs the 30th Guam Legislature’s Committee on the Guam Military Buildup and Homeland Security. Send feedback to senatorjudiguthertz@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Thursday, 27 August 2009
by Sen. Judi Guthertz
Marianas Variety
JUST a few weeks ago, a congressional delegation came to Guam and the six members of the U.S. Congress met with members of the Guam Legislature more than once during their visit, and in general were friendly, open and welcoming to the local community. Their presence and their actions made the people of Guam feel as if we are an actual part of the American Union.
Fast-forward to this week and the Washington establishment presents its other face, and offers a totally different experience. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus was here on Guam, and unfortunately he hardly paid attention to anyone who was not in uniform. He made some of us remember what it feels like to live in a colony.
Repeated attempts by my office to set up a meeting were ignored, and the Navy reportedly eliminated a visit with the Guam Legislature because of time constraints. There wasn’t even a courtesy telephone call or e-mail to say that the Navy secretary was going to bypass us, because of a trip to the CNMI and a meeting with the governor and
legislators there.
Sometimes, when we hear the tremendous buzz about the buildup, and we hear about all of the dollars and yen that will potentially be spent on Guam, we fall back into our “wishful thinking” mode. We think, “maybe our federal government will treat us fairly. Maybe they won’t ignore us this time. Maybe they won’t forget us this time. The reality is that we are an unincorporated territory, which is just a nice way of saying “colony.” We have a lesser status than the CNMI just 75 miles to the north.
The feds don’t need to talk to us, and they know they don’t have to. It’s frustrating that the CNMI has indigenous fishing rights and we don’t; they have relief from high ocean shipping rates and we don’t; they have SSI and we don’t.
And their legislators met with Secretary Mabus, and we didn’t.
Instead, we received an e-mail hours after the meeting didn’t take place, with an apology attached. We all know how it feels to be so unimportant that we don’t even rate an advisory call or e-mail in advance.
Despite the snub, we must move forward. Sen. Respicio and I are working with the University of Guam’s School of Business and Public Administration to put on the “Island Conference on the Guam Military Buildup: the Guam Perspective,” on November 19 and 20. We have invited President Obama, President Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, and a host of others. We will also be inviting both Navy Secretary Ray Mabusand Admiral Douglass Biesel, who is Commander Joint Region Marianas.
What better way for them to make up for what didn’t happen on this visit, and what better way for them to learn how the real people of Guam feel about the buildup?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a related matter, I’ve written to Admiral Biesel about the Ifit trees on military property. It’s the Territorial Tree of Guam and its very hard wood was used in traditional construction. It’s a favorite of a number of traditional carvers.
Upcoming military construction may require cutting down some Ifit trees on military property. Although Guam law protects the Ifit, I’m not sure it has any federal protection. I’ve asked Admiral Biesel if he could ensure that if Ifit trees are to be cut down, they are properly harvested and their timber be offered to the local carvers.
This could generate good will in the community. It won’t make up for past wrongs, but every step forward, no matter how small, is worth the effort.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Judith Paulette Guthertz, DPA, chairs the 30th Guam Legislature’s Committee on the Guam Military Buildup and Homeland Security. Send feedback to senatorjudiguthertz@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Guam Resists Military Colonization
Published on Monday, August 17, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Guam Resists Military Colonization
Having No Say When Washington Tries to Increase your Population by 25%
by Ann Wright
The United States and the Chinese governments have some remarkable similarities when it comes to colonization. The Chinese government has sent a huge Han population to inhabit Tibet and overwhelm the Tibetan population, even building the world's highest railway to get people and materials there.
The United States government, with virtually no consultation with the local government and citizens, is increasing the population of its non-voting territory, Guam, by 25%. 8,000 U.S. Marines, their dependents and associated logistics units and personnel-a total of 42,000 new residents-will be moved to the small Pacific island (barely three times the size of Washington, DC) that has a current population of 175,000. The move will have a tremendous impact on the cultural and social identity of the island.
These military forces are being relocated to Guam, in great measure, because of the "Close US Military Bases" campaign organized by citizen activists in Okinawa, Japan. The United States has had a huge military presence there since the end of World War II.
I thought I was reasonably well-informed about America's interests in the Pacific. I had worked as a US diplomat in Micronesia for two years and travelled many times through Guam, a US territory, located an 8 hour flight west of Honolulu.
But earlier this month, in Guam on a study tour sponsored by a coalition of Japanese peace activists spearheaded by CODEPINK-Osaka, Japan, which included a former member of the Japanese Diet (Parliament), I learned new aspects of the decision to relocate this large number of U.S. military to Guam.
Guam was first colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s, became a US colony in 1898, a war-trophy from the Spanish-American war and served as a stopover for ships travelling to the Philippines. During World War II, Guam was attacked and occupied by Japan on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. American citizens living on the island had been evacuated by the United States government before the attack, but the indigenous Chamorro population was left behind. During the 31 months of Japanese occupation, the Chamorros endured forced labor, concentration camps, forced prostitution, rape and execution by the Japanese military. The United States military returned three and one-half years later on July 21, 1944 to retake Guam.
In 1950, Guam was made an "unincorporated territory" of the United States by a US Congressional act and residents were given US as one of 16 "non-self governing territories" left in the world.
Lands were taken after World War II from the native Chamorro population without compensation by the US military to construct major air and naval bases which the US military still uses. Currently, there are 3,000 US Air Force and 2,000 US Navy personnel and 1,000 employees of other federal security agencies assigned to Guam.
Three Guam legislators told us that the Guam government has not been properly consulted in the discussions between the US and Japanese governments on the relocation of the large US Marine force. Guam officials have been given little firm information about the military expansion plans. They are very concerned about the impact of further militarization of their island as its major income is provided by hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists who visit the tropical island annually.
They are disturbed by rumors of proposed forced condemnation of another 950 acres of land owned by members of the native Chamorro population for a live fire range for the incoming Marines. Residues of Agent Orange left from the Vietnam War and other toxic wastes from the military bases, plus the possibility that artillery shells and other munitions made from depleted uranium will be used on their island, are all sources of concern for the people of Guam.
In order to get the 8,000 US Marines out of Okinawa, the Japanese government is paying $6 billion to the US government for their relocation. Guam officials are concerned that not enough of the relocation funds will be made available for the large infrastructure improvements that will be needed for the island's roads, water, sewage and electrical systems as it tries to support a 25% increase in population. They feel the military will take care of its bases but may leave the local population struggling with the new infrastructure problems created by the large number of military personnel.
The Japanese people, too, are in the dark about the details of the billions of dollars they will pay the US government to have US forces leave Japan. Japanese members of our delegation were shocked when they learned from local Guam activists that the relocation budget calls for the Japanese government to pay $650,000 for the construction of each new house on the base, while Guam activists told us the cost of a middle class home on Guam is around $250,000. The Japanese delegation was greatly concerned that their government is funding such inflated projects and is going to raise the budget with Japanese Diet members when they return to Japan.
Of concern to the Guam business community is consideration by US House of Representatives law makers to give Japanese contractors the same access as American firms to bidding on contracts worth more than $2.5 billion in upcoming US military construction projects on Guam. Apparently, the Japanese government, like the US government, likes to have its commercial firms benefit from government aid projects it is funding "overseas." With Japan's $6 billion contribution to the $10 billion cost of relocating the Marines, Japan wants some of that money returned to Japan through construction contracts on the Guam infrastructure projects.
Many Guam officials and a large number of Guam citizens are deeply concerned about the cultural, economic and security impact of the dramatic increase in population and militarization of their island the relocation would present. The current cultural divide of those living in relative luxury inside the bases with better housing, schools and services has been a source of friction between the US military and the local population over the years.
Guam officials said that they too have been perturbed about the extraordinarily high expenditures on US military base facilities, when the Government of Guam is strapped financially. The officials said they were amazed and horrified when they learned that the Air Force recently built an on-base animal kennel for $27 million, with each animal space costing $100,000, when locally, the government is unable to provide sufficient infrastructure for its citizens, much less animals.
Professors and students at the University of Guam expressed concern that there will be a sharp increase in sexual assault and rape on the island due to the relocation of US Marines. They believe one of the reasons the Japanese government finally was able to get the US government to move some military forces out of Okinawa was because of major citizen mobilizations that occurred in response to rapes by US military personnel.
In 2008, the US Ambassador to Japan had to fly to Okinawa to give his apologies for the rape of a 14 year old girl by a US Marine. The US military forces on Okinawa had a 3 day stand-down for "reflection" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to express her "regrets" to the Japanese Prime Minister "for the terrible incident that happened in Okinawa... we are concerned for the well-being of the young girl and her family."
In April, 2008, U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Tyrone Hadnott, 38, who had been in the Marines 18 years, was charged with the February 10, 2008, rape of 14 year old girl, abusive sexual contact with a child, making a false official statement, adultery and kidnapping.
On May 17, 2008, Hadnott was found guilty of abusive sexual conduct and the four other charges were dropped. Hadnott was sentenced to four years in prison, but will only serve a maximum of three years in prison due to a pretrial agreement that suspended the fourth year of the sentence. He was reduced to private and given a dishonorable discharge from the US Marines.
The rape accusation against Hadnott stirred memories of a brutal rape more than a decade ago and triggered outrage across Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said that Hadnott's actions were "unforgivable."
There are US Congressional stirrings of concern about the relocation of the Marines to Guam. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee chair Ike Skelton has raised concerns about the size, scope and cost of the move to Guam. "At over $10 billion (two and one-half times the initial cost estimate of $4 billion), it is an enormous project, and I am concerned that the thinking behind it is not yet sufficiently mature," Skelton said at a recent Congressional hearing. "We need to do this, but it needs to be done right."
In a challenge to US military "forward deployment" strategy in Asia and the Pacific, Guam activists strongly feel the US military should relocate large forces to the mainland of the US where there presence can be better absorbed by the greater populations and existing large military bases, rather than to their small Pacific island.
However, the US federal government seldom takes into account local feelings about their projects, particularly military projects in a region far removed from the Washington power center.
Guam activists want their voices heard and respected and not to be treated as merely residents of a colony of the United States.
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience." (www.voicesofconscience.com)
Guam Resists Military Colonization
Having No Say When Washington Tries to Increase your Population by 25%
by Ann Wright
The United States and the Chinese governments have some remarkable similarities when it comes to colonization. The Chinese government has sent a huge Han population to inhabit Tibet and overwhelm the Tibetan population, even building the world's highest railway to get people and materials there.
The United States government, with virtually no consultation with the local government and citizens, is increasing the population of its non-voting territory, Guam, by 25%. 8,000 U.S. Marines, their dependents and associated logistics units and personnel-a total of 42,000 new residents-will be moved to the small Pacific island (barely three times the size of Washington, DC) that has a current population of 175,000. The move will have a tremendous impact on the cultural and social identity of the island.
These military forces are being relocated to Guam, in great measure, because of the "Close US Military Bases" campaign organized by citizen activists in Okinawa, Japan. The United States has had a huge military presence there since the end of World War II.
I thought I was reasonably well-informed about America's interests in the Pacific. I had worked as a US diplomat in Micronesia for two years and travelled many times through Guam, a US territory, located an 8 hour flight west of Honolulu.
But earlier this month, in Guam on a study tour sponsored by a coalition of Japanese peace activists spearheaded by CODEPINK-Osaka, Japan, which included a former member of the Japanese Diet (Parliament), I learned new aspects of the decision to relocate this large number of U.S. military to Guam.
Guam was first colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s, became a US colony in 1898, a war-trophy from the Spanish-American war and served as a stopover for ships travelling to the Philippines. During World War II, Guam was attacked and occupied by Japan on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. American citizens living on the island had been evacuated by the United States government before the attack, but the indigenous Chamorro population was left behind. During the 31 months of Japanese occupation, the Chamorros endured forced labor, concentration camps, forced prostitution, rape and execution by the Japanese military. The United States military returned three and one-half years later on July 21, 1944 to retake Guam.
In 1950, Guam was made an "unincorporated territory" of the United States by a US Congressional act and residents were given US as one of 16 "non-self governing territories" left in the world.
Lands were taken after World War II from the native Chamorro population without compensation by the US military to construct major air and naval bases which the US military still uses. Currently, there are 3,000 US Air Force and 2,000 US Navy personnel and 1,000 employees of other federal security agencies assigned to Guam.
Three Guam legislators told us that the Guam government has not been properly consulted in the discussions between the US and Japanese governments on the relocation of the large US Marine force. Guam officials have been given little firm information about the military expansion plans. They are very concerned about the impact of further militarization of their island as its major income is provided by hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists who visit the tropical island annually.
They are disturbed by rumors of proposed forced condemnation of another 950 acres of land owned by members of the native Chamorro population for a live fire range for the incoming Marines. Residues of Agent Orange left from the Vietnam War and other toxic wastes from the military bases, plus the possibility that artillery shells and other munitions made from depleted uranium will be used on their island, are all sources of concern for the people of Guam.
In order to get the 8,000 US Marines out of Okinawa, the Japanese government is paying $6 billion to the US government for their relocation. Guam officials are concerned that not enough of the relocation funds will be made available for the large infrastructure improvements that will be needed for the island's roads, water, sewage and electrical systems as it tries to support a 25% increase in population. They feel the military will take care of its bases but may leave the local population struggling with the new infrastructure problems created by the large number of military personnel.
The Japanese people, too, are in the dark about the details of the billions of dollars they will pay the US government to have US forces leave Japan. Japanese members of our delegation were shocked when they learned from local Guam activists that the relocation budget calls for the Japanese government to pay $650,000 for the construction of each new house on the base, while Guam activists told us the cost of a middle class home on Guam is around $250,000. The Japanese delegation was greatly concerned that their government is funding such inflated projects and is going to raise the budget with Japanese Diet members when they return to Japan.
Of concern to the Guam business community is consideration by US House of Representatives law makers to give Japanese contractors the same access as American firms to bidding on contracts worth more than $2.5 billion in upcoming US military construction projects on Guam. Apparently, the Japanese government, like the US government, likes to have its commercial firms benefit from government aid projects it is funding "overseas." With Japan's $6 billion contribution to the $10 billion cost of relocating the Marines, Japan wants some of that money returned to Japan through construction contracts on the Guam infrastructure projects.
Many Guam officials and a large number of Guam citizens are deeply concerned about the cultural, economic and security impact of the dramatic increase in population and militarization of their island the relocation would present. The current cultural divide of those living in relative luxury inside the bases with better housing, schools and services has been a source of friction between the US military and the local population over the years.
Guam officials said that they too have been perturbed about the extraordinarily high expenditures on US military base facilities, when the Government of Guam is strapped financially. The officials said they were amazed and horrified when they learned that the Air Force recently built an on-base animal kennel for $27 million, with each animal space costing $100,000, when locally, the government is unable to provide sufficient infrastructure for its citizens, much less animals.
Professors and students at the University of Guam expressed concern that there will be a sharp increase in sexual assault and rape on the island due to the relocation of US Marines. They believe one of the reasons the Japanese government finally was able to get the US government to move some military forces out of Okinawa was because of major citizen mobilizations that occurred in response to rapes by US military personnel.
In 2008, the US Ambassador to Japan had to fly to Okinawa to give his apologies for the rape of a 14 year old girl by a US Marine. The US military forces on Okinawa had a 3 day stand-down for "reflection" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to express her "regrets" to the Japanese Prime Minister "for the terrible incident that happened in Okinawa... we are concerned for the well-being of the young girl and her family."
In April, 2008, U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Tyrone Hadnott, 38, who had been in the Marines 18 years, was charged with the February 10, 2008, rape of 14 year old girl, abusive sexual contact with a child, making a false official statement, adultery and kidnapping.
On May 17, 2008, Hadnott was found guilty of abusive sexual conduct and the four other charges were dropped. Hadnott was sentenced to four years in prison, but will only serve a maximum of three years in prison due to a pretrial agreement that suspended the fourth year of the sentence. He was reduced to private and given a dishonorable discharge from the US Marines.
The rape accusation against Hadnott stirred memories of a brutal rape more than a decade ago and triggered outrage across Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said that Hadnott's actions were "unforgivable."
There are US Congressional stirrings of concern about the relocation of the Marines to Guam. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee chair Ike Skelton has raised concerns about the size, scope and cost of the move to Guam. "At over $10 billion (two and one-half times the initial cost estimate of $4 billion), it is an enormous project, and I am concerned that the thinking behind it is not yet sufficiently mature," Skelton said at a recent Congressional hearing. "We need to do this, but it needs to be done right."
In a challenge to US military "forward deployment" strategy in Asia and the Pacific, Guam activists strongly feel the US military should relocate large forces to the mainland of the US where there presence can be better absorbed by the greater populations and existing large military bases, rather than to their small Pacific island.
However, the US federal government seldom takes into account local feelings about their projects, particularly military projects in a region far removed from the Washington power center.
Guam activists want their voices heard and respected and not to be treated as merely residents of a colony of the United States.
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience." (www.voicesofconscience.com)
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Support Bill 66
Support Bill 66
Thursday, 09 July 2009
Letter to the Editor
The Marianas Variety
by Scott "Taisapit" Knudson
DEAR people of Guam, it is your right under the 3rd amendment of the United States Constitution to approve or deny the peacetime transfer of military personnel to our island. Thus, it is your right to approve or deny the possible transfer of 8,000 Marines and other personnel from Okinawa to Guam.
This island is divided as to whether it should be allowed or not. Our leaders appear to generally support it because they are chasing $$, but this transfer will have such a large-scale and long-lasting impact on our island’s economy, population, environment, and quality of life that it demands approval by the people en masse.
Bill 66, submitted by Senator BJ Cruz, is currently under consideration at the legislature. It calls for an island-wide referendum, within 90 days of passage, with two questions being put before the people:
1. Do you approve the transfer of these military personnel?
2.Do you approve the lease of Chamoru Land Trust lands to the U.S. military?
This bill is the only bill currently under consideration that would mandate that the military transfer – and, by extension, its associated construction build-up – be put to vote before the people. For that reason, I am calling upon all the citizens of Guahan to show up at the public hearing at the legislature, which will take place on Thursday, July 16 at 4:00 p.m. There they will be free to express opinions and ask questions.
Regardless of whether one supports or opposes the build-up, it is absolutely essential to our dignity that the matter be put to vote before the people. The current intention of the Pentagon is to triple the military presence on island – from around 15,000 to about 40,000 – without even asking us, but merely by tossing money at us and relying on our leaders’ complacency. That’s called colonialism.
If we are ever to escape our subject status and achieve the dignity and equality that we deserve as U.S. citizens and human beings, we must exert our democratic rights under the constitution. That means telling the Pentagon that they have to check with us first before doing what they please.
So please, people of Guam, come to the legislature on July 16 and show support for democracy and human rights. Support the demand for an island-wide referendum.
Fanogue Taotao Guahan!
Thursday, 09 July 2009
Letter to the Editor
The Marianas Variety
by Scott "Taisapit" Knudson
DEAR people of Guam, it is your right under the 3rd amendment of the United States Constitution to approve or deny the peacetime transfer of military personnel to our island. Thus, it is your right to approve or deny the possible transfer of 8,000 Marines and other personnel from Okinawa to Guam.
This island is divided as to whether it should be allowed or not. Our leaders appear to generally support it because they are chasing $$, but this transfer will have such a large-scale and long-lasting impact on our island’s economy, population, environment, and quality of life that it demands approval by the people en masse.
Bill 66, submitted by Senator BJ Cruz, is currently under consideration at the legislature. It calls for an island-wide referendum, within 90 days of passage, with two questions being put before the people:
1. Do you approve the transfer of these military personnel?
2.Do you approve the lease of Chamoru Land Trust lands to the U.S. military?
This bill is the only bill currently under consideration that would mandate that the military transfer – and, by extension, its associated construction build-up – be put to vote before the people. For that reason, I am calling upon all the citizens of Guahan to show up at the public hearing at the legislature, which will take place on Thursday, July 16 at 4:00 p.m. There they will be free to express opinions and ask questions.
Regardless of whether one supports or opposes the build-up, it is absolutely essential to our dignity that the matter be put to vote before the people. The current intention of the Pentagon is to triple the military presence on island – from around 15,000 to about 40,000 – without even asking us, but merely by tossing money at us and relying on our leaders’ complacency. That’s called colonialism.
If we are ever to escape our subject status and achieve the dignity and equality that we deserve as U.S. citizens and human beings, we must exert our democratic rights under the constitution. That means telling the Pentagon that they have to check with us first before doing what they please.
So please, people of Guam, come to the legislature on July 16 and show support for democracy and human rights. Support the demand for an island-wide referendum.
Fanogue Taotao Guahan!
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Proud Taotaomo'na
Proud taotaomo’na
Thursday, 04 June 2009
Letter to the Editor
Marianas Variety
IT SEEMS amazing how many proud Chamorros there are in the Mariana Islands. But when the word “independence” or the phrase “Yankee Go Home” are mentioned, attitudes change. You see, I am used to hearing bragging rights on the word “proud” from people who come from independent nations except from America, for the white race are not from America. As a matter of fact, they all emigrated from Europe since the late 1400s. Instead of saying proud Italian, Scottish, Irish, German, etc., they used the word American. For example, proud Irish-American, African American, and just plain “proud American.” Who is the true American though? I was taught that the Indians (Apache, Sioux, Cheyenne, etc.) and Mexican, Columbian, Brazilians are the true Americans.
Now let’s return to these islands. These islands, called the Mariana Islands, are inhabited by the oldest society on earth and are known throughout our planet by the old civilization as the Mountain Range of the Crescent Moon, in which the old civilizations claim as their origins.
Today, these islands are owned by the United States of America through wars: the Spanish American War of 1898 and World War II. Not as an independent country, but a property.
Between “Chamorro” and “Chamoru,” which spelling is correct? Actually, the word Chamorro/ru is not indigenous to these islands. It is indigenous to Spain. If a person were to consult a Spanish/English dictionary, one will find out that the word “Chamorro” is defined as the hind leg of a cow. So my question is how we, the aboriginals, can call ourselves “Chamorro” when it is not indigenous to our own language.
The next question should be, “What is our true name?” The answer is taotanomo’na. Then again, a proud Chamorro/ru will say that taotaomo’na means spirit. In reality, the true word for spirit is Aniti. It was actually the Catholic Church that made us believe that taotaomo’na and Chamorro are our true names.
The reason why the indigenous succumbed to their lies in such a short time is due to the ordered punishment and abuse both mentally and physically.
To the foreigners, the Spanish, even God believed our ancestors to be savages, who needed to be civilized. So guess what happened? Since 1521, when Magellan arrived until 1696, record of the size of the native population has been estimated to be over 200,000 throughout the islands. But in 1695, when all natives were assembled on Guam, the population count was under 4,000.
I would love to say to all the indigenous of these islands: Let’s come together and reclaim being a “Proud Taotaomo’na,” and reclaim our lands back and become and independent nation.
Howard A. Hemsing
a.k.a. Maga’lahi Maga’ Aniti
Yigo
Thursday, 04 June 2009
Letter to the Editor
Marianas Variety
IT SEEMS amazing how many proud Chamorros there are in the Mariana Islands. But when the word “independence” or the phrase “Yankee Go Home” are mentioned, attitudes change. You see, I am used to hearing bragging rights on the word “proud” from people who come from independent nations except from America, for the white race are not from America. As a matter of fact, they all emigrated from Europe since the late 1400s. Instead of saying proud Italian, Scottish, Irish, German, etc., they used the word American. For example, proud Irish-American, African American, and just plain “proud American.” Who is the true American though? I was taught that the Indians (Apache, Sioux, Cheyenne, etc.) and Mexican, Columbian, Brazilians are the true Americans.
Now let’s return to these islands. These islands, called the Mariana Islands, are inhabited by the oldest society on earth and are known throughout our planet by the old civilization as the Mountain Range of the Crescent Moon, in which the old civilizations claim as their origins.
Today, these islands are owned by the United States of America through wars: the Spanish American War of 1898 and World War II. Not as an independent country, but a property.
Between “Chamorro” and “Chamoru,” which spelling is correct? Actually, the word Chamorro/ru is not indigenous to these islands. It is indigenous to Spain. If a person were to consult a Spanish/English dictionary, one will find out that the word “Chamorro” is defined as the hind leg of a cow. So my question is how we, the aboriginals, can call ourselves “Chamorro” when it is not indigenous to our own language.
The next question should be, “What is our true name?” The answer is taotanomo’na. Then again, a proud Chamorro/ru will say that taotaomo’na means spirit. In reality, the true word for spirit is Aniti. It was actually the Catholic Church that made us believe that taotaomo’na and Chamorro are our true names.
The reason why the indigenous succumbed to their lies in such a short time is due to the ordered punishment and abuse both mentally and physically.
To the foreigners, the Spanish, even God believed our ancestors to be savages, who needed to be civilized. So guess what happened? Since 1521, when Magellan arrived until 1696, record of the size of the native population has been estimated to be over 200,000 throughout the islands. But in 1695, when all natives were assembled on Guam, the population count was under 4,000.
I would love to say to all the indigenous of these islands: Let’s come together and reclaim being a “Proud Taotaomo’na,” and reclaim our lands back and become and independent nation.
Howard A. Hemsing
a.k.a. Maga’lahi Maga’ Aniti
Yigo
Sunday, March 08, 2009
A Guam Legislature Walkout?
March 4th, 2009
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
On my blog last week I wrote that, until Guam’s political status changes, the national anthem of the island should be changed to “The Hand that Feeds” by Nine Inch Nails. This week, I think that the official song of the Government of Guam and in particular the Guam Legislature should be changed to the protest song “Federåles” by the rock band Chamorro.
In all colonies, because of the fundamentally unequal relationship between parties, there is always constant tension and sometimes conflict over the “proper” governance of the colonies. In the case of Guam, we can see this at a grassroots, everyday personal level in each of our lives (even if we chosen not to admit to it), but the place where you can see and feel it the most everyday, is in the relationship between the Government of Guam and the Federal Government. For them the Federal Government truly is the Feds or Federåles, an oppressive force thats coming down on you or always looking over your shoulder and interfering in your life. A lot of this feeling comes down to Federal-Territorial relations, or the lack thereof.
The thinking of the Federal Government at pretty much any level, in relation to the colonies of the United States can generally be divided into two “thinking” points. 1st. What territories? 2nd. Whatever is good for the 50 stars on the flag should be good for our backwater colonies too. This means that Federal-Territorial relations is a horrifying game of fighting to find or force a place for yourself in the maze of Federal laws and funding sources. As not being a foreign country or a state, you don’t have a place in that maze, you aren’t seated at the table with everyone else, nor are you provided a table of your own. Wherever you end up sitting depends on how much the Federales care or don’t care, how much they know or don’t know, and what place you try to fight for. We can see this clearly in the life of the non-voting delegates to Congress.
Without a secure political identity for your colony, your legislative life is all about fighting for inclusion on some bills/laws and exclusion on others. Its not a life I would envy, since you can never take your place for granted. You can never assume that a bill will automatically include you and you can never assume that any law is ever made thinking about the particular needs of your colony. This is why at one point during his tenure, Congressman Robert Underwood actually attempted to pass a bill with a long and frustrated title that went something like this “Whenever you Write a Bill Don’t Forget the Territories!”
So in one way, those who can most smell and feel the stench of American colonialism on Guam aren’t necessarily the crazy activists such as myself, its actually people in the Government of Guam. They are on the front line for feeling the heavy, ignorant and sometimes racist hand of the Federal Government or the military.
They are the ones who have to deal with the Federal agencies who seem to unanimously feel that Guam is the most corrupt and backwards place in the universe, a never-ending black whole of dependency, laziness and crime. They are the ones who are stuck with a government which everyone seems to feel is bloated and useless, but in actuality is not funded anywhere near the level it should be in order to provide adequate services to Guam’s population. They are the ones who on the one hand have to deal with the horrible red tape and attached-strings of Federal funds, but at the same time deal with a population who seems to think that Federal funds come like big baskets of money, soaps and shower gels put on the door steps of Felix Camacho and the Legislature every morning, with a cheery and simple note attached, “Spend it however you like, just don’t hire your pare’!”
Ground zero right now for feeling the realities of colonialism on Guam is the Guam Legislature. Unlike the Governor or the courts which may be chosen through a democratic process, but aren’t very democratic afterwards, the Legislature cannot help but always be a democratic and representative body. It is the one which is allowed to be responsive to the needs or concerns of everyday people. The Governor may be elected by the people, but the Legislature is supposed to represent, in both senses of the word, the people.
In the past year they have been pushed into a position where they have become the front line for defending Guam against rising Federal pressure. What they do in the coming months will determine much in the near future of Guam. Whether or not they can rise to this challenge, will have a huge impact on where Guam goes from here.
The two main fronts in this conflict are the closing of Ordot Dump and the building of a new landfill at Dandan and the planned 2014 military buildup. The conduct of the Federal Government in both of these issues reek of colonialism, you have to literally be getting lasik done with American flags soaked in kerosene to not see it.
On the military buildup side of things, the Legislature has been one of the few spots in the government in general where you see some fight against the military, some willingness to complain, to criticize, to make demands and to openly argue that Guam’s interests should be put first, before we begin to prioritize our lives to support the military buildup. They are voices of reason in an island which completely refuses to even think about what is going to happen to the island when it undergoes as the Pacific Daily News put it “20 years of growth in just five.” They are the voices who are cautiously reminding us that there are plenty of dangers here, plenty of negative aspects to having this increase. Plenty of ways in which property and commodity prices will rise up, that public utilities and government services will be strained, and the island will no doubt be damaged even more environmentally.
For supporters of the buildup, all the focus is on the new monies that will be coming in. To listen to some you would imagine that each Marine will bring with them a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills, and they will literally, as part of their community engagement, walk around each weekend to family barbeques, just handing out cash. And each of these Marines will bring with them a friend from the states who runs a Cracker Barrel, Besy Buy or Chili’s that they are going to set up on Guam. Because, as the late Joe Murphy prophesized what really matters is that we will be getting out of this buildup, better restaurants, better nightclubs and better movie theaters.
Proponents of the buildup love to cite the $15 billion figure as a sum which will absolutely help Guam, even if we just get a small piece of it. But as I have exhaustedly tried to tell people, NONE of that money will be spent outside of the bases, all of it is directly towards improvements within the fences. In reality, this buildup will cost GovGuam plenty, CMTF estimates vary, but they all exceed a billion dollars, with one estimate putting the total cost at $6.1 billion. Imagine how many Marines buying shishkabobs at the Chamorro village would it take to reach that figure?
The Government and the people of Guam are being asked to prioritize the needs of the military, and alter the landscape of their island, and possibly even give up 950 more acres of Chamorro Land Trust property in order to accommodate what they need, with, as of yet, no guarantees that they will receive any Federal aid to cover those costs. They are being asked to take on a massive burden in order to accommodate, what amounts to a military typhoon which will rapidly descend on the island, which they were not even included in the planning or discussions of.
Believe it or not, but the Ordot Dump and new landfill issue is tied to the military buildup. The dump was supposed to be closed more than a decade ago, and the Government of Guam has been incurring regular fines because of its inability to close it. Both the current and previous Governors and the Legislatures since as well, have all acted poorly in this regard. Either refusing to take any bold action on the trash situation in Guam in general, or attempting to skew the issue to benefit themselves. But the Federal Government for years seemed to be content to sit on the sidelines, keep giving fines and just watch. There was never any significant pressure for years, in fact the fact that Ordot still wasn’t closed seem to prove all of the racist fantasies that people in the Federal Government had about Guam. So lazy and corrupt they’d rather live in trash than take care of themselves.
But for some reasons out of nowhere, all of this changed last year, when Federal Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood appointed a Federal Receiver, Gershman, Brickner and Bratton, Inc, to take over the solid waste management of Guam and most importantly to oversee the closing of the Ordot and the opening of a new dump.
For many this act by the judge has been interpreted as a long-overdue disciplining of GovGuam. Of a swift patek gi i daggå-ña, to finally get it moving. This might be true, but the timing remains suspicious. As part of the proposed military buildup, Anderson Air Force base will soon close its own dump, and rather than open a new one in their existing foot print, they are planning to use the new landfill in Dandan. The judge’s order ensures that the military’s needs will be met, even if it means a catastrophe for the Government of Guam.
In January the Federal Receiver announced that in order for it to fulfill its mandate it would have to be paid $1 million dollars a week by the Government of Guam. The Government of Guam balked at this, asking to meet with the Receiver and work out an alternative plan. At its present levels there is simply no way that the Government would pay that amount each week. In order to accommodate that payment, the Government of Guam would either have to reduce every single office/agency by 9%, or in order not to upset the budgets or staff of essential agencies, all non-essential agencies would have to take a cut somewhere between 30-40%.
The Legislature last week, passed Bill 51, which provided three different options for paying the Federal Receiver, but prohibited the use of any funds save for those outlined in the Bill itself. It even went so far as to ban any Government of Guam official from paying the $1 million weekly payments, and prohibited the use of Section 30 money to make any payments.
Earlier today, Tydingco-Gatewood responded demanding to know why she shouldn’t place the Government of Guam in contempt for not making its first payment, and outlined five options that the Government should undertake in order to make the weekly $1 million payments. These options included, the raising of taxes, the implementation of new GRT or other commercial taxes, the using or other Federal funds (such as Federal Highway funds), the selling off of Chamorro Land Trust Property, the selling of Government assets such as buildings, vehicles.
The Government of Guam has until March 10th to file its argument, and the United States Government has until March 17th to file their response. The most interesting and frightening part of all this (as if it wasn’t crazy enough already), is that in their briefs each party is supposed to discuss the court’s powers in implementing her suggestions. Basically, if GovGuam doesn’t convince Tydingco-Gatewood about the viability of Bill 51, she, as a Federal Judge, might actually order that Guam’s taxes be raised, or force it to sell Chamorro Land Trust lands, or actually force it to mis-use Federal funds!
As a colony, this sort of abuse is always there in the relationship, even if people don’t feel it. We are, as I always find myself reminding people, the tip of America’s spear, we are something that the Federal Government feels it owns and feels it can do whatever it wants with. Every once in a while, the Government of Guam will try to find a way to resist this objectivization. There will be strong statements, court cases filed, protective or defensive laws passed, and sometimes even protests will take place. Looking at the state of affairs in Guam today, with a Legislature which is straining to find a way to prioritize Guam’s interest, against a Federal machine which is determined to interfere and force Guam to accommodate it. I am reminded of an event which took place close to today, sixty years ago. I am of course thinking of March 5, 1949 and the Guam Congress Walkout.
I won’t give you much details here, for fear that I may never stop writing this post. Guampedia has a decent article on the walkout, which you can read here. But Anne Perez Hattori’s article on it “Righting Civil Wrongs: The Guam Congress Walkout of 1949″ is a must read, and you can find it in the blue Hale’-ta book, also known as Kinalamten Pulitikat. There are also numerous writings and interviews on it from former Senator Carlos Taitano who was instrumental in the planning and the promotion of the walkout.
The Guam Congress Walkout was an act of defiance, against a greedy and ignorant military that had returned to Guam during World War II, and was determined that Guam be remade into a modern day fortress. While at first Chamorros were grateful and happy to be able to provide their land, their island and their loyalty in exchange for the expulsion of the Japanese and the return of the United States, as families saw more and more land being snatched up, and sitting often times fallow or poisoned behind tall fences, they began to question their “liberation” and what the real cost of the militarization of their island had become. This was exasperated, by the fact that Chamorros were still denied even the most basic rights and political protections after the war, continuing the colonial policies of the Navy from the prewar period.
In order to protest these issues and a number of others, the members of the Guam Congress voted to adjourn and walkout. It was an action that ended up making news around the world and shed light on the abuses of the US Navy in Guam, its ravenous landtaking after World War II and its refusal to provide self-government for Chamorros. It ended up changing the entire game, as the walkout was one of the events that compelled the United States Federal Government to create an Organic Act for Guam, which at last satisfied in some way the longstanding Chamorro desire for some political protections and rights, and also a chance to have its own government.
The Guam Legislature of today is in a similar position to its ancestors of 1949. And, if I were one of its members I would be considering my own act of protest, my own way of changing the game.
Something symbolic, yet something powerful enough to bring the eyes of the island, the nation and the world to Guam and to reveal to all the other side of American power, this colonial side that we live with and struggle under everyday.
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
On my blog last week I wrote that, until Guam’s political status changes, the national anthem of the island should be changed to “The Hand that Feeds” by Nine Inch Nails. This week, I think that the official song of the Government of Guam and in particular the Guam Legislature should be changed to the protest song “Federåles” by the rock band Chamorro.
In all colonies, because of the fundamentally unequal relationship between parties, there is always constant tension and sometimes conflict over the “proper” governance of the colonies. In the case of Guam, we can see this at a grassroots, everyday personal level in each of our lives (even if we chosen not to admit to it), but the place where you can see and feel it the most everyday, is in the relationship between the Government of Guam and the Federal Government. For them the Federal Government truly is the Feds or Federåles, an oppressive force thats coming down on you or always looking over your shoulder and interfering in your life. A lot of this feeling comes down to Federal-Territorial relations, or the lack thereof.
The thinking of the Federal Government at pretty much any level, in relation to the colonies of the United States can generally be divided into two “thinking” points. 1st. What territories? 2nd. Whatever is good for the 50 stars on the flag should be good for our backwater colonies too. This means that Federal-Territorial relations is a horrifying game of fighting to find or force a place for yourself in the maze of Federal laws and funding sources. As not being a foreign country or a state, you don’t have a place in that maze, you aren’t seated at the table with everyone else, nor are you provided a table of your own. Wherever you end up sitting depends on how much the Federales care or don’t care, how much they know or don’t know, and what place you try to fight for. We can see this clearly in the life of the non-voting delegates to Congress.
Without a secure political identity for your colony, your legislative life is all about fighting for inclusion on some bills/laws and exclusion on others. Its not a life I would envy, since you can never take your place for granted. You can never assume that a bill will automatically include you and you can never assume that any law is ever made thinking about the particular needs of your colony. This is why at one point during his tenure, Congressman Robert Underwood actually attempted to pass a bill with a long and frustrated title that went something like this “Whenever you Write a Bill Don’t Forget the Territories!”
So in one way, those who can most smell and feel the stench of American colonialism on Guam aren’t necessarily the crazy activists such as myself, its actually people in the Government of Guam. They are on the front line for feeling the heavy, ignorant and sometimes racist hand of the Federal Government or the military.
They are the ones who have to deal with the Federal agencies who seem to unanimously feel that Guam is the most corrupt and backwards place in the universe, a never-ending black whole of dependency, laziness and crime. They are the ones who are stuck with a government which everyone seems to feel is bloated and useless, but in actuality is not funded anywhere near the level it should be in order to provide adequate services to Guam’s population. They are the ones who on the one hand have to deal with the horrible red tape and attached-strings of Federal funds, but at the same time deal with a population who seems to think that Federal funds come like big baskets of money, soaps and shower gels put on the door steps of Felix Camacho and the Legislature every morning, with a cheery and simple note attached, “Spend it however you like, just don’t hire your pare’!”
Ground zero right now for feeling the realities of colonialism on Guam is the Guam Legislature. Unlike the Governor or the courts which may be chosen through a democratic process, but aren’t very democratic afterwards, the Legislature cannot help but always be a democratic and representative body. It is the one which is allowed to be responsive to the needs or concerns of everyday people. The Governor may be elected by the people, but the Legislature is supposed to represent, in both senses of the word, the people.
In the past year they have been pushed into a position where they have become the front line for defending Guam against rising Federal pressure. What they do in the coming months will determine much in the near future of Guam. Whether or not they can rise to this challenge, will have a huge impact on where Guam goes from here.
The two main fronts in this conflict are the closing of Ordot Dump and the building of a new landfill at Dandan and the planned 2014 military buildup. The conduct of the Federal Government in both of these issues reek of colonialism, you have to literally be getting lasik done with American flags soaked in kerosene to not see it.
On the military buildup side of things, the Legislature has been one of the few spots in the government in general where you see some fight against the military, some willingness to complain, to criticize, to make demands and to openly argue that Guam’s interests should be put first, before we begin to prioritize our lives to support the military buildup. They are voices of reason in an island which completely refuses to even think about what is going to happen to the island when it undergoes as the Pacific Daily News put it “20 years of growth in just five.” They are the voices who are cautiously reminding us that there are plenty of dangers here, plenty of negative aspects to having this increase. Plenty of ways in which property and commodity prices will rise up, that public utilities and government services will be strained, and the island will no doubt be damaged even more environmentally.
For supporters of the buildup, all the focus is on the new monies that will be coming in. To listen to some you would imagine that each Marine will bring with them a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills, and they will literally, as part of their community engagement, walk around each weekend to family barbeques, just handing out cash. And each of these Marines will bring with them a friend from the states who runs a Cracker Barrel, Besy Buy or Chili’s that they are going to set up on Guam. Because, as the late Joe Murphy prophesized what really matters is that we will be getting out of this buildup, better restaurants, better nightclubs and better movie theaters.
Proponents of the buildup love to cite the $15 billion figure as a sum which will absolutely help Guam, even if we just get a small piece of it. But as I have exhaustedly tried to tell people, NONE of that money will be spent outside of the bases, all of it is directly towards improvements within the fences. In reality, this buildup will cost GovGuam plenty, CMTF estimates vary, but they all exceed a billion dollars, with one estimate putting the total cost at $6.1 billion. Imagine how many Marines buying shishkabobs at the Chamorro village would it take to reach that figure?
The Government and the people of Guam are being asked to prioritize the needs of the military, and alter the landscape of their island, and possibly even give up 950 more acres of Chamorro Land Trust property in order to accommodate what they need, with, as of yet, no guarantees that they will receive any Federal aid to cover those costs. They are being asked to take on a massive burden in order to accommodate, what amounts to a military typhoon which will rapidly descend on the island, which they were not even included in the planning or discussions of.
Believe it or not, but the Ordot Dump and new landfill issue is tied to the military buildup. The dump was supposed to be closed more than a decade ago, and the Government of Guam has been incurring regular fines because of its inability to close it. Both the current and previous Governors and the Legislatures since as well, have all acted poorly in this regard. Either refusing to take any bold action on the trash situation in Guam in general, or attempting to skew the issue to benefit themselves. But the Federal Government for years seemed to be content to sit on the sidelines, keep giving fines and just watch. There was never any significant pressure for years, in fact the fact that Ordot still wasn’t closed seem to prove all of the racist fantasies that people in the Federal Government had about Guam. So lazy and corrupt they’d rather live in trash than take care of themselves.
But for some reasons out of nowhere, all of this changed last year, when Federal Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood appointed a Federal Receiver, Gershman, Brickner and Bratton, Inc, to take over the solid waste management of Guam and most importantly to oversee the closing of the Ordot and the opening of a new dump.
For many this act by the judge has been interpreted as a long-overdue disciplining of GovGuam. Of a swift patek gi i daggå-ña, to finally get it moving. This might be true, but the timing remains suspicious. As part of the proposed military buildup, Anderson Air Force base will soon close its own dump, and rather than open a new one in their existing foot print, they are planning to use the new landfill in Dandan. The judge’s order ensures that the military’s needs will be met, even if it means a catastrophe for the Government of Guam.
In January the Federal Receiver announced that in order for it to fulfill its mandate it would have to be paid $1 million dollars a week by the Government of Guam. The Government of Guam balked at this, asking to meet with the Receiver and work out an alternative plan. At its present levels there is simply no way that the Government would pay that amount each week. In order to accommodate that payment, the Government of Guam would either have to reduce every single office/agency by 9%, or in order not to upset the budgets or staff of essential agencies, all non-essential agencies would have to take a cut somewhere between 30-40%.
The Legislature last week, passed Bill 51, which provided three different options for paying the Federal Receiver, but prohibited the use of any funds save for those outlined in the Bill itself. It even went so far as to ban any Government of Guam official from paying the $1 million weekly payments, and prohibited the use of Section 30 money to make any payments.
Earlier today, Tydingco-Gatewood responded demanding to know why she shouldn’t place the Government of Guam in contempt for not making its first payment, and outlined five options that the Government should undertake in order to make the weekly $1 million payments. These options included, the raising of taxes, the implementation of new GRT or other commercial taxes, the using or other Federal funds (such as Federal Highway funds), the selling off of Chamorro Land Trust Property, the selling of Government assets such as buildings, vehicles.
The Government of Guam has until March 10th to file its argument, and the United States Government has until March 17th to file their response. The most interesting and frightening part of all this (as if it wasn’t crazy enough already), is that in their briefs each party is supposed to discuss the court’s powers in implementing her suggestions. Basically, if GovGuam doesn’t convince Tydingco-Gatewood about the viability of Bill 51, she, as a Federal Judge, might actually order that Guam’s taxes be raised, or force it to sell Chamorro Land Trust lands, or actually force it to mis-use Federal funds!
As a colony, this sort of abuse is always there in the relationship, even if people don’t feel it. We are, as I always find myself reminding people, the tip of America’s spear, we are something that the Federal Government feels it owns and feels it can do whatever it wants with. Every once in a while, the Government of Guam will try to find a way to resist this objectivization. There will be strong statements, court cases filed, protective or defensive laws passed, and sometimes even protests will take place. Looking at the state of affairs in Guam today, with a Legislature which is straining to find a way to prioritize Guam’s interest, against a Federal machine which is determined to interfere and force Guam to accommodate it. I am reminded of an event which took place close to today, sixty years ago. I am of course thinking of March 5, 1949 and the Guam Congress Walkout.
I won’t give you much details here, for fear that I may never stop writing this post. Guampedia has a decent article on the walkout, which you can read here. But Anne Perez Hattori’s article on it “Righting Civil Wrongs: The Guam Congress Walkout of 1949″ is a must read, and you can find it in the blue Hale’-ta book, also known as Kinalamten Pulitikat. There are also numerous writings and interviews on it from former Senator Carlos Taitano who was instrumental in the planning and the promotion of the walkout.
The Guam Congress Walkout was an act of defiance, against a greedy and ignorant military that had returned to Guam during World War II, and was determined that Guam be remade into a modern day fortress. While at first Chamorros were grateful and happy to be able to provide their land, their island and their loyalty in exchange for the expulsion of the Japanese and the return of the United States, as families saw more and more land being snatched up, and sitting often times fallow or poisoned behind tall fences, they began to question their “liberation” and what the real cost of the militarization of their island had become. This was exasperated, by the fact that Chamorros were still denied even the most basic rights and political protections after the war, continuing the colonial policies of the Navy from the prewar period.
In order to protest these issues and a number of others, the members of the Guam Congress voted to adjourn and walkout. It was an action that ended up making news around the world and shed light on the abuses of the US Navy in Guam, its ravenous landtaking after World War II and its refusal to provide self-government for Chamorros. It ended up changing the entire game, as the walkout was one of the events that compelled the United States Federal Government to create an Organic Act for Guam, which at last satisfied in some way the longstanding Chamorro desire for some political protections and rights, and also a chance to have its own government.
The Guam Legislature of today is in a similar position to its ancestors of 1949. And, if I were one of its members I would be considering my own act of protest, my own way of changing the game.
Something symbolic, yet something powerful enough to bring the eyes of the island, the nation and the world to Guam and to reveal to all the other side of American power, this colonial side that we live with and struggle under everyday.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Guam Struggles to Find Its Roots From Beneath Growing Piles of Spam
WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 28, 2000
Guam Struggles to Find Its Roots Beneath Growing Piles of Spam
By ROBERT FRANK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HAGATNA, Guam -- The brochures for this breezy Pacific outpost boast of a "small island containing a world of cultures." On the main drag in downtown Hagatna, Japanese noodle shops thrive amid Dairy Queens, cha-cha clubs, Spanish-style Catholic churches and American strip clubs. There's even a Wild West-style shooting gallery that doubles as a wedding chapel for visiting South Koreans.
And what about the native culture of Guam? "Oh, gee. I'm not sure where to even look," says a Japanese concierge at the Guam Hyatt Regency. "Maybe the mall?"
Cold War Castaway
Forgive Guam its confusion. Officially, this small volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific, which has been colonized three times, is an "unincorporated territory of the U.S." Unofficially, it's a Cold War castaway looking for a purpose. For decades, it was supported by the Navy, and more recently, by Japanese tourists looking for a nearby beach and duty-free Chanel bags. Through it all, people here have patiently adopted the language, food, clothing and religion of their invaders in hopes of being accepted.
Yet now, with self-determination all the rage around the world, Guam is looking for its inner Guamanian. Local residents are scheduled to vote in July on whether to remain part of the U.S. or become independent, setting the stage for a new round of talks with Congress on the island's status. Guam's indigenous Chamorros are banding together to fight for Chamorro rights, Chamorro businesses and, most of all, Chamorro culture.
Leading the charge is the Chamorro Nation, a group of tattooed youths and tribal activists who seek to reclaim the country. Their methods are mild -- aside from staging the occasional sit-in, they give beach tours and fauna lessons.
The group has gained widespread popularity on an island searching for its precolonial roots. "We've had some tough times since Magellan landed" in 1521, says Eddie L.G. Benavente, leader of the Chamorro Nation, and a teacher at Guam's John F. Kennedy High School. "But now it's time to take control of our country and our culture."
Trouble is, after all those invasions, no one is quite sure what Chamorro culture is. On a steamy evening along the coast, the lights flicker on at Chamorro Village. A Spanish-style plaza of stalls and shops, Chamorro Village was born in the early 1990s to promote Chamorro arts and crafts and raise the profile of Chamorro culture. Tonight, only a few stalls are open -- and they're far from Chamorro.
Most sell kimonos and T-shirts. Carmen's Mexican Restaurant is dark, and the Jamaican Grille is empty. The only visitors are two Koreans sitting in the food court eating Szechuan food.
"You have to come on Wednesday nights," says Tien Bin Wu, a 67-year-old owner of a Cantonese food stall. "Wednesday night is Chamorro night."
At the far corner of the village, Jose Rosario proudly shows off his small collection of "genuine Chamorro artifacts." His store, called Che lu -- which means "brother" or "sister" in the rarely spoken language of Chamorro -- offers old-fashioned fishhooks and a collection of egg-shaped rocks that were once used in Chamorro slingshots. His biggest seller is the Che lu baseball hat.
Mr. Rosario concedes that four centuries of colonial rule have taken their toll on the Chamorro identity. Less than 40% of the island's 160,000 people are now considered "Chamorro," and most of them have Philippine or Mexican ancestors, dating from Guam's 18th- and 19th-century trading days. Most of the island's original settlers -- of Malay and Indonesian descent -- were wiped out by either disease or war with the various colonizers, which included the Spanish, Americans and Japanese. Filipinos, who are pouring into Guam for jobs, are expected to outnumber Chamorros in the next decade.
Still, Mr. Rosario says he sees a "renaissance" in Chamorro pride, based on legends and history passed down from generation to generation. A 1671 speech by a tribal chief named Hurao, who gored a Spanish missionary with a lance, has become a rallying cry for nationalists.
"Before [the Spaniards] arrived ... did we know rats, flies, mosquitoes and all the other little animals which constantly torment us?" Chief Hurao said, in a speech recounted by a French Jesuit. "These are the beautiful presents they have made us."
Spam Capital
Later came the gift of Spam. Guam's culinary past, buried under Spanish rice, Philippine noodles and American burgers, has been difficult to uncover. The island's two most celebrated dishes -- red rice, and pancit, a fried-noodle dish -- are both Filipino. Spam is the true national mainstay, thanks to the Americans. Guam consumes more Spam per capita than any country in the world, according to its maker, Hormel Foods Corp. Guam hosts a Spam Olympics to honor new Spam recipes.
Even the celebrated Chamorro Chip Cookie turns out to be tainted. At the small cookie factory, dozens of locals mix a secret blend of nuts, dough and chocolate chips to create one of the island's best-known delicacies. The labeling on the folksy-looking boxes, written in Chamorro, says "made exclusively on Guam." But Chamorro Chip is owned by a Bostonian, Bob McLaughlin, who also owns the Boston Pizza Co. on Guam.
Dozens of Chamorros interviewed struggled to name a food that is distinctly Chamorro.
"I've got one!" says Tony Lamorena, a local senator. "Barbecued fruit bat. My grandmother used to make it." The local fruit bat, however, is a threatened species and can't be eaten. The same is true of Mr. Lamorena's other suggestion, sea turtle. "I guess we'll stick to Spam," he says with a sigh.
Seen in the Ocean
High on Guam's tallest sea cliff, two bronze figures embrace in the sunset. The statues honor the legend of the Two Lovers, a key part of the Chamorro culture. During early Spanish rule, the story goes, a fair Chamorro maiden was ordered by her father to marry a Spanish army captain. She refused, having fallen in love with a handsome Chamorro warrior. After the two tried to escape, they were chased by the Spanish army to the edge of the cliff. Rather than surrender, the two tied their long black braids together and plunged into the dark waters. On a moonlit night, locals say they can see the spirits of the two lovers frolicking in the ocean below.
They're more likely to see ice-cream cups. At the top of the cliff, a tourist lookout is perched at the edge of the Lovers Point, flanked by a Haagen-Dazs stand and postcard booth. While it's billed as a sacred Chamorro site, few Chamorros ever visit. The only visitors these days are the occasional Japanese couple who use the site for weddings.
"Who's a Chamorro, and who's not?" asks 18-year-old Menchie Canlas, a Filipino ticket-taker at the cliff. "I don't think anybody knows anymore."
March 28, 2000
Guam Struggles to Find Its Roots Beneath Growing Piles of Spam
By ROBERT FRANK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HAGATNA, Guam -- The brochures for this breezy Pacific outpost boast of a "small island containing a world of cultures." On the main drag in downtown Hagatna, Japanese noodle shops thrive amid Dairy Queens, cha-cha clubs, Spanish-style Catholic churches and American strip clubs. There's even a Wild West-style shooting gallery that doubles as a wedding chapel for visiting South Koreans.
And what about the native culture of Guam? "Oh, gee. I'm not sure where to even look," says a Japanese concierge at the Guam Hyatt Regency. "Maybe the mall?"
Cold War Castaway
Forgive Guam its confusion. Officially, this small volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific, which has been colonized three times, is an "unincorporated territory of the U.S." Unofficially, it's a Cold War castaway looking for a purpose. For decades, it was supported by the Navy, and more recently, by Japanese tourists looking for a nearby beach and duty-free Chanel bags. Through it all, people here have patiently adopted the language, food, clothing and religion of their invaders in hopes of being accepted.
Yet now, with self-determination all the rage around the world, Guam is looking for its inner Guamanian. Local residents are scheduled to vote in July on whether to remain part of the U.S. or become independent, setting the stage for a new round of talks with Congress on the island's status. Guam's indigenous Chamorros are banding together to fight for Chamorro rights, Chamorro businesses and, most of all, Chamorro culture.
Leading the charge is the Chamorro Nation, a group of tattooed youths and tribal activists who seek to reclaim the country. Their methods are mild -- aside from staging the occasional sit-in, they give beach tours and fauna lessons.
The group has gained widespread popularity on an island searching for its precolonial roots. "We've had some tough times since Magellan landed" in 1521, says Eddie L.G. Benavente, leader of the Chamorro Nation, and a teacher at Guam's John F. Kennedy High School. "But now it's time to take control of our country and our culture."
Trouble is, after all those invasions, no one is quite sure what Chamorro culture is. On a steamy evening along the coast, the lights flicker on at Chamorro Village. A Spanish-style plaza of stalls and shops, Chamorro Village was born in the early 1990s to promote Chamorro arts and crafts and raise the profile of Chamorro culture. Tonight, only a few stalls are open -- and they're far from Chamorro.
Most sell kimonos and T-shirts. Carmen's Mexican Restaurant is dark, and the Jamaican Grille is empty. The only visitors are two Koreans sitting in the food court eating Szechuan food.
"You have to come on Wednesday nights," says Tien Bin Wu, a 67-year-old owner of a Cantonese food stall. "Wednesday night is Chamorro night."
At the far corner of the village, Jose Rosario proudly shows off his small collection of "genuine Chamorro artifacts." His store, called Che lu -- which means "brother" or "sister" in the rarely spoken language of Chamorro -- offers old-fashioned fishhooks and a collection of egg-shaped rocks that were once used in Chamorro slingshots. His biggest seller is the Che lu baseball hat.
Mr. Rosario concedes that four centuries of colonial rule have taken their toll on the Chamorro identity. Less than 40% of the island's 160,000 people are now considered "Chamorro," and most of them have Philippine or Mexican ancestors, dating from Guam's 18th- and 19th-century trading days. Most of the island's original settlers -- of Malay and Indonesian descent -- were wiped out by either disease or war with the various colonizers, which included the Spanish, Americans and Japanese. Filipinos, who are pouring into Guam for jobs, are expected to outnumber Chamorros in the next decade.
Still, Mr. Rosario says he sees a "renaissance" in Chamorro pride, based on legends and history passed down from generation to generation. A 1671 speech by a tribal chief named Hurao, who gored a Spanish missionary with a lance, has become a rallying cry for nationalists.
"Before [the Spaniards] arrived ... did we know rats, flies, mosquitoes and all the other little animals which constantly torment us?" Chief Hurao said, in a speech recounted by a French Jesuit. "These are the beautiful presents they have made us."
Spam Capital
Later came the gift of Spam. Guam's culinary past, buried under Spanish rice, Philippine noodles and American burgers, has been difficult to uncover. The island's two most celebrated dishes -- red rice, and pancit, a fried-noodle dish -- are both Filipino. Spam is the true national mainstay, thanks to the Americans. Guam consumes more Spam per capita than any country in the world, according to its maker, Hormel Foods Corp. Guam hosts a Spam Olympics to honor new Spam recipes.
Even the celebrated Chamorro Chip Cookie turns out to be tainted. At the small cookie factory, dozens of locals mix a secret blend of nuts, dough and chocolate chips to create one of the island's best-known delicacies. The labeling on the folksy-looking boxes, written in Chamorro, says "made exclusively on Guam." But Chamorro Chip is owned by a Bostonian, Bob McLaughlin, who also owns the Boston Pizza Co. on Guam.
Dozens of Chamorros interviewed struggled to name a food that is distinctly Chamorro.
"I've got one!" says Tony Lamorena, a local senator. "Barbecued fruit bat. My grandmother used to make it." The local fruit bat, however, is a threatened species and can't be eaten. The same is true of Mr. Lamorena's other suggestion, sea turtle. "I guess we'll stick to Spam," he says with a sigh.
Seen in the Ocean
High on Guam's tallest sea cliff, two bronze figures embrace in the sunset. The statues honor the legend of the Two Lovers, a key part of the Chamorro culture. During early Spanish rule, the story goes, a fair Chamorro maiden was ordered by her father to marry a Spanish army captain. She refused, having fallen in love with a handsome Chamorro warrior. After the two tried to escape, they were chased by the Spanish army to the edge of the cliff. Rather than surrender, the two tied their long black braids together and plunged into the dark waters. On a moonlit night, locals say they can see the spirits of the two lovers frolicking in the ocean below.
They're more likely to see ice-cream cups. At the top of the cliff, a tourist lookout is perched at the edge of the Lovers Point, flanked by a Haagen-Dazs stand and postcard booth. While it's billed as a sacred Chamorro site, few Chamorros ever visit. The only visitors these days are the occasional Japanese couple who use the site for weddings.
"Who's a Chamorro, and who's not?" asks 18-year-old Menchie Canlas, a Filipino ticket-taker at the cliff. "I don't think anybody knows anymore."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Guam should be wary
"US PLANS for military buildup leave Guam wary" (Page A9, Jan. 4) reminded me why the Chamorro people are increasingly fearful of the destruction of their environment and culture, and why many are doing all they can to prevent the massive US military expansion in their occupied land.
Guam remains the colony designed to reinforce US dominance in Asia that William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt envisioned when they seized it from Spain in 1898. Twenty-five years ago, members of the Guam Land Owners' Association worked with two maps. One depicted Guam's best fresh water supply, agricultural land, and fishing grounds. The other showed the US military bases in their homeland. The maps were nearly identical.
Now, with many Okinawans and other Japanese saying that they've had enough of US nuclear-powered ships based in their cities, and that they are fed up with the terrifying noise of night-landing and low-altitude flights and the seizure of their lands, the idea is to transfer some of this nightmare to Guam. Guam's isolated 155,000 people are a frail force to resist the imperium.
As a nation, we feel shame when we recall the genocide and cultural destruction of our country's first peoples. We should not repeat it with the military corruption and destruction of Guam.
Joseph Gerson
Director of programs
American Friends Service Committee
New England Region
Cambridge
Guam remains the colony designed to reinforce US dominance in Asia that William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt envisioned when they seized it from Spain in 1898. Twenty-five years ago, members of the Guam Land Owners' Association worked with two maps. One depicted Guam's best fresh water supply, agricultural land, and fishing grounds. The other showed the US military bases in their homeland. The maps were nearly identical.
Now, with many Okinawans and other Japanese saying that they've had enough of US nuclear-powered ships based in their cities, and that they are fed up with the terrifying noise of night-landing and low-altitude flights and the seizure of their lands, the idea is to transfer some of this nightmare to Guam. Guam's isolated 155,000 people are a frail force to resist the imperium.
As a nation, we feel shame when we recall the genocide and cultural destruction of our country's first peoples. We should not repeat it with the military corruption and destruction of Guam.
Joseph Gerson
Director of programs
American Friends Service Committee
New England Region
Cambridge
Friday, November 21, 2008
Military Buildup Forum Draws Huge Crowd
Military buildup forum draws huge crowd
Thursday, 20 November 2008
By Beau Hodai
Marianas Variety News Staff
THE forum called “A Critique of the Military Buildup on Guahan” held last night at the University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Lecture Hall drew hundreds of participants who were seeking to know how Guam has been dealing with the preparation for the federal government’s Marines relocation plan.
Students and other members of the community filled the hall to hear statements made by an eight-member panel comprised in equal parts of representatives of community organizations and the Civilian-Military Taskforce under the Office of the Governor.
The CMTF provided presentations on the impact of the buildup on the island’s economy, infrastructure, public safety and environmental.
Several panelists and members of the audience expressed concern and frustration over the lack of input from the local community.
“I unequivocally object to the unilateral and arbitrary U.S. policy to hypermilitarize our home,” said Hope Cristobal, former Senator and founder of the Guam Decolonization Commission.
“The federal government never consulted the people of Guam as to the impact such a move would cause before a deal was made with the foreign Japanese government and that the U.S. military officials will not accommodate Guam’s needs in the already concluded bilateral agreement,” she added.
Chris Duenas, chairman of the CMTF public safety task force, said his committee has been working to improve the safety of Guam residents in years to come as the buildup begins to materialize.
He said there are some pre-construction concerns that the CMTF is working to address, such as port capacity and security and tightened customs security to handle the influx of traffic Guam is set to see in coming years.
In addition to increased port and customs security, Duenas said the Office of the Governor has requested $236 million in additional funding from the federal government for fiscal year 2010.
Of the requested amount, $14 million has already been earmarked for the Guam Police Department for recruitment of 60 new police officers.
He said another goal is to develop “fusion centers” to bring local and federal officials together to facilitate cooperation and coherency in government.
An open forum followed after the panels’ presentations.
“If the military buildup is so great, how come Okinawa wants them out?” Fanai Castro of the Guahan Indigenous Collective asked, rhetorically.
“One of the major drives as to why the people of Okinawa started organizing against the U.S. military was because a helicopter crashed at a university in Okinawa,” said Castro. “So, that question is kind of clever—it answers its self. It is because the U.S. military is so great, it is the reason why the people of Okinawa want the military out.”
John Benavente, Consolidated Commission on Utilities general manager and chairman of the CMTF committee on infrastructure, encouraged the students to take jobs in the environmental field, saying environmental workers on Guam now are overburdened.
Panelist Michael Lujan Bevacqua of Famoksaiyan said every resident of Guam—regardless of their position on the buildup—needs to realize that the buildup will affect them personally. He encouraged residents to take a more proactive roll in the course of their and Guam’s future.
“It (the buildup) is taking place because we are America, and it’s taking place because we’re not. It is not only something that takes place because of our geographic position, but our colonial status as well,” Bevacqua said.
“It is also taking place because we are one of the few American communities where a unilateral announcement by the DOD that it intends to drastically affect life in your community and cause a population increase of 34 percent is met with excitement, celebration and a frightening lack of questioning,” he added.
Whether one supports or opposes the troops buildup, Bevacqua said everyone “should care about the fact that you are a colony and this military buildup is predicated on the fact that you live in a colony and you can be treated as an object for the subject of the united states, as a weapon of the warrior of the United States military.”
“This is the United States military sharpening the tip of its spear,” he said.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
By Beau Hodai
Marianas Variety News Staff
THE forum called “A Critique of the Military Buildup on Guahan” held last night at the University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Lecture Hall drew hundreds of participants who were seeking to know how Guam has been dealing with the preparation for the federal government’s Marines relocation plan.
Students and other members of the community filled the hall to hear statements made by an eight-member panel comprised in equal parts of representatives of community organizations and the Civilian-Military Taskforce under the Office of the Governor.
The CMTF provided presentations on the impact of the buildup on the island’s economy, infrastructure, public safety and environmental.
Several panelists and members of the audience expressed concern and frustration over the lack of input from the local community.
“I unequivocally object to the unilateral and arbitrary U.S. policy to hypermilitarize our home,” said Hope Cristobal, former Senator and founder of the Guam Decolonization Commission.
“The federal government never consulted the people of Guam as to the impact such a move would cause before a deal was made with the foreign Japanese government and that the U.S. military officials will not accommodate Guam’s needs in the already concluded bilateral agreement,” she added.
Chris Duenas, chairman of the CMTF public safety task force, said his committee has been working to improve the safety of Guam residents in years to come as the buildup begins to materialize.
He said there are some pre-construction concerns that the CMTF is working to address, such as port capacity and security and tightened customs security to handle the influx of traffic Guam is set to see in coming years.
In addition to increased port and customs security, Duenas said the Office of the Governor has requested $236 million in additional funding from the federal government for fiscal year 2010.
Of the requested amount, $14 million has already been earmarked for the Guam Police Department for recruitment of 60 new police officers.
He said another goal is to develop “fusion centers” to bring local and federal officials together to facilitate cooperation and coherency in government.
An open forum followed after the panels’ presentations.
“If the military buildup is so great, how come Okinawa wants them out?” Fanai Castro of the Guahan Indigenous Collective asked, rhetorically.
“One of the major drives as to why the people of Okinawa started organizing against the U.S. military was because a helicopter crashed at a university in Okinawa,” said Castro. “So, that question is kind of clever—it answers its self. It is because the U.S. military is so great, it is the reason why the people of Okinawa want the military out.”
John Benavente, Consolidated Commission on Utilities general manager and chairman of the CMTF committee on infrastructure, encouraged the students to take jobs in the environmental field, saying environmental workers on Guam now are overburdened.
Panelist Michael Lujan Bevacqua of Famoksaiyan said every resident of Guam—regardless of their position on the buildup—needs to realize that the buildup will affect them personally. He encouraged residents to take a more proactive roll in the course of their and Guam’s future.
“It (the buildup) is taking place because we are America, and it’s taking place because we’re not. It is not only something that takes place because of our geographic position, but our colonial status as well,” Bevacqua said.
“It is also taking place because we are one of the few American communities where a unilateral announcement by the DOD that it intends to drastically affect life in your community and cause a population increase of 34 percent is met with excitement, celebration and a frightening lack of questioning,” he added.
Whether one supports or opposes the troops buildup, Bevacqua said everyone “should care about the fact that you are a colony and this military buildup is predicated on the fact that you live in a colony and you can be treated as an object for the subject of the united states, as a weapon of the warrior of the United States military.”
“This is the United States military sharpening the tip of its spear,” he said.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
From a Footnote...To the DNC
MINAGAHET ZINE
Tulu'Nga'Fulu'Gualo
"From a Footnote...To the DNC"
October 3, 2008
ARTICLES
May 15, 2008 - Bei Falak Denver - I'm Headed to the Democratic National Convention
Yanggen ilek-hu na "excited yu'" siempre ti nahong este na fino'-hu para u na'tungo' hamyo i tinahdong-hu i minagof-hu put este! Mampos excited yu'! Mamposssss.
May 19, 2008 - From a Footnote...To the Democratic National Convention
My new audience, and one which I am definitely happy to engage with is a liberal, Democratic, progressive one. There is so much terrain, so many issues and so many ideas upon which there is a strong affinity between what I believe and what these other bloggers believe, but I know that given my political status, there will be very fundamental divisions and distinctions, that cannot be simply explained away as "politics" or simple differences of opinion, but stem directly from the ambiguous and colonial status of Guam.
June 26, 2008 - Fache'
TRUE RUMORS ABOUT OBAMA: Barack Obama is spearheading a movement to rename “Marine Corps Drive” “Marine Drive Magazine Drive.”...Barack Obama is the white lady in Mai'ina...Barack Obama was really the one who grabbed the gavel from Judi Won Pat...Barack Obama closed down Gameworks...Barack Obama is the reason that it always rains on Liberation Day...Barack Obama is the one who keeps putting casino gambling on the election ballots and who also keeps organizing the Lina’la’ Sin Casino movements...Barack Obama is the one who wrote all the terrible Guam jokes for Bob Hope, Johnny Carson and Jon Stewart...When the Marines and their dependents get to Guam and the roads get worse, the infrastructure becomes even more strained and the cost of living shoots up even more, it will all be Barack Obama’s fault
July 9, 2008 - Racial Fantasies
From this perspective Obama does represent a huge shift. He is not just another rich white guy, who came from a perfect American home and had plenty of perfect American opportunities. He is not part of that fallacy of American normativity. Since he comes from modest means and a broken home, he does have a much more actual American story than most Presidents. But as a person of color, he also knows the pain of being an American who must constantly endure the racism of American race relations, where those with different names, skin colors, phenotypes or religions can always be treated like outsiders and always be told in both polite and impolite ways to "go home" or back to where they came from. Obama, as a Presidential candidate still isn't exempt from this. Despite being born in the United States and being a US citizen, there are still very strong rumors working their ways through "hard working" communities that argue that he isn't an US citizen and was in fact born in Kenya, and that he believes in one of those "non-American" or "anti-American" religions.
August 15, 2008 - Bloggers at the DNC
Whether this year results in significant gains for racialized groups is unlikely, but the Democratic National Convention will be a potent symbolic event, creating a huge emotional bubble amongst people in the United States, built from two very intimate, yet transcendent hopes. The first is the laudable hope that racism in this country can be surpassed and that dream of Martin Luther King Jr.'s is possible. The second is the selfish and self-protecting hope that should America at last elect a black person to its highest office, then white people who never owned slaves or killed Native Americans, will no longer have to feel guilty for the slaves owned and indigenous people that their ancestors killed or profited from
August 23, 2008 - Kao Sina Hu Interview Hao?
To tell you the truth, there is some hope on the horizon for this dream of decolonization for Guam, a faint trace fell into my inbox this evening. It is not much, and probably won't amount to anything, but it is still something.
August 24, 2008 - DNC Preview
Tomorrow is the first day of the convention and I'll have a lot more. I was able to meet up with the Guam delegation today. They all sported red Hawaiian shirts which made them very popular with the other delegations and they were often asked by complete strangers if they could take pictures of them. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this...
August 25, 2008 - DNC Day 1- The AAPI Matrix
I attended four Asian Pacific Islander Events today, and for the part of me that has lived out in the states for the past four years, and become accustomed to pan-ethnic rubrics such as “Asian Pacific Islander Americans” it was an exciting day. For the other part of me which is rooted in Guam, and had never even used the term “Pacific Islander” until I came out here, the day has been a bit disconcerting.
August 25, 2008 - DNC Day 1 - The Return of the Native
I think the crosswalk lights had been white for a while. Because he immediately darted off, in a different direction than which we had both been initially facing. In the last look that I got of his face, I saw a mixture of fear and confusion, as if the foundation for his identity in that moment had just completely collapsed and fallen away, leaving him to dangle without any certainty. I imagine that so many people who come to Guam serving in the military, or even tourists who visit Hawai’i get that look after they realize that a place that they imagined as theirs, whether it be a paradise or just another military base, in reality belongs to someone else, and has natives who claim it.
August 26, 2008 - DNC Day 2 - The Half Vote Dilemma
I've written before about the half-vote delegates that Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Americans Abroad receive in the Democratic Presidential primary process. For me this is just another sort of way in which the island is included and excluded, how it is never made a full part of the United States, but instead treated to small token gestures to make it feel more American then it really is. But this is my view on things, a member of the Guam delegation Taling Taitano...looks at it in a different way.
August 26, 2008 - DNC Day 2 - Okinawan Realities
I briefly met one elected official this afternoon, who had spent several years of her life in Okinawa. I introduced myself as the blogger from Guam. She mentioned having always wanted to visit Guam but never having the chance too. I took this opportunity to discuss the impending military buildup there...At first her face went ashen, and she said, oh no, how terrible.
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - Another Dispatch from the AA/PI Matrix
Guestblogged by Rashne Limki
The fundamental difference between the two groups (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) can be captured in one word – ‘colonization.’ The AAPI rubric is as absurd as AANA (i.e. Asian American Native American). But what makes the indifference, lack of awareness and absurdity starkly evident is that the majority of the speakers at the caucus stumble over the ‘PI’ part, hesitating about where exactly the letters P and/or I fit into the label. And of course, when not using the abbreviated version, the group is addressed simply as ‘Asian American.’
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - Looking for the Other Side of American Militarization
Coming from an island which has a far more intimate relationship to the military than any other military community (with the exception perhaps of the Marshall Islands), I'm struggling to find a place for the expression or even just mention of Guam's particular relationship with the United States military. Can any "real" "formal" American community, meaning those in states, know the feeling of being occupied in an American war, being displaced from your land to transform your island into a massive base, and also have your people then serve and die in that same military in record numbers? And this is all history which is not ancient, but has all taken place in the lives of my grandparents and thousands of other Chamorros.
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - War Reparations and Self-Determination are on the Table
Pilar Lujan also made an impact on the proceedings with her short, but to the point introduction to Guam, prior to providing the tally for the Guam delegation. She began by invoking that they were the delegation from Guam, "Where America's Day Begins" which was met by applause. She followed up this statement with a reminder that the Guam delegation seeks self-determination and war reparations from the United States. She again repeated a moment later, the reminder about self-determination for Guam.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day 4 - The Lost Pacific
To say that this convention has been frustrating because of a lack of Pacific Islander presence would be a sen dongkalu na understatement. I've attended this week all of the events which were marked as "Asian-American Pacific Islander" or "Asian Pacific Islander American" and even "Asian Pacific American." I've had little to no luck. The delegates and representatives from these islands haven't been attending these meetings or even speaking at them.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day - Operation New Life
She was considering how far things had come, how things had changed, how they hadn't, and how people came full circle. She is currently teaching journalism at Kent State University, and more than thirty years ago, over that war and its expansion into Cambodia had sparked even more protests, and at her current university several protesting students were killed to protect that idea of American exceptionalism, and that it above all has a right to wage whatever war it wishes.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day 4 - Of Course...
I spent Barack Obama's speech crawling around on the floor of Invesco Field, trying to worm my way close enough to the candidate so I could get a decent picture of him with my cheap digital camera. Unfortunately, the closest I was able to get was right in the middle of the Texas delegation, so I have several dozen photos of a brown blur in a black suit that still has plenty of gravitas.
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - The War We Fight
Guestblogged by Victoria Leon Guerrero
Like Obama’s advisor, most political advisors know nothing about Guam . The DNC taught me that we will never have a presence until we make a statement. No one is going to listen until we shout loudly for our rights. There is no hope in fighting another country’s war. It’s time to fight for our own nation and her people.
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - Breaking News - Sarah Palin as Republican VP
I'm watching CNN right now and it seems that the Republicans have decided to make major history this election, by not just picking a woman for Vice President, but bringing together the first Father -Daughter Ticket in History!!!!
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - Some Quotes from the Week
Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo: "When I first sat in the Armed Services Committee, my first meeting. They said now, the question you ask, I was on the lower tier, the first row, now I'm on the second row. They said the question should be kind of generic and not too specific. So I had this question written out. Then I heard the rest of them, "my base" and "my state." I says, "Hey!" So when it came down to me, I said, "I want a carrier sent to Guam."
September 4, 2008 - Why Obama Has a Vision, While Palin Doesn't...Or Why I'm (sort of) a Community Organizer
When organizing communities, you are often working with an injustice and a vision. A community which is being mistreated, is not getting their fair share, has been ignored or forgotten, and you reference this historical or contemporary mistreatment in order to activate them, to propel them forward into a progressive, more inclusive, more prosperous, more equal or simply, just a better vision of the future. In Barack Obama's campaign you can see this, and contrast it with the McCain campaign's approach.
September 7, 2008 - Change You Can Handle - A White Compromise
But whereas Obama represents a change that "you can believe in" or a change which is derived from hope or dreams in a better future (something which, even if incrementally pushes you forward), McCain's campaign has changed this race back into the question of "change that you can handle." For all of those white voters out there who are uncomfortable or uneasy about voting for black man, who might be Muslim, and talks like he's smart and "uppity" McCain has offered them a chance to still change this country, but to still protect its perceived identity as a "white" nation. Protect the whiteness of America, but still be part of that bold pioneering American spirit!
September 13, 2008 - An Indigenous View on Palin's Alaska
There is far more to "Native America" than just casinos, and if you don't know about the fragile relationships that reservations or tribes have with their state governments in your state, its probably not because it doesn't exist, but its either because of the metaphorical erasure of Native Americans from American consciousness, or its because they were physically erased and displaced from your area or state.
Tulu'Nga'Fulu'Gualo
"From a Footnote...To the DNC"
October 3, 2008
ARTICLES
May 15, 2008 - Bei Falak Denver - I'm Headed to the Democratic National Convention
Yanggen ilek-hu na "excited yu'" siempre ti nahong este na fino'-hu para u na'tungo' hamyo i tinahdong-hu i minagof-hu put este! Mampos excited yu'! Mamposssss.
May 19, 2008 - From a Footnote...To the Democratic National Convention
My new audience, and one which I am definitely happy to engage with is a liberal, Democratic, progressive one. There is so much terrain, so many issues and so many ideas upon which there is a strong affinity between what I believe and what these other bloggers believe, but I know that given my political status, there will be very fundamental divisions and distinctions, that cannot be simply explained away as "politics" or simple differences of opinion, but stem directly from the ambiguous and colonial status of Guam.
June 26, 2008 - Fache'
TRUE RUMORS ABOUT OBAMA: Barack Obama is spearheading a movement to rename “Marine Corps Drive” “Marine Drive Magazine Drive.”...Barack Obama is the white lady in Mai'ina...Barack Obama was really the one who grabbed the gavel from Judi Won Pat...Barack Obama closed down Gameworks...Barack Obama is the reason that it always rains on Liberation Day...Barack Obama is the one who keeps putting casino gambling on the election ballots and who also keeps organizing the Lina’la’ Sin Casino movements...Barack Obama is the one who wrote all the terrible Guam jokes for Bob Hope, Johnny Carson and Jon Stewart...When the Marines and their dependents get to Guam and the roads get worse, the infrastructure becomes even more strained and the cost of living shoots up even more, it will all be Barack Obama’s fault
July 9, 2008 - Racial Fantasies
From this perspective Obama does represent a huge shift. He is not just another rich white guy, who came from a perfect American home and had plenty of perfect American opportunities. He is not part of that fallacy of American normativity. Since he comes from modest means and a broken home, he does have a much more actual American story than most Presidents. But as a person of color, he also knows the pain of being an American who must constantly endure the racism of American race relations, where those with different names, skin colors, phenotypes or religions can always be treated like outsiders and always be told in both polite and impolite ways to "go home" or back to where they came from. Obama, as a Presidential candidate still isn't exempt from this. Despite being born in the United States and being a US citizen, there are still very strong rumors working their ways through "hard working" communities that argue that he isn't an US citizen and was in fact born in Kenya, and that he believes in one of those "non-American" or "anti-American" religions.
August 15, 2008 - Bloggers at the DNC
Whether this year results in significant gains for racialized groups is unlikely, but the Democratic National Convention will be a potent symbolic event, creating a huge emotional bubble amongst people in the United States, built from two very intimate, yet transcendent hopes. The first is the laudable hope that racism in this country can be surpassed and that dream of Martin Luther King Jr.'s is possible. The second is the selfish and self-protecting hope that should America at last elect a black person to its highest office, then white people who never owned slaves or killed Native Americans, will no longer have to feel guilty for the slaves owned and indigenous people that their ancestors killed or profited from
August 23, 2008 - Kao Sina Hu Interview Hao?
To tell you the truth, there is some hope on the horizon for this dream of decolonization for Guam, a faint trace fell into my inbox this evening. It is not much, and probably won't amount to anything, but it is still something.
August 24, 2008 - DNC Preview
Tomorrow is the first day of the convention and I'll have a lot more. I was able to meet up with the Guam delegation today. They all sported red Hawaiian shirts which made them very popular with the other delegations and they were often asked by complete strangers if they could take pictures of them. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this...
August 25, 2008 - DNC Day 1- The AAPI Matrix
I attended four Asian Pacific Islander Events today, and for the part of me that has lived out in the states for the past four years, and become accustomed to pan-ethnic rubrics such as “Asian Pacific Islander Americans” it was an exciting day. For the other part of me which is rooted in Guam, and had never even used the term “Pacific Islander” until I came out here, the day has been a bit disconcerting.
August 25, 2008 - DNC Day 1 - The Return of the Native
I think the crosswalk lights had been white for a while. Because he immediately darted off, in a different direction than which we had both been initially facing. In the last look that I got of his face, I saw a mixture of fear and confusion, as if the foundation for his identity in that moment had just completely collapsed and fallen away, leaving him to dangle without any certainty. I imagine that so many people who come to Guam serving in the military, or even tourists who visit Hawai’i get that look after they realize that a place that they imagined as theirs, whether it be a paradise or just another military base, in reality belongs to someone else, and has natives who claim it.
August 26, 2008 - DNC Day 2 - The Half Vote Dilemma
I've written before about the half-vote delegates that Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Americans Abroad receive in the Democratic Presidential primary process. For me this is just another sort of way in which the island is included and excluded, how it is never made a full part of the United States, but instead treated to small token gestures to make it feel more American then it really is. But this is my view on things, a member of the Guam delegation Taling Taitano...looks at it in a different way.
August 26, 2008 - DNC Day 2 - Okinawan Realities
I briefly met one elected official this afternoon, who had spent several years of her life in Okinawa. I introduced myself as the blogger from Guam. She mentioned having always wanted to visit Guam but never having the chance too. I took this opportunity to discuss the impending military buildup there...At first her face went ashen, and she said, oh no, how terrible.
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - Another Dispatch from the AA/PI Matrix
Guestblogged by Rashne Limki
The fundamental difference between the two groups (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) can be captured in one word – ‘colonization.’ The AAPI rubric is as absurd as AANA (i.e. Asian American Native American). But what makes the indifference, lack of awareness and absurdity starkly evident is that the majority of the speakers at the caucus stumble over the ‘PI’ part, hesitating about where exactly the letters P and/or I fit into the label. And of course, when not using the abbreviated version, the group is addressed simply as ‘Asian American.’
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - Looking for the Other Side of American Militarization
Coming from an island which has a far more intimate relationship to the military than any other military community (with the exception perhaps of the Marshall Islands), I'm struggling to find a place for the expression or even just mention of Guam's particular relationship with the United States military. Can any "real" "formal" American community, meaning those in states, know the feeling of being occupied in an American war, being displaced from your land to transform your island into a massive base, and also have your people then serve and die in that same military in record numbers? And this is all history which is not ancient, but has all taken place in the lives of my grandparents and thousands of other Chamorros.
August 27, 2008 - DNC Day 3 - War Reparations and Self-Determination are on the Table
Pilar Lujan also made an impact on the proceedings with her short, but to the point introduction to Guam, prior to providing the tally for the Guam delegation. She began by invoking that they were the delegation from Guam, "Where America's Day Begins" which was met by applause. She followed up this statement with a reminder that the Guam delegation seeks self-determination and war reparations from the United States. She again repeated a moment later, the reminder about self-determination for Guam.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day 4 - The Lost Pacific
To say that this convention has been frustrating because of a lack of Pacific Islander presence would be a sen dongkalu na understatement. I've attended this week all of the events which were marked as "Asian-American Pacific Islander" or "Asian Pacific Islander American" and even "Asian Pacific American." I've had little to no luck. The delegates and representatives from these islands haven't been attending these meetings or even speaking at them.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day - Operation New Life
She was considering how far things had come, how things had changed, how they hadn't, and how people came full circle. She is currently teaching journalism at Kent State University, and more than thirty years ago, over that war and its expansion into Cambodia had sparked even more protests, and at her current university several protesting students were killed to protect that idea of American exceptionalism, and that it above all has a right to wage whatever war it wishes.
August 28, 2008 - DNC Day 4 - Of Course...
I spent Barack Obama's speech crawling around on the floor of Invesco Field, trying to worm my way close enough to the candidate so I could get a decent picture of him with my cheap digital camera. Unfortunately, the closest I was able to get was right in the middle of the Texas delegation, so I have several dozen photos of a brown blur in a black suit that still has plenty of gravitas.
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - The War We Fight
Guestblogged by Victoria Leon Guerrero
Like Obama’s advisor, most political advisors know nothing about Guam . The DNC taught me that we will never have a presence until we make a statement. No one is going to listen until we shout loudly for our rights. There is no hope in fighting another country’s war. It’s time to fight for our own nation and her people.
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - Breaking News - Sarah Palin as Republican VP
I'm watching CNN right now and it seems that the Republicans have decided to make major history this election, by not just picking a woman for Vice President, but bringing together the first Father -Daughter Ticket in History!!!!
August 29, 2008 - DNC Day 5 - Some Quotes from the Week
Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo: "When I first sat in the Armed Services Committee, my first meeting. They said now, the question you ask, I was on the lower tier, the first row, now I'm on the second row. They said the question should be kind of generic and not too specific. So I had this question written out. Then I heard the rest of them, "my base" and "my state." I says, "Hey!" So when it came down to me, I said, "I want a carrier sent to Guam."
September 4, 2008 - Why Obama Has a Vision, While Palin Doesn't...Or Why I'm (sort of) a Community Organizer
When organizing communities, you are often working with an injustice and a vision. A community which is being mistreated, is not getting their fair share, has been ignored or forgotten, and you reference this historical or contemporary mistreatment in order to activate them, to propel them forward into a progressive, more inclusive, more prosperous, more equal or simply, just a better vision of the future. In Barack Obama's campaign you can see this, and contrast it with the McCain campaign's approach.
September 7, 2008 - Change You Can Handle - A White Compromise
But whereas Obama represents a change that "you can believe in" or a change which is derived from hope or dreams in a better future (something which, even if incrementally pushes you forward), McCain's campaign has changed this race back into the question of "change that you can handle." For all of those white voters out there who are uncomfortable or uneasy about voting for black man, who might be Muslim, and talks like he's smart and "uppity" McCain has offered them a chance to still change this country, but to still protect its perceived identity as a "white" nation. Protect the whiteness of America, but still be part of that bold pioneering American spirit!
September 13, 2008 - An Indigenous View on Palin's Alaska
There is far more to "Native America" than just casinos, and if you don't know about the fragile relationships that reservations or tribes have with their state governments in your state, its probably not because it doesn't exist, but its either because of the metaphorical erasure of Native Americans from American consciousness, or its because they were physically erased and displaced from your area or state.
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