NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since 2003 I have had a number of uneven traditions associated with this blog. Many of these have dissipated as I have used this blog less and less, but a few I have continued to hold on to. One of the longest held traditions is "Happy US Imperialism Day!" It started as a thinking piece while I was working on my Master's Thesis in Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam. I had spent a few years reading as much as I could about Guam History. I had interviewed hundreds of elders born prior to World War II, who had experienced Japanese occupation. I had even begun working for Puerto Rican filmmaker Frances Negron-Muntaner on a documentary that would later become War for Guam. I was also spending time with activists of every stripe on Guam, trying to talk to anyone who I could find who had long been critical of the things I was just starting to learn about the historical and contemporary realities of the Chamoru people.  I was encountering the history and the present of

I first wrote an article "Happy US Imperialism Day Guam!" about 16 years ago. It was published in Minagahet Zine and later on this blog when I began it soon after. The writing of this article originally was a very formative experience. Part of it eventually became my Masters Thesis in Micronesian Studies. But I also wrote it at a time when I was first trying to find a way to become more public about my critiques and writing letters to the editor of the Pacific Daily News and creating websites/blogs were some of the obvious choices. This article was written when the second Iraq War was only eight months old and the War in Afghanistan was over two years old. It was written at a time when I was feeling frustrated over the deaths of the first few Chamorros in Iraq, Christopher Rivera Wesley being the first. As I said, it was also written at a time when I was first working on developing a critical consciousness and a public voice in terms of writing and philosophy. I had been

Like many issues that straddle both the US and Guam, there are ways in which their may be a shared, similar experience, but always ways in which geography, culture, identity, history and coloniality will make it different and distinct. For example, within a US context I may be on one side of any health care debate, but in Guam I may take a completely opposite position. Part of it depends on how I may see myself ideologically and politically in relation to issues of power, justice and progress in the US context. But when the discussion extends to the colonies, my sense of things tends to become more Guam and Chamorro focused. If Guam were a full part of the US, I might feel differently, but as it is not, I do not and should not assume that however things work in the US, is how they should work in Guam. Or that, like the colonial mantra goes, whatever is good for the US must be good for Guam. Because of this colonial difference, I haven't been following the Trumpcare debacle as muc