NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Despite the social distancing lockdown and remote work for my office over the past month, it has been difficult to find the mental brain space needed to write regularly. I mean this in terms of creative writing, but also political writing. So much of my brain space has been taken up by worrying about so many different things, I've found it hard at times to focus or give myself the space to take on the many other writing projects I have waiting for me. Thankfully I have been able to work through some of the thoughts I have on the COVID-19 pandemic and Guam's political status in my weekly column for the  Pacific Daily News. This hasn't gotten me many new fans, in fact the columns that I published for three weeks at the start of the lockdown phase have been some of my most hated since I started writing for the newspaper a few years ago. I won't get into way people seem to take particularly gleeful hate in my columns lately, but I felt compelled to share them here. Afte

Diagnosis Guinaiya by Michael Lujan Bevacqua I flip through the untouched yellowed pages of a phonebook where photographs of smirking physicians remind me that there is no cure for what I feel. Symptom 1, the itching, restless dancing of fingers hovering above a keyboard, agonizing over an email to you. When I glance away, they audaciously type, “tåya’ åmot para guinaiya.” I spend sleep-starved nights tabbing page after virtual page from malware infected medical sites, each of which is sponsored by the fact that there is no cure for what I am feeling right now. Symptom 2, my poor eye, crooked and scratched, sprained in its socket from straining to watch you from afar. As my eyes fail in frustration, the normally invisible detritus of the world’s afterglow mimes the plot of the most recent installment of my life, “Tåya’ åmot para guinaiya” I Whatsapp friends and foes photos of my symptom-sick form, hoping for some positive prognosis, but each

You'll find a number of different articles about Agent Orange on this blog, that I've posted over the years. This one was published in the Guam Daily Post recently and didn't get much attention. Thought I'd post it here as a reminder about the dangers and poisons of militarization. It is one of the many American legacies in Guam that most people refuse to admit to or do anything about. Check out this page Guam & Agent Orange for more information. ******************** Study finds link between Agent Orange and infant mortality on Guam by Mar-Vic Cagurangan Guam Daily Post January 19, 2016 Infants born to mothers who lived in Agent Orange-sprayed areas were at an increased risk of infant mortality due to congenital anomalies, according to scientists who recently released the first study that examined the link between herbicides and infant mortality on Guam. The study, published in the December 2015 issue of the Hawaii Journal of Medicine and Publi

If you look at pictures of Chamorros a hundred years ago, we look markedly different today. I do not mean in terms of skin color and so on, but I mean in terms of size. If you look at images of Chamorros a century ago there are some who look healthy and comfortable in their size, but most, especially men are quite skinny. Descriptions of Ancient Chamorros allude to them being a bit on the larger side, healthy, but slightly overweight. A happy and comfortable plumpness.  Chamorros today are a very large and very unhealthy people. Some of this can be blamed on environmental factors, such as poisons in the land and sea due to militarization. It can also be blamed on the diets of people today, which are a combination of poor health choices but also structural conditions that go all the way back to the end of World War II and the drastic changes that took place in the Chamorro way of life. Chamorros are not unique in this regard but it is a tragic story we find across the Pacific, wher

Read the article below about the case of James Leon Guerrero, notorious on Guam for robbing the Bank of Guam. The Federal Government was planning on seeking the death penalty for him and another Chamorro for their role in killing a prison guard. The article recounts how the death penalty has been dropped due to a Federal judge ruling that Leon Guerrero has a history of untreated mental illness. And so while Leon Guerrero will remain in prison for the rest of his life, he is no longer in danger of ending up on death row. For the past few years I have been meeting with Leon Guerrero's defense team to discuss with them aspects of Chamorro history that may be relevant to the case. Through these meetings I learned about mitigation, and the exhaustive amount of research that should take place prior to trying someone in a capital case. I have spoken to them about the impact of World War II on Chamorros and the trauma that gets carried into postwar generations in both visible and invisib

We Are Going to Wait for These People to Die" by Giff Johnson Pacific Politics http://pacificpolitics.com/2013/11/were-going-to-just-wait-for-these-people-to-die/ With the exception of two public hearings in the U.S. Congress eight years ago, a petition from the Marshall Islands seeking additional compensation for nuclear weapons testing damages has languished for 13 years. The lack of a formal response from the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration prompted a Congressman from New York State, Gary Ackerman, to comment angrily during a 2010 public hearing: The Marshall Islands ‘claim we owe (them) US$2 billion and so what? We’re going to just wait for these people to die, right? We’ve given cancer to them, taken away their property…They’ve put a value on it, and it seems to me that if we know that this is about dignity, then there has to be something besides ‘good luck fellows’ with whatever few years you might have left…You can’t unscrew them is the point. B

In the film The Matrix, the Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving holds a short, but memorable philosophical session with his captive, resistance fighter Morpheus. He tells him about the first versions of the Matrix that were created in order to keep the imprisoned human population occupied while their energies were siphoned from them like batteries. In the early versions of the Matrix everything was perfect. It was like paradise, free of conflict and problems. It was a perfect world. That perfection is what made it impossible for humans to accept, and so when confronted with this perfect world humans rejected it wholesale and so those early versions of the Matrix were total failures. So instead of having the Matrix make people happy and give them a perfect world, the machines decided to give them a world similar to what they already knew. Imperfect, full of struggle, pain, loneliness, doubt and rejection. People accepted this and the Matrix continued to functi