NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Being back in the states has made me nostalgic for when I was a grad student. The nostalgia primarily comes out around book stores, because that was one of my favorite pastimes while I lived in San Diego. A friend of mine who I haven't seen since I left grad school and finished my Ph.D. is on the verge of defending her dissertation in Ethnic Studies. All of this is for some reason reminding me of my dissertation. The days I would spend in coffee shops working on it. The hours spent poring through books and articles researching it. The times I would spend while driving across California contemplating it and then rushing to write hasty notes on anything I could before a random, but precious thought escaped me. One of the central scandals that drove my dissertation was the issue of "symbolic" or "fake" votes for the delegates from the colonies of the United States. It was a site that was so rich with material for illustration my arguments, I could have written

I was racking my brain recently to determine what was the first ever Chamorro song that was featured in a motion picture. Noon Sunday was the first every motion picture to be filmed primarily on Guam, prior to that some minor filming had been done on Guam for World War II and Godzilla films but nothing substantial. Noon Sunday was not set in Guam, but it was the first film to feature extensively the island of Guam. Guam was the locale for a fictional Pacific island that was being taken over by a menacing Asian power. Almost all the speaking roles went to people from off-island (from the US or the Philippines), and Chamorros ended up playing most of the "extra" roles. As a result the film didn't feature any Chamorro music. You do find documentaries and television programs, all locally produced that feature Chamorro songs of at least Chamorros singing songs. Guam's History Through Songs, made by the late Carmen Santos is a perfect example of this. For those of you u

“Guam is a Dirty Word” Michael Lujan Bevacqua Marianas Variety 7/3/13 When I wrote my dissertation in Ethnic Studies I ran into several methodological problems. The chief among them was how to write about Guam’s colonial status in a world where countries pretend it doesn’t exist anymore? How do you write about it when most people on Guam don’t want to admit to it and neither does the United States? As a result most of the discourse that is produced about Guam doesn’t admit to its colonial truths and pretends it doesn’t exist. For me this doesn’t mean that Guam’s status is any less colonial, but it means that because of the nature of the world today, the evidence of Guam’s colonial status is never formal, it has to be found in other ways. Joe Murphy used to joke that Guam was a “dirty word” or a “four letter word,” and in one sense he was right. Guam today is something that is obscene, in the same way as other small places beset by militarism and colo

Texas has made my teaching a lot easier lately for a variety of reasons. When trying to talk about Guam's political status, it's experience of the colonial difference, or to use the imagery of Du Bois, its own personal veil, the story of a Chamorro woman who recently attempted to apply for a Federal childcare program for her children, but was rejected on the basis being born on Guam made them not U.S. Citizens. When she confronted the agency about this "mistake," this was the conversation she had with a supervisor. "He laughed about it and said the letter is true and he actually had gone to college and he has never been taught or never had heard anything about Guam existing or even being a territory of the U.S." She later received an apology. Where did this most recent example of the everyday manifestations of Guam's unequal political status in the lives of those who call it home take place? Texas. The rhetoric of Texas Governor Rick Perry in the f

Monday, Aug 29, 2011 10:30 ET The decade's biggest scam  By Glenn Greenwald Salon.com The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles.  All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat: "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically

“The Not-So-Secret Guam Wikileaks” Michael Lujan Bevacqua August 17, 2011 The Marianas Variety Former Congressman Robert Underwood used to call Guam “The Rodney Dangerfield of the Pacific” because it never seems to get much respect from the Federal Government or from the United States in general. So when I first heard that there were Guam mentions in the much discussed and maligned Wikileaks archive of US State Department communiqués, I was certain that most of them wouldn’t be of any substance, but rather reflect the way Guam is often mentioned in American popular culture; as the butt of jokes. Eventually we learned that the details were very important and shed much light on how the Guam military buildup was or wasn’t really planned. They were salacious enough, although not in the silly way I had initially wished for. For your reading pleasure here are some of the not-so-secret Wikileaks Guam mentions that I imagined finding. I was certain that several of them would simply be

Political status has been such a huge issue lately, even to the point of bringing the infamous Dave Davis out of his temporary hiatus from writing columns for the Marianas Variety back to the forefront of racist denigrating rhetoric on Guam. There are bills flying around the Legislature, the Governor is not only having meetings but also make soft promises about a vote taking place in 2012. As a staffer from the Legislature noted last week, the next few years may be the most significant chance that our generation gets at resolving an issue which has been stewing for centuries, that of Guam's colonial status. I'm someone who is very willing to take on that challenge, but we'll see how serious Guam's leaders are. Political status is something great for rhetoric and for giving the illusion of having a political ideology, but action on it has been historically minute. The recent snub by 15 US Senators who visited Guam on their way to Asia has even gotten embroiled in this

The Marianas Variety has a habit lately of putting huge images of people talking on their front page. A few months back, when there was some back and forth debating between JGPO and We Are Guahan at the Rotary Club. The front page of the Variety first had a large, almost poster size image of i matan WAG and my Starcraft 2 bromance buddy Leevin Camacho, in the middle of a word. The week after, they had an image of Colonel Jackson from JGPO, also mid-word. The images weren't that interesting, since it was just people speaking, but the size of them caught me and others off guard. In today's Marianas Variety there was another tall and large frontpage image, yet this time rather than merely representing the act of someone speaking, it was meant to convey deep and serious emotions. The Governor of Guam, Eddie Calvo is standing tall, his hands folded below his waist before him. Rather than the usual images of politicians that we find in the media, which show them staged as happy, bl

(This image comes from Guam Zombie , click the link to see more). For the past week everyone, their grandmother, second cousin and achakma' have been asking me to weigh in on the debate over Chamorro vs. Guamanian. I ended up writing a very quick column for the Marianas Variety about the issue. I spent some time in one of my classes discussing it and ended up emailing back and forth with many people who feel angry and confused about the issue. Part of the anger and confusion was from Chamorros who feel like they are being erased in the rhetoric of the new administration on Guam which loves using the term Guamanian to refer to everyone on Guam, including Chamorros, basically saying that they are a group just like any others on Guam. The other anger and confusion was from young Chamorros and non-Chamorros who like using the term Guamanian and don't like being told that it is wrong to use it. For them, the term doesn't erase Chamorros, but is just something meant to refer