NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

At the funeral for Maga'låhi Ed Benavente today, I got a chance to talk to former Governor of Guam Felix Camacho. When Felix Camacho was first elected the group Nasion Chamoru was in decline in terms of its political power. Angel Santos had been elected into the Guam Legislature years earlier and formally left the group. Nasion itself had continued to fight and gotten a number of reforms implemented around land for the landless and for families that had lost land after World War II to the US military. Felix Camacho, seeking to make a sort of peace with Nasion Chamoru, which had been a notorious thorn in the side of the previous administration, reached out to Ed Benavente and offered him a position in his cabinet. I remember that time well, as I had already started hanging out with members of the Colonized Chamoru Coalition and so I got to listen in while members of Nasion Chamoru discussed whether or not Ed should join with Camacho. I won't describe the deliberations in detai

I used to run (with the help of a few others) the blog Peace and Justice for Guam and the Pacific . It is still online and features more than a thousand articles from a variety of sources dealing with issues of peace, militarization and culture primarily in Guam, but also in the wider Pacific. I was working on the draft of an article recently talking about Nasion Chamoru and their effect on Chamorro activism and Guam society. I found on that blog several articles and I wanted to share some of them below. ***************** Mayors shuns Chamorro Nation By Mar-Vic Cagurangan Variety News Staff July 16, 2007 GUAM senators yesterday gave the Japanese delegation a rundown of demands that they want from the U.S. government in exchange for hosting the 8,000 troops that will be relocated from Okinawa, while Chamorro activists told the delegation that they don't want the Marines to come to Guam at all. The delegation, however, declined to give audience to Chamorro Natio

In the past few weeks, an image and a short activist meme featuring a black and white image of Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo appeared on Facebook. Bordallo has upset alot of people on island over her pushing to authorize the Department of Defense to create a surface danger zone over Litekyan (Ritidian) a popular beach, historically significant area and wildlife refuge as part of their possibly building a firing range on the cliff above.  She introduced a bill to this effect, withdrew it and has now reintroduced it.  The memes attacking her were built around this premise, "What Would Ricky Do?" The reference is to the late Governor Ricardo Bordallo, Madeleine's husband. He served two non-consecutive terms in the 1970s and 1980s as the chief executive of Guam. He ended his political career on scandalous terms after being investigated by the Federal Government and convicted of several crimes, most importantly witness tampering. He was slat

Over the past few years I have been on many hikes here on Guam. I have seen so many beautiful things on these hikes. I have found artifacts that hundreds had probably walked by, but never noticed before. I have found latte stones that may have gone unseen for centuries before I stumbled upon them, literally. I have seen sunsets sitting on rocks that seemed to be created strictly for the purpose of allowing ones eyes to swallow the sky in massive gulps. I have seen the ocean in so many types of blue at a given moment that it both looks like one massive solid color and a multitude of disagreeing blues at the same time. Throughout these hikes the history and beauty of Guam has come alive in so many ways. I feel not only a stronger connection to the present day Guam, but also to so many versions of its throughout the past. Walking amongst latte stones where Chamorros walked hundreds of years before. Exploring caves where Chamorros and Japanese soldiers huddled hiding from American bo

One of the problems in their fight is that while most of Jeju may know about their resistance, news of this fight has barely reached the mainland of South Korea. This was something which I had heard two days earlier from Mr. Kang Sang-won in Pyeongtaek when he was talking about the difficulties in trying to get people outside of the immediate vicinity to care. One of the problems with the rural struggles in South Korea against US base expansion is that the news of their fight barely reaches the large population centers of South Korea. For instance, while most of Jeju Island may know about the resistance of the villagers of Gangjeong or the city of Pyeongtaek may know about the resistance by local farmers, or even the citizens of Paju might know about the displacement of villagers in order to expand the Mugeon-ri training fields, but this news doesn't travel very far otherwise. I heard this most specifically from Mr. Kang Sang-won in Pyeongtaek when he was talking about the difficu

Every month the group SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea) holds a peace action in near the US embassy and the city hall in downtown Seoul. It’s called Self-Reliance Peace Unification Action, and it is basically a small sit-in style rally. The event even comes with its own small red-seat cushions which are laid out prior to the start of the event, rewarding those who come early with more comfortable seats from which to listen and observe. When I first arrived at the protest, it was primarily old people there, who were all holding signs which I was told described different things such as reunification, demands of the South Korean government to stop trying to take away civil rights and the closure of US bases in the country. After seeing so many manåmko’ I asked my interpreter and guide Sung-Hee if this was a good representation of the activist community in South Korea, meaning are most of the progressives here are a little bit older? For several years, when I first