NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

In February,  Adolf Sgambelluri or "Sgamby" as many knew him, passed away. He leaves behind a long legacy of accomplishments. To name a few, he was a war survivor, a decorated Vietnam Vet, a GCC Vice President and a Guam Police Chief.     When I was a graduate student in Micronesian Studies at UOG, close to 20 years ago, and I was asking my grandparents who would be great to interview for oral history, about prewar life, war experiences, anything, we made long lists of people we could visit. Sgamby was on that list.    When we visited him however, he wasn’t the focus, but rather his father. Adolfo Camacho Sgambelluri had played a sort of double agent role, while working for the Japanese as a police officer, trying to minimize where he could their violent impact on the lives of Chamorus. I also learned from that visit that we were related with his mother being a close relative to my great-grandfather. Sgamby was eager to tell his father’s story since some up til this day don’t

I have been wracking my brain for the past few hours and also "tearing apart" at least digitally my computer looking for the source for a quote that I had included in my notes and now need to use in an article I'm completing for The Journal of Okinawan Studies. As of now I have yet to find it unfortunately and I'm hoping that this quote didn't come from a news article that I had photocopied years ago but had yet to scan or transcribe. If that is the case, I may never find the citation for it. Part of the joy, but also the frustration of searches like this, is the random surprises and nostalgia bombs that end up crossing your path. While searching through more than a decade of research, I came across so many bits and pieces of things, some of which ended up being keystones in my academic cosmology, others I had completely forgotten. One thing I came across that I wanted to share was these three articles below. They all come from August 2007, at a time when th

Earlier this week the letter to the editor that I have pasted below appeared in the PDN. Titled "Some of the unspoken Chamorro rules" it was written by Adolf Sgambelluri and purported to give a clear picture of why Chamorros are so messed up. People familiar with liberal/conservative discourse in the United States might immediately recognize the framework that this was written in. It is a standard conservative screed that appears on chain letters and messages boards, just with some changes to make it more "local" and attack Chamorros, and in some ways combine the problems of Chamorros with the problems of liberalism. For Sgambelluri, a conservative to attack liberals makes sense. But as a Chamorro, his attacks are a bit more confusing. The core of this discursive attack is the attempt to make liberals/Chamorros the source of all the problems in a society, and to implicitly offer conservative Americanism as the solution.   This type of self-loathing should be fa