NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

  For the past 10 weeks, I've been writing columns for the Pacific Daily News providing historical context for the 1946 protest of US Navy Radioman George Tweed by more than a 100 Chamorus. Today marked my last column on the series. Although I did get a great deal more hate messages and a hateful comments during this series, I still greatly enjoyed writing these pieces. George Tweed was such an incredibly important symbol for Chamorus during the Japanese occupation. For me as a historian it is fascinating to think about how, just two years after the end of that occupation, more than a 100 Chamorus felt compelled to make signs and protest him when he returned to island. They didn't do this in the dead of night, but in the middle of the Plaza de España in front of the leadership of the US Navy on Guam. As I wrote in this last column, it was a multitude of things that compelled Chamorus to take this act, but many of them weren't about Tweed himself. Chamorus were frustrated th

Independent Guåhan to discuss veteran’s issues and decolonization and honor the late Tony “Submariner” Artero  For Immediate Release, November 24, 2019-  Independent Guåhan (IG) invites the public to attend their upcoming General Assembly (GA) to take place on Thursday, December 5th from 6:00-7:30 pm at the Main Pavilion of the Chamorro Village in Hagåtña. For this GA, the group will honor as  Maga’taotao the late Tony “Submariner” Artero, who was a US Navy veteran and also a strong community activist in pushing for political status change in Guam. In honor of Veteran’s Day, this GA will also feature an educational discussion on the voices of Chamoru veterans and decolonization.  Tony Artero was a veteran, a war survivor and an entrepreneur, who was part of the Artero family that helped hide US Navyman George Tweed during the Japanese occupation of Guam. Although his father received the Congressional Medal of Freedom for the risks he took, soon after the US military condemned

Chamorro Soil, Chamorro Soul by Michael Lujan Bevacqua May 4, 2016 The Guam Daily Post Last week’s University of Guam Film Festival or UOGFF was very exciting for me personally. In three of the films featured, I had a role in creating, whether as an actor, producer or consultant. I had a minor speaking role in the film “You’re Not Going Anywhere…Kid” directed by my former student Kyle Twardowsky, who shot the entire film on his iPhone. The documentary “War For Guam” which was premiered last year on PBS stations around the United States was also shown. It was directed by Frances Negron-Muntaner, a prominent Puerto Rican scholar who teaches at Columbia University. I worked for a several years as a co-producer (along with local filmmaker Baltazar Aguon and others) on this film that shows the Chamorro experience in World War II, primarily through the re-telling of the stories of American holdout George Tweed and Chamorro priest Jesus Baza Duenas. The final film, which was

Not many people remember who Guam's version of the Lone Ranger was. He was someone who in a time of terrible crisis and injustice, with great risk to himself, stood up for the Chamorro people. Juan Mala or Juan Malo might be someone you would consider to fit this category. In some of his stories he does wear a mask to hide his identity when he is tricking and defrauding the Spanish on the island. But alas, Juan Mala stories were popular long before the Long Ranger even existed. Agualin could be a wishful candidate. During a time of terrible warfare and atrocities he worked to organize the Chamorro people to fight against Spanish colonization. He did not shy away from a fight but in the speech attributed to him he called on them to rise up, and that he would lead them with his lance that has killed many and will kill them all. Metgot na sinangan. But once again Agualin lived long before the Lone Ranger was created. If you were a drinking man than someone from prewar Guam w

One project that I have slowly been working on for almost a year is to create a set of 60-second sports for KPRG about Chamorro culture, language and history in the Chamorro language. Last year UOG President Robert Underwood asked me to do something with Chamorro language and media. He made several suggestions, such as creating a Chamorro TV talk show or have Chamorro language radio interviews. All of these were wonderful ideas, but after I investigated them, they would require quite a bit of effort and planning, far too much for me alone. I look forward to trying to create something along these lines in the future. KPRG is right next door to UOG and I already work there for the radio show Beyond the Fence and so for someone whose plate is already overflowing with work this seemed like the most logical and most efficient choice. I met with Chris Hartig the General Manager for KPRG and he said that the best way to start off, and something that he was already

Sometime last year I spent a morning with some members of We Are Guahan preparing for an upcoming round of Heritage Hikes that we hoped would visit Spanish Steps, Tweed's Cave, Pagat and Haputo Beach. Our initial round of Heritage Hikes featured places that are open to the public, but have some relationship to Guam's militarization, either in a contemporary or historical sense. For later rounds we tried to choose sites on bases in hopes of testing to see how sincere the US military is that the public have good and regular access to historical and culturally significant places. That morning we went on a tour of the historic sites that can be found on Navy Base Guam, including a walk around the area where songsong Sumay used to be. In a way, a historical tour around Naval Base Guam is actually a depressing trip. It is a tour of absence. Almost a tour of nothing, a tour of the long gone traces of something. There is plenty of recent history on the base. It has only existed s

On July 17th, myself and some of my friends will be walking 19 miles from Merizo to Manengon, Yo'na in honor of the Chamorros who endured Japanese occupation in World War II. The name of this event is "Remember Our Strength," in order to explain why we are walking and from where to where I wrote the following: In July of 1944 Guam had been turned into a warzone. As the Japanese, recent occupiers of the island dug in, erecting haphazard defenses and brutalizing Chamorros in anticipation of an American invasion, 13 days of Americans bombs fell on the island, all with the calculated intent of destroying every structure on the island. Chamorros were caught desperately in the middle. The final weeks of World War II in Guam or I Tiempon Chapones, were filled with tales of violence and suffering. After 32 months of Japanese occupation which was difficult and trying to say the least, the final month of the war on Guam is riddled with massacres, rapes, torture, and a long collec

It has been quite a white since my last installment of Fun With Footnotes, where I post on my blog some of my more excessive or informative footnotes from my academic work. I wrote a poem several years ago which described Guam as one "Big American Footnote," and that was in one way the first seed which later became my dissertation, various articles, some of my favorite talking points and numerous posts on this blog. The metaphor of the footnote was something I felt could help me explain Guam and its colonial predicament, and how it exists, it means something, it matters, it reveals something crucial or important, but like most footnotes it is assumed to matter in a way that doesn't matter. I remember when I was in grad school at UCSD and in one class, another student who had read a draft of my Masters Thesis noted that my long footnotes were irrelevant and pointless since she, like everyone else in the world didn't read them anyways, and to make them any longer than