Guam's Quest for Decolonization


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Chamoru Love Sayings

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A student from my Zoom Chamoru classes recently asked me for some suggestions for some Chamoru sayings or words of wisdom that she could use for a speech she had to give for a friend's wedding.  I get this type of request pretty frequently and so over the years I have a number of lists of ways to say "I Love You" in Chamoru. For years that was one of the my most visited pages on this blog, a simple page that had more than a dozen different ways to say "Hu Guaiya Hao" ranging from the poetic and deep, to the silly and sexy.  When I looked at many of those lists, I realized that the majority of the ways love was expressed, was indeed written in Chamoru, but not necessarily rooted in Chamoru. What I mean by this, is that alot of the sayings were simply translated from English or variants of ways that love would be expressed in English.  For me, I am definitely in support of these sorts of things, I love having our language adapt and take on new forms, especially wh...
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Island of Massacres

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Every July Guam becomes transformed into an "island of massacres." As the collection memory of the island becomes focused around recalling and recounting the tragic final weeks of I Tiempon Chapones on Guam, the month seems to move from one horrific story to another. July 1944 was filled with more atrocities and more suffering than the 31 months of Japanese occupation that preceded it. Pale' Jesus Baza Duenas is killed. Chamorros are forced into concentration camps. Massacres take place in Hagat, Yigu, Merizo and Hagatna. War stories from war survivors build towards a brutal climax at this point. This brutal period however is the prologue to the happy end to Japanese rule. Within days or weeks of these atrocities taking place, Japanese guards have disappeared from concentration camps and stories of American troops being spotted are traveling around with lightning speed. War narratives at this point jump from opposite sides of the spectrum. They go from being ...
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Angels carrying savage weapons

Returning to my last post, this verse (which I got from the film The Prophecy ) is one of the strangest from the Bible. "Even now in Heaven there were angels carrying savage weapons." Hafa kumekeilek-na este? Kao kumekeilek-na Si Santo Paul na debi di manluhan hit nu i Si Yu'us yan i tentago'-na siha? Sa' achokka' guaha un bandan guinaiya gi as Yu'us, guaha lokkue un bandan ni' savage, yan tinaklalu? The interesting part of course (as one poster kindly pointed out to me) is that its probably not actually in the Bible. But in response to the questions (would you really want to meet an Angel?) opened up by the movie, one might almost expect (along the lines of my last post) that it would be there. Precisely because it would lead us down the road of thinking out these things which remain unthought. Regardless of whether or not it is really in the Bible, it still plays a descriptive role in fleshing out those unthought, but very much felt questions about f...
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