Pandemics Without Borders
Thankfully I have been able to work through some of the thoughts I have on the COVID-19 pandemic and Guam's political status in my weekly column for the Pacific Daily News. This hasn't gotten me many new fans, in fact the columns that I published for three weeks at the start of the lockdown phase have been some of my most hated since I started writing for the newspaper a few years ago. I won't get into way people seem to take particularly gleeful hate in my columns lately, but I felt compelled to share them here. After all, my columns were a rare voice in the public media on Guam, that sought to remind people about how we remain a colony or territory of the US, and how that may hinder the potential responses we can have to large-scale problems.
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Colonization brought new diseases, death to Guam
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Pacific Daily News
ChT March 19, 2020
Epidemics or outbreaks of disease have been a persistent part of Guam’s history since first contact with Europeans. From the start of Spanish colonization in 1668, you can provide a historical outline of Guam’s history over the next two centuries simply in terms of disease outbreaks.
As the Spanish brought new diseases into the Marianas, their mere presence was deadly to CHamorus. As the first priests under San Vitores began to spread out across the Marianas, their arrival was often announced through microbes, with someone dying a strange and unsettling death, even prior to a priest actually visiting a village.
As with many indigenous communities around the world, these types of mass deaths for CHamorus would be one of the most terrifying metaphors illustrating the damage that was sometimes wrought in the wake of colonization.
During the CHamoru Spanish Wars of the late 17th century, it wasn’t those killed by Spanish muskets or swords that made the biggest difference. The new diseases ravaged CHamorus far worse than any soldiers could. Simple germs for which the Spanish had acquired immunity could take far more lives and have a far wider punitive reach than any military company could.
This is why Maga’lahi Hurao’s speech curses the Spanish and the new ailments they brought. Many CHamorus, initially friendly to the Spanish, turned against them once they realized they had no cures for the new afflictions. Eventually, when the death toll became too high to bear, many CHamorus turned back to the new religion, hoping that its prayers might offer some relief.
Even after the wars ended, the outbreaks continued, sometimes every few decades, sometimes killing hundreds, sometimes thousands. They always arrived in the same way, aboard a ship.
The last major epidemic on Guam occurred in 1918, when the entire world was hit by the great influenza pandemic. According to Navy records, 858 died on Guam, or 6% of the island’s population. The Navy at the time sought to censor how bad the situation had become in Guam, however an eye-witness account from one CHamoru makes clear the catastrophe.
Jose C. Duenas was 23 during the outbreak and one of a handful who had the unenviable task of tallying the dead. In a 1960 interview he recounted the horrors of the time.
“By Nov. 13, the epidemic was at its worst. This was the day when 52 died. The hospital (and schools) were full of sick and dying people. The speed with which the epidemic spread was so fast. … Five prison inmates and a police jitney driver did nothing but transport the dead from the various districts … to Pigo cemetery.”
The epidemic took such a toll on the people, that eventually it was hard to continue mourning those who had been lost.
Duenas said: “In some homes, people no longer cried. They had run out of tears and could do nothing but look after and pray for the dead.”
During all these historical outbreaks, there were a few consistent themes, one being an island population unable to control its own borders. For each outbreak, a colonial authority, whether the Spanish or the Americans, were in charge, with your average resident voiceless in what was allowed into Guam, and unable to do much more than endure any tragic consequences.
Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an author, artist and activist who works for Sen. Kelly Marsh.
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Political status affects what we can do during pandemic
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Pacific Daily News
ChT March 26, 2020
My column this week was initially going to focus on another historical epidemic in Guam history, the smallpox outbreak of 1856, the worst ever recorded. But after seeing the social media reaction to last week’s column, I thought it prudent to provide more clarity to some of my arguments.
If you have read any of my newspaper columns, one of my main goals is to get people to understand that our political status is at the center of everything in our lives. I have my personal preference for what I think would be our best next option as a political status, but more than anything, I simply want more people to understand the connections.
The centrality of our status is a fact of our lives. Even if you don’t want our territorial status much of our lives, it remains true. Facts don’t care about your feelings. One can deny it till they are blue in the face, but it doesn’t not change simple truths.
Impact of status
Even at a time like this, where the island and most of the world is in crisis, we may not want to see how our status is affecting what we can and cannot do, but the impact remains. When something is this influential in dictating our lives, we don’t do ourselves any favors by refusing to recognize it.
The sooner we can understand it, the sooner we can work to improve our situation.
Political status is about the underlying structure of the island and its political reality. Whether you are a state, freely associated, independent or a territory, that status dictates the basic framework for how you can or cannot interact with the world.
One thing that political status absolutely dictates is control over borders. Greater sovereignty and independence means greater general control. Lesser sovereignty means the opposite.
Limited power
There have been persistent calls for months that Maga’håga Lou Leon Guerrero close Guam’s borders. As the governor of a territory, she doesn’t have the authority to shut down airports or ban flights from certain countries. Even if she was a state governor, she wouldn’t have the authority. Within the U.S., issues of borders and entry are primarily a federal function.
You may have seen in the news that Hawaii is closing its borders, but this isn’t technically true. As Gov. Ige cannot shut down the borders to his own state, he is instead trying to compel people to not visit Hawaii by instituting a mandatory 14-day quarantine for everyone who steps off a plane (if you are a resident you can quarantine at home). They are backing up the quarantine with a $5,000 misdemeanor fine and up to a year in prison.
For those wanting Guam to have a better ability to determine who can enter Guam in a time of crisis, or just in general, it isn’t something you get to decide as a territory. That power resides with people thousands of miles away in the federal government, many of whom may not be able to find Guam on a map.
For me, that isn’t a great position to be in, and it is one reason why we should use this moment to think about our political status and what role it has played in helping us in this crisis, but also possibly hindering us.
Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an author, artist and activist who works for Sen. Kelly Marsh.
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Europeans, Americans brought disease, epidemics to Guam
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Pacific Daily News
April 2, 2020
The past few centuries of Guam History, since the time of European contact, is punctuated with tragedies around epidemics and diseases brought to Guam. These diseases tended to hit CHamorus the hardest, leading to terrifying moments of depopulation.
In “Destiny’s Landfall” by Robert Rogers, he lists more than a dozen disease outbreaks in Guam from 1688 to 1919. Sometimes the number of dead would only be a few dozen, sometimes several hundred. The most severe outbreak occurred in 1856, which killed several thousand.
The outbreaks were caused by diseases already familiar to Europeans and other groups, but were new for CHamorus, hence they had little immunity or defense. Flu and chicken pox epidemics in the 1700 and 1800s killed hundreds.
Outbreaks from ships
All of these outbreaks in Guam began with a ship coming into port and bringing sometimes a single carrier of the disease to the island. A flu epidemic started on Guam in 1794 was brought on the same ship as the new Spanish governor. Many of these outbreaks could be foreseen since they were tied to disease outbreaks elsewhere in the Spanish empire.
For instance, because galleons would leave Acapulco, Mexico, and stop in Guam on their way to the Philippines, if there was a disease outbreak in Mexico, it would usually hit Guam on its way to the Philippines.
The word quarantine is used regularly nowadays to mean isolating people who may be infected with a disease. Its original use comes from the days of the plague in Italy, where cities such as Venice instituted orders that ships had to be docked off-shore for 40 days before people could disembark. Quarantine comes from the word “quaranta giorni,” meaning 40 days.
The rationale behind this is clear. Prior to people coming ashore, you have to make certain that they aren’t carrying any diseases that may spread through the population. During the Spanish period, quarantines were practiced, but the worst outbreak in recorded Guam History occurred when one such order wasn’t followed.
In February 1856, an American ship was bringing passengers to Guam from the Philippines. While at sea, someone had died from smallpox and their body was dumped into the water after anchoring at Guam. The Spanish government required a three-day quarantine prior to anyone coming ashore, but two men were allowed to leave immediately. Both of them died within months from smallpox and the disease began to spread.
Horrific epidemic
A Spanish priest, Aniceto del Carmen, wrote an account of this horrific epidemic that followed:
“In the beginning the infested were only from Agana. By the end of August, the epidemic had spread throughout the whole island and at the speed of lightning. The spectacle that the island presented by September was terrible, sad, very sad indeed and overwhelmingly heartbreaking. The (Filipinos) who resided in Guam, could do nothing else all day but carry the corpses in their carts to the hospital of (Adelup) and there give them burial in wide trenches where were laid as many corpses as would possibly fit.”
By the end of 1856, the death toll was almost impossible to believe. On an island of 8,775, 5,534 had died from smallpox, more than 60% of the entire population.
The epidemic also resulted in the loss of a village. Pågo, where Pågo Bay is today was abandoned as a result of the depopulation.
Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an author, artist and activist who works for Sen. Kelly Marsh.
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