Mensahi Ginen i Gehilo' #12: The Pacific is Not Complete Without Guam...
In just 50 days, more than two dozen Pacific Island nations will gather in Guam for the 12th Festival of Pacific Arts or FESTPAC. Although geographically Guam's presence in the Pacific cannot be questioned, culturally and politically due to its history of colonization, the island and its native people, the Chamorros are regularly treated differently. As if they are a part of the Pacific, yet also exist apart from it as well.
There’s a great website out there
for those who are colonialism and political status geeks such as myself called Overseas Territories Review. It features regular updates on different
currently-existing-colonies out there in the world (most of which are small
islands like Guam in the Caribbean or the Pacific) and some commentary on what
sort of challenges they might face as they try to change their colonial status.
The website is run by Dr. Carlyle Corbin, an expert on decolonization and the
various remaining colonies in the world, who has visited Guam several times.
It is interesting when I
periodically check up on other territories and colonies to see hafa guaguaha guihi. Sometimes it is an
experience akin to looking in the mirror and discovering that the reflection,
which looks so much like you, is in truth somebody else! Other times it feels
like reading a book which everyone around you tells you that you will love,
that is totally everything you look for in a book, which will truly connect
with you, but which ends up feeling like a gross invasion, a horrid
misrepresentation of who you are or what you like, when you reach the end.
Stalking other colonies can sometimes create in me, feelings
of jealousy and envy at how much better they have it, how much stronger they
seem to be, about how much less strategically important they are, or how much
more-together the activists or the progressives there are about their issues.
And of course, in the cases of some colonies, which are now states, (although
their indigenous people might rightfully claim otherwise), I have to look at
them and emit a sigh of relief that I am not in their position. Although there
may be a mountain of racist, exceptionalist and self-serving American legal balabola which keeps Guam as a
possession and something owned by the United States, at least I have that
shred, that small sliver of possibility that its unincorporated status gives,
where Guam might be free again.
With the notion of Guam being free again, I am reminded of
an article from the magazine The Nation earlier
this year. Titled “Outrageous Fortuno” it was meant to provide an update to the
people of the United States, about what the current state of affairs in Puerto
Rico, and what prospects the island has in terms of its own struggle for
decolonization. “Fortuno” in the title is meant to refer to Luis Fortuno,
former non-voting delegate from Puerto Rico and current governor of the island,
who has according to the article’s author Ed Morales, helped turn Puerto Rico
into a “political powder keg,” through a combination of merciless slashing of
government programs, the laying off of thousands of government employees and
various strategies meant to coerce the island towards becoming the 51st
state. The article ends with the following passage, the final sentence of which
struck a chord with me.
For many Puerto Ricans, the current problems stem from a
deeper, much more long-term malaise: the island’s unsettled political status.
Yet another plebiscite proposal, which critics say is stacked toward getting
Puerto Ricans to vote for statehood, is creeping through the House in
Washington. Now more than ever, it’s time for a strong coalition of Puerto
Ricans on the island and the US mainland to come up with an alternative–a
people’s movement, perhaps seeking stronger economic ties to the Caribbean and
Latin America, to demand social justice for 4 million effectively second-class
US citizens.
As Residente [a
Puerto Rican rapper] said on MTV, “Latin America is not complete without Puerto
Rico, and Puerto Rico is not free.”
Para
bei tulaika este didide’ ya i humuyongña: The Pacific is not complete without
Guam, and Guam is not free. I like
the sound of that. It is a great way of arranging together a dream, a goal and
a problem into a fairly poetic phrasing.
That relationship that Puerto Rico has to the world of Latin
America applies to Guam and the Pacific. We are, in our own way, an island eternally
trapped between worlds, fitting into neither and pulled between two forms of
impossible belonging. This island was the first in the Pacific to be colonized
by Europe, and there is a very good chance that it will be the last to ever be
decolonized. Just as Puerto Rico and other Caribbean colonies represent the
horizon of their decolonization, the challenge in their building a stronger
regional future, Guam and other tiny island colonies represent the same for the
Pacific. What lies ahead for the Pacific, what sort of future it can create
with its diversity of islands, governments and people will depend largely on
whether places like Guam are snatched up in order to complete the region, or
condemned to remain colonial footnotes which the world would rather forget
exist.
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