NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When I first started voyaging out into the internet full force several years ago, meaning I started using Google and Yahoo to search for random crap, interesting things would always pop up when I was looking for stuff related to Guam and Chamorros. For instance, if you do just general Guam searches you will find a surprisingly alot of Gay community website. I never imagined Guam as some gay oasis in the Pacific, but apparently around the Pacific alot of people do think of Guam as just that. Also, if you do just general searches for Chamorro, you will receive a bunch of sites for Chamorros in Nicaragua. These aren't ethnic Chamorros but people with the last name Chamorro, such as Edgar Chamorro , a contra fighter and former ambassador to the United Nations, or Violet a Chamorro , a President of Nicaragua in the 1990's. When I would do searches for Chamorro language however, a certain type of page would constantly show up, "I Love You Pages." I'm sure that most of ...

Every couple of months I write about Pale' Jesus Baza Duenas. There are a number of reasons why. Here are two. One is that when I was an undergrad and graduate student at the University of Guam, I did a helluva alot of research put i lina'lan Si P ale Duenas. I combed the archives at the Micronesian Area Research Center and other places on Guam looking for whatever mention I could find of him. I also did several dozen interviews with people who had worked with Pale' Duenas during the war, had known him before the war, or had worked on his legacy after the war. From all this research I was given an extremely machalapon pinenta pu t Si Pale'. For instance, today there is a small movement to beatify Pale' Duenas and eventually get him sainthood for his ministry and bravery as the second Chamorro Catholic priest ever. Although the odds of Pale' Duenas actually being beatified are extremely extremely gof gof poor, if this was a possibility it would depend upon those ...

Mayulang i kareta-hu giya Los Angeles, mientras sumusungon yu' ginnen Atascadero asta San Diego. Ai dimalas todu! Hu pega gui' gi un tendan kareta gi Tuesday (giya Thousand Oaks), ya trinain yu' para San Diego gi Wednesday. Ma agang yu' nigap ya ma sangani yu' na esta mafa'maolek, ya i apas para un mayamak na bomban hanom, $288. Pa'go bai sungon ta'lo hulo' para Thousand Oaks ya chule' tatte i kareta-hu. And for those of you familiar with my blog, you know what happens when I don't have time to post things on my blog, yet feel obligated to put something new up. Magahet hao! I post response papers that I've written in my grad seminars. I'm pasting below one of my less coherent but therefore more interesting ones. ************ Michael Lujan Bevacqua ETHN 200b Professor Da Silva 3/9/05 Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico by Laura Briggs. I’ve spent the past hour trying to figure out how to critique Re...

Mana'manman yu' nai i ga'chong-hu Si Madel muna'hanaoggue yu' ni' este. I taotao ni' ma kubre gi i tinige' i abok-hu Si Keith, estaba profesor giya UOG lao ti apmam u profesor giya UCLA. Hu taitai iyo-na dissertation ni' ma mentiona pues ti nina'manman yu' nu ayu. Manman yu' mismo sa' ma tugiyi i pinagat-na este gof annakoko' na tinige'. Achokka' buente baba na bei assuma este, lao annok nu Guahu na i titige' ti ha komprende i sinangan-na Si Keith pues ha chule' ha' i palabras-na, lao ti ha hulat chumule' lokkue kinemprende. Lao magof hu sinembatgo na ma na'huyong este taiguini, sa' achokka' kalang academic i fino'-na Si Keith, sina ma chule' gof impottante na tiningo' ginnen i che'cho'-na. Divergent Chamorro loyalties, cultural identities in NMI, Guam By Alexie Villegas Zotomayor Variety Features Editor The Marianas Variety Competing legacies of colonial loyalty affect the i...

Friday, October 6th, 2006 'Why I Refused to Go Back to Iraq' ... by Camilo E. Mejia Salt Lake Tribune In 2004, I was sentenced to 12 months in a U.S. Army jail because I refused to go back to Iraq. Even then, I knew that our military presence there was fueling a national resistance while boosting terrorism across the world. And I knew our commander in chief was not being straight with us. Now the National Intelligence Estimate confirms that the Iraq war has become a "cause celebre" for terrorists. And Bob Woodward's latest book, "State of Denial," confirms that the president has consistently gotten a negative picture of Iraq in private only to turn around and give a positive picture in public. When I became a prisoner of conscience for refusing to return to my Florida National Guard unit in Iraq, morale among my unit was already low. But I'm sure it's much lower now for all the troops who are there, or for those who are about to deploy, some for ...

For those of you on Guam who have a nagging suspicion that everything is going to hell in Iraq, you are definitely right. But if your explaination for the quagmire is some ridiculous Samual Hunginton "clash of civilizations" argument about the pathological infection of Muslims with islamofacism, then know this, your explainations are just stupid racist patriotic defenses, meant to absolve the United States of its incredible role in producing a civil war in that country. A more useful and important explaination for the violence in Iraq can be found in the film Iraq for Sale which chronicles the incredible government and corporate corruption and incompetence that lies at the center of the reconstruction in Iraq. The level of corruption and abuse of power in awarding contracts and in rebuilding Iraq as well as supporting the troops there reached such insane levels that it makes the alleged corruption of Carl Guiterrez, Joseph Ada, Ricardo Bordallo, Paul Calvo and Carlos Camacho...

Just a warning kontiempo. V ery often with Chamorro songs I have trouble hearing what exactly is being said, in particular with J.D. Crutch's songs where sometimes clarity is necessarily sacrificed to express un gof tahdong pat fotte na siniente. This is compounded with the lack of readily accesible liner notes, which would make translation easier. This post is a public service post for all those who asked for an English translation of J.D. Crutch's Apo Magi, I put the forewarning notice though because I'm not quite sure if the Chamorro lyrics I wrote down are the actual lyrics. APO MAGI Tinige' Si J.D. Crutch (maayao i dandan ginnen un kantan BeeGees) Ai siña ti un tungo' (It’s possible that you don’t know) Taiguihi tiningo’ put Hågu (What I know about you) Ya ti hu chå’ka hao yanggen un dingu (And I won’t reproach you if you leave) Lao hu li’e hao gi painge (But I saw you last night) Ya un lågu gi matå-mu (And the tears on your cheek) Ya ha pacha yu’ mas ki na bei...

For those of you who don't know us, we go by many names. To many we are the Bevacqua Brothers, to very few we are Pump Fake Nation, and to those who know our most hidden secrets, we are The Guam Bus. I haven't posted much lately about the creative endeavors of the intrepid Guam Bus, but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing much. We've actually been working like crazy on different things. For those who get my emails or just my blog regularly, I've been very busy lately with Famoksaiyan , working at getting it up and moving, organzed and somehow sustainable. That combined with all the academic work on my plate means I don't get to write as much as I want to for our comics. I am proud to announce though that things are still moving along, just not at the pace I had wanted. After attending the Alternative Press Expo ( APE ) last year and seeing quite a bit of interest in our ideas, I set up a schedule for myself in order to finish the our first big title Batt...

I was forwarded some interesting material today, worth sharing with everyone because of the way it has the ability to jolt us into recognizing the position of Guam. Apparently, there as someone on myspace named Sherry, a haole living on Guam, who has been posting on her blog there some very hateful things about Guam. To be clear, these are not just simple "Guam sucks" posts, but rather hyperbolic "Guam is the ultimate, pathological with no hope for redemption sucks." The first "simple sucking" is easy to do, no big deal, but second require the expenditure of serious energy to do it and so for someone who really dislikes Guam it makes no sense to spend this much money on something you "don't like." Some other psychological process must therefore be taking place. After receiving an email I got detailing the things that she had written, one statement being that once she leaves Guam she hopes the island "burns down to the ground" I tri...

If you have been keeping up with the news on Guam, then you know that the military is making contingency plans for retaking some of the lands which they had already returned as excess, to make way for new firing ranges in Northern Guam in Finegayan. Although the information of this only comes from a report, which outlines two plans for building a Marine firing range, one which will require the taking of non-military lands, the other which will not require the taking of non-military lands. For everyone on Guam, this shouldn't even be an issue, in terms of our relationship with the military, we are already way beyond mere accomodation and support, and the taking of even more lands by the military will be a travesty! Especially these lands which were just returned to the original land owners and now might be taken from them, AGAIN! As Jose Pangelinan one of the landowners "caught in the middle" of this land grab deja vu, "My father bought that (land) when he was a young...

A few years ago, during the debate over what to "re-name" Marine Drive, I sent a letter to the editor of The Pacific Daily News, contributing my two cents. When finishing up my master's thesis in Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam, I collected all the letters to the editor, editorials and articles about this topic from The Marianas Variety , The Pacific Daily News , and Kuam and wrote about how I saw a very particular cartography or mapping of patriotism and identity taking place in the way people were asserting that this history of eternal dependency and loyalty to the United States, was the history that had to be preserved and passed on. The position that I took was an uncommon one, of the dozens of articles and letters in support of the re-naming of Marine Drive, Marine Corps Drive, me and possibly two other people sent in letters critical of this act. Eventually as we all know, Marine Drive was re-named Marine Corps Drive. I'm posting the text of my le...