Uneasy Coexistence on Guam: Military Buildup and an Indigenous Upwelling

“Balutan! You’ve got to balutan!”

Anthony Mantanona — Uncle Tony, Guam’s favourite Indigenous baker — pointed to trays of recent coconut bread, reminding the barbecue’s departing friends to comply with one among Chamorro tradition’s elemental tenets: Balutan, or seize a to-go plate, be beneficiant, be grateful, share.

“If you don’t need much, give it to someone else,” he yelled.

The Chamorro individuals had been Guam’s first inhabitants, and thru 500 years of colonization by Spain, Japan and, most not too long ago, the United States, they’ve survived by sharing their land, sea and sky whereas holding quick to core cultural values.

Now, the Chamorro manner is once more being examined, as one other spherical of encroachment by the U.S. army comes simply as new efforts are being made to strengthen Guam’s Indigenous bonds.

The barbecue was being held within the yard of a Nineteen Fifties ranch-style home that doubles as a cultural heart. Mr. Mantanona was baking in an out of doors oven, as youngsters practiced talking Chamorro and group leaders welcomed mates and curious newcomers.

In the air, American F-15s roared previous each jiffy, their noise, markings and pace a reminder of the harmful world that continues to make calls for on Guam’s individuals.

Roughly a 3rd of the island has been beneath Defense Department management for many years. But with China and the United States locked in a bitter contest for strategic benefit, Guam — a volcanic outcrop the dimensions of Chicago, with 168,000 individuals — has grow to be an much more important army launchpad.

Adding to the 22,000 U.S. troops already right here, one other 5,000 Marines will quickly transfer into a brand new base named after Brig. Gen. Vicente T. Blaz, the primary Chamorro to grow to be a Marine Corps common officer.

A number of miles away, a pier for nuclear-powered submarines is being upgraded. More than a dozen websites have additionally been recognized as potential areas for missile protection methods, whereas Andersen Air Force Base has plans for a brand new weapons complicated.

On-island, as they are saying right here, off-island challenges are invading as soon as once more.

Surprisingly maybe, the heavy buildup has not created a lot worry. Guam’s inhabitants have recognized for years that their house could possibly be a goal. It’s in missile vary of regional adversaries, far nearer to China and North Korea than Honolulu.

But particularly amongst Chamorros, who’re Guam’s largest ethnic group, the danger of struggle and the U.S. army’s plans have bolstered divided identities.

Guam swims in a murky pool of Americanism. It has one of many U.S. army’s highest charges of recruitment, with Chamorros closely represented within the ranks, however even essentially the most adorned veterans have little say in what the federal authorities does on the island. It is an unincorporated territory with out full illustration in Congress. Its residents can’t vote for president, and whereas there’s an elected native authorities, Guam stays extra garrison than state; the island was handed to the U.S. Navy after the Spanish-American War in 1898.

As the writer and lawyer Julian Aguon has put it: “Militarism is normalized on Guam. It’s part of our meat and drink. It’s a protein we have to work very hard to break down.”

For Suruhana Rosalia Fejeran Mateo, or Mama Chai, an 87-year-old conventional Chamorro healer, the regular creep of militarization nonetheless brings new surprises. Recently, when she trekked to a distant seashore to gather vegetation for treating illnesses, U.S. marshals confronted her, warning that she had wandered right into a no-go zone.

They didn’t say why the seashore was off-limits, stated Vinessa Duenas, 26, an apprentice who was together with her, studying the outdated methods. Mama Chai noticed the interference as a weird reminder of the island’s dissociation from its historic tradition.

“We’re not destroying the area,” she stated. “We’re just taking medicine.”

At a seashore close to Naval Base Guam, Ron Acfalle ran his hand alongside a slim wood canoe with a turtle and different Chamorro imagery on its hull. Once within the water, the canoe could have a triangular sail — a sight first seen and praised by Spanish explorers who reached Guam in 1521.

The colonizers referred to as them “flying proas” and later destroyed the boats to maintain individuals from fleeing, buying and selling with different islands, or planning a revolt. It was the start of Guam’s position as a strategic worldwide outpost.

Now college students of Indigenous science are studying the right way to sail and navigate with the celebs.

“The whole idea was to bring back what our ancestors had left behind,” stated Mr. Acfalle, 64, a homebuilder and co-founder of Ulitao, a nonprofit seafaring group. “To recreate the design that was recognized by the Europeans as one of the fastest canoes they’d ever seen.”

Smiling with pleasure, he stated he had returned to Indigenous tradition slowly. He grew up being taught that America had liberated his individuals from the merciless Japanese troops who seized Guam in 1941. He and his relations had been like General Blaz and plenty of others: They selected to be grateful after the Americans returned in 1944 with a army presence.

But over time, they noticed their language fade, with few asking why studying Chamorro was discouraged. Guam’s youngsters weren’t taught native historical past when Mr. Acfalle went to highschool. They ate American meals. They fought in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, hoping the United States would love them again, solely to search out that almost all Americans barely knew Guam existed.

And at house, the land grew to become suffering from ordnance, the ocean with spills of heavy oil.

“I’m a former Marine, you know, back in the ’70s,” Mr. Acfalle stated. “I come home and I’m fighting what the military has been doing to our people.”

He linked with others locally by a Chamorro dance group, and raised his six youngsters to respect their roots whilst one among them joined the army, too. He began learning historic seafaring and now has grow to be a part of a unfastened community of Chamorro leaders — together with Mr. Mantanona — who’ve channeled their issues about Guam into cultural preservation and promotion.

“People want more,” Uncle Tony stated.

The historical past of Guam is now a daily characteristic of the island’s highschool curriculum. A new museum, with Chamorro phrases carved into the facade, opened a couple of years in the past, and paddling in conventional outrigger canoes is an more and more common sport.

But even in renaissance, threat swirls by the Guam air. At the barbecue, because the jet engines raged above ringing cellphones and a speaker blaring Steely Dan, three bursts on a conch shell rang out.

A 9-year-old boy in a baseball uniform with grime on his knees, chest and someway his again stood between a backyard and a view of waves crashing whitewash onto a shallow reef. A slugger for positive, he’d simply come from the diamond of America’s favourite pastime when his mom requested him to elucidate why he had blown the three bursts from the shell.

“Sky, sea and land,” he stated, in Chamorro and English.

It was a name to the ancestors, asking for cover.