Michael Lujan Bevacqua

For PDN

Last week I received a barrage of emails, messages and Facebook comments from Chamorros, both on island and off island, all focused on the idea that Guam cannot be independent because of existing levels of government incompetence on Guam and the frightening specter of what Guam might do to itself, should it be left to its own devices.

The comments contained elements of serious concerns, but overall seemed to be sustained by notions that Guam is somehow the most corrupt and incompetent place in the universe and we are fortunate that the U.S. is here so that we don’t destroy ourselves.

For you, dear reader, when considering independence, you may feel similar resistant stirrings, which may seem natural and normal. But it is important that we assess this within Guam’s colonial context.

These ideas are ground zero in terms of understanding how colonialism can dramatically affect a people. How it can create a veneer around them that makes things which are commonplace and normal for those in already independent countries appear to be menacing and impossible.

Bevacqua: Elders and political activism

Colonialism divides the world into harsh and oftentimes unforgiving binaries. The colonizer attempts to assert that everything on the top half, or that which is good and positive, is their domain. There we find things such as education, prosperity, progress, transparency, freedom and order. And, as a result, all that is negative or bad, whether it be stagnation, ignorance, corruption or chaos, is supposed to belong to the colonized people and their culture.

But these binaries aren’t simply distinct and divide up the world of possibility in the colonies. For those who accept this colonial “common sense,” they will come to see the world around them as relying on the top end of the binary, keeping the dangers of the bottom in check. This is where people in colonies develop ideas that the only reason life their lives are possible is because of what the colonizer brought or continues to bring. This is where we get ideas that if Uncle Sam wasn’t controlling our island, we would no doubt påri system ourselves to death in no time.

Locally, we see this dependency manifest in the ways people feel like Guam could never have an economy, never be safe, never accomplish anything except as a colony of the U.S.

But part of the problem with this mindset is that while it skews the way we on Guam see our island, and ourselves to focus more on that which is potentially negative, it skews our image of the U.S. toward being unrealistically positive. People on Guam see the U.S. as being a grand old monopoly over things such as prosperity, advancement, democracy and freedom.

While the U.S. is a rich and powerful nation, it has serious problems, which it has shown of late to be terrible at resolving. Anyone who has been paying attention to the U.S. for the past few years should see a country that is chronically divided and a government that is horrifically corrupt and majestically dysfunctional.

Bevacqua: What independence for Guam would mean

People in the U.S. don’t perceive these imperfections because their country’s No. 1 industry seems to be fantasies of exceptionalism. On Guam, we don’t properly perceive them because American fantasies seem to be the island’s No. 1 import.

People around the world succeed and fail without being colonized by the US, and so any idea that Guam couldn’t is rooted in these colonial fears and nothing more. Every change entails some risk, but to imagine that Guam could never handle those risks is simply ridiculous.

Guam has problems, as all countries and colonies do, to see ours as impossible to overcome does us no favors, but simply feeds those colonial feelings of inferiority.

Independence does not equate failure, but neither does it mean success. It is what the people of a nation make of it.

Bevacqua: Decolonization is a form of justice

Rather than reproach ourselves as infinitely incompetent or ceaselessly corrupt, why not take a clear-eyed look at where we are in the world and what we have accomplished already, and what our destiny might look like as an independent country?

Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an author, artist, activist and assistant professor of Chamorro studies at the University of Guam.