From Draft NOtices, January—March 2008
— Michael Lujan Bevacqua
A part of the U.S., yet apart from it; a colony in a world where colonialism supposedly no longer exists; the “tip of America’s spear” in Asia — welcome to Guam, USA. This is a place where the residents, including its indigenous population, the Chamorros, are U.S. citizens, yet cannot vote for president and have no voting delegate in Congress. And notwithstanding the promise of American democracy, all federal laws apply to Guam and supercede all local laws.
Despite this colonial relationship, or perhaps because of it, most U.S. Americans know nothing about Guam – not only that it is a colony, but that it is their colony. The place of Guam in the U.S. American consciousness is constituted through a paradox of everyday popular ambiguity and ignorance along with an almost solid military certainty. Because of this, in U.S. popular culture (such as blogs, movies, newspapers, magazines, and novels), Guam has been represented as literally anything – a foreign country, a tropical paradise, an island full of cannibals or exiled homosexuals, and Guatemala.
If the average U.S. American is unaware of or unclear about Guam, this perspective is not shared by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), for whom Guam is one thing only: a military installation. From the moment it was first taken during the Spanish American War in 1898, in order to provide a transit point for U.S. military and economic interests into Asia, this mindset has governed U.S. policy and control over the island.
In the century since it was taken, Guam has played a critical role in every U.S. conflict in the Asia-Pacific region, including as a forward base; a site for the transportation of U.S. troops and bombs into Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East; and a transit site for the evacuation of refugees from Vietnam, Iraq or Burma. This role continues today, evidenced most recently in the magazine Foreign Policy, which listed Guam as one of the six most important U.S. bases in the world.