Chapter 6
(Careful what they teach you at
school)
Despite the constant complaints from the Navy about Chamorro stubbornness and laziness which went on even up tiil the Second World War, they had done an effective job. This new generation of Chamorros which were young adults or children when the war began in 1941, never knew a Guam not under American control. For them America was an integral part of their tangible reality in which they encountered whether briefly or for sustained periods of time each day. It was also an established part of their ideological positions. The education in which Chamorros were given before the war was truly an act of benevolent colonial indoctrination. It was not blatantly fascist, nor racist, which would have been easier to critique or resist. Instead it operated on a gentler level, and less direct level. The curriculum which in the early years of American rule was nonexistent, was later borrowed from school systems in California, was pure Americana. The children were instructed in American history, American culture and civics. The only geographically and culturally appropriate portions of the school system was in trade schools. The children were taught skills such as planting, sewing, weaving and cooking in order to keep them up to date with the skills which their local capitalist economy would require, when Chamorros had been cured from their terminal laziness.
What this created was a generation of young Chamorros whose reality had been skewed to include their mother country thousands of miles away in their daily discourse. By learning about American history and American culture, by adopting their heroes and historical events, and their ideas of good and bad institutions and ideologies, the boundaries of their consciousness were expanded to include America when their self was expressed. This began the process of the rhetorical “We the people” working on Guam, at least on the level of ideology and abstraction. The effectiveness of this tactic lay in its injection into the Chamorro psyche through the school system. First, because it was then enforced with an aura of authority and accuracy, as it was coming from teachers, the ultimate tyrant for a child. Second, because then the seeds would be planted through an abstract process and be created as an abstraction.
The discourse on America which was created in children centered around improvement through adoption of American ideals and principles, and the superiority of American ideals was constantly validated through the self-referential idea of America being the greatest nation in the world. Vague concepts of democracy, freedom and capitalism were consistently coat tailing that discourse, as reasons or proof of American greatness.
The importance of the abstraction of the indoctrination in this equation is that it only serves as the justification and the reality, not a part of the reality. By keeping it on that level of mythology, the level of why things the way they are, not how they are or what they should be, there is no contradiction between the principles being preached to the Chamorros about American government and the Naval regime which contradicted pretty much everything the American system is supposed to be about. That fine line as well as the fact that colonial status had been the norm on Guam for centuries is what kept the Chamorro consciousness from rejecting the new American ideology.
But the indoctrination, the cultural decimation was not as total as the Navy would of hoped. Pockets of resistance existed, as was evidenced by the Chamorro language still being used at home and in churches.23 The vast majority of Chamorros still farmed and lived away from the Naval stations. The Naval invitations to become part of that gaudy and all too wonderful American dream were mainly ignored as the economy and culture that the Navy was proposing or was pushing on the Chamorros was either not present on Guam, impossible to re-create on Guam or just wasn’t worth the effort. Even in 1941 Chamorros still took great pride in, and still derived an well-earned satisfaction from growing their own food and supporting their family through their labors.
When the Japanese invaded Guam on December 8th, 1941 it was a different Guam than it had been in 1899 when the Americans had “invaded.” With much better and more intense propaganda through health care and public education the United States was able to create a far stronger connection to the Chamorros in four decades, than the Spanish had been able to do in more than two hundred years. The United States had made its impact on the physical landscape of the island through construction and through regulations, yet it had also made its impact psychologically through the use of propaganda and indoctrination.
For the political leaders Guam was already a part of the United States in
some shape or form, and clarifying that or improve that relationship was of the
utmost importance. For the young generation, America was already a part of their
identities and realities. They began to look to new movies and music for their
dreams and fantasies. As those who remembered the autocratic acts of the Navy
became fewer and fewer, as well as those who could spot the racism of the Navy
or the contradiction of its rule became pushed further and further down by the
oppressive discourse of American and its greatness, Guam and Chamorro identity
seemed on the brink of falling into the American fold. All that was needed was
one huge and dramatic push rooted in reality, a tangible force which would allow
the programming to take place. That force would come in December 1941 with the
Japanese occupation of Guam.