Volume 2 Issue 13 - November 31, 2004 http://www.geocities.com/freeguahan [email protected]
Hafa Adai, yan welcome to i mina'kinse na Minagahet.
A
few months ago, people around the island were up in arms about how the Guam
Visitor's Bureau had created a mascot for Guam's tourist industry called "Balate'
Bob."
I agree Balate' Bob was pretty dumb, however the visceral reaction to him by people like Peter Siguenza in the Pacific Daily News, is something which should be looked at a bit closer. The creation of Sinot Balate' was a foolish, but nonetheless important attempt to go beyond the tourism mindsets we've come to accept as being the only way our island can survive (besides the US military). More than a century ago, ships from Asia and Europe all came through the Micronesian islands looking for balate', because of its value to markets in China and Japan, where it is a valued commodity. Sinot Bob, is one way in which we can start to think about our tourist industry beyond just copying and ripping off Hawaii. The balate' has an economic value, like nearly everything else, and is there a way we can harness this, like other things on the island, to create more sustainable economies on Guam? Furthermore, this brings up the question of how can we represent ourselves to tourists or tourists markets without just reproducing the same dumb stereotypes or images about island paradises and Hawaiian like locales?
Feel free to post any balate' jokes at our message board, FANAHGUE'YAN.
Don't forget to check out my blog, No Rest for the Awake.
Si Yu'us Ma'ase, ya usuni fan sumahuma minagahet yan na'suha dinagi
Sahuma
ARTICLES
Ginnen i Nasion Chamoru, http://members.aol.com/magastodu/mayot.htm
The Mass Exploitation of our Balate' by outsiders
Tinige' Jose Ulloa Garrido
A Response from Hawa'ii to the Balate' Question
by Isaac D. Harp
Draft Fan i Balate para u mumu giya Irak!
Tinige' Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Tinige' Brandon Cruz, "Kaluko671"
Two Lover's Cave at Urunao Beach
Tinige' Antonio Artero Sablan
Unibetsat na Deklarasion Direcho Siha para i Taotao
Ginnen i United Nations
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Chamoru.
by chetnotmaipi
by George Carlin
To continue the discussion please link here to our forum board -
MINAGAHET is published by the Chamorro Information Activists, a non-profit, poorly funded and poorly staffed activist organization, created for the public benefit. Non-profit doesn't imply "non-profit status or anything" just that taya' suetdon-mami nu este. Pues an kala'u este, ti isao n-mami. Mismo i isaoni tinaigefsagan-mami. Copyright 2004 MINAGAHET. All rights reserved. We aren't sure what that means, but we see it put at the bottom of other things, and the last thing we want to do is get in trouble for not telling people that all our rights are reserved as well. http://www.geocities.com/freeguahan [email protected] or [email protected]