Unincorporated Territory Research Articles

Writing <em>toward</em> Action: Mapping an Affinity Poetics in Craig Santos Perez's <em>from unincorporated territory</em>

Writing <em>toward</em> Action: Mapping an Affinity Poetics in Craig Santos Perez's <em>from unincorporated territory</em>

Writing toward Action: Mapping an Affinity Poetics in Craig Santos Perez’s from unincorporated territory

Writing toward Action: Mapping an Affinity Poetics in Craig Santos Perez’s from unincorporated territory

Nursing Leadership in Guam.

Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States, is one of the ten (10) US Affiliated Pacific Islands. The geographic location in the western Pacific Ocean, as well as the ties to the US position Guam as a strategic hub between the continental US, Asia, and the Pacific region. Health disparities in Guam and the Micronesian region are significant, and the non-communicable disease crisis is worsening, threatening the existing poor health infrastructure on the islands. Migration of islanders from the Micronesian region, whose countries also suffer health disparities, adds to the burden of the weak health care system on Guam. A critical nursing workforce shortage plagues the health care community, and strong nursing leadership is needed to address the problems. Nurse leaders, through many organizations, are working to implement strategies to address the issues facing the islands. Increased collaboration with partners on the island, on the US mainland, and globally, are necessary to effectively address Guam's health care concerns.

GUAM, THE CENTER OF ASIA PACIFIC: A SOURCE OF GEO-STRATEGIC RIVALRY BETWEEN CHINA AND THE US

Guam is the U.S. unincorporated territory and military (base), which lies in the western part of the Pacific Islands. Guam serves as the lynchpin for the U.S. influence in the Pacific, is became the flashpoint between two nuclear powers of the region i.e. United States of America and China, due to its strategic geopolitical position. Nevertheless, Guam remained a conducive place for the U.S. naval basing as well as the territory to provide shorten and strategic edge for Washington to sustain her hegemony and influence in the region. The aim of this research paper is that, could the U.S. sustain her hold over Guam while facing the Chinese mesmerizing and clear empirical indicators of its military forces, particularly its navy, air force, missile technology, and its rapidly expanding marine corps, as the arbiters of a new global order—one that stands opposed to U.S. national interests and threat to its close allies in the region.

#HuelgaUPR: The Kidnapping of the University of Puerto Rico, Students Activism, and the Era of Trump

For the past 100 years, Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory of the United States, has underwent economic hardship. In 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill known as PROMESA (promise) to assist Puerto Rico in the reconstruction of the economy hoping to relieve the island from its 74 billion dollar debt. PROMESA proposed to cut funds to the island’s university system totaling roughly $450 million over three years. In the wake of the presidential administration changing from President Barack Obama to Donald Trump, Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy. The University of Puerto Rico (UPR), the main public university system of the island, has become a site of protests and strikes for students due to proposed cuts in the fiscal plan submitted by Gov. Ricardo Rossello Nevares to the Fiscal Oversight & Management Board. All the universities in the UPR system are considered Hispanic Serving Institutions, producing college graduates that work on the island, but also stateside contributing to the United States economy. This study examines the #HuelgaUPR (strike UPR), adopted by student activists that attend college in the University of Puerto Rico system. We examine newspapers (local and national),and twitter as primary documents to understand student demands, UPR, and government responses to those demands. Through a content analysis, which is the study of sign systems intersecting with power, we seek to understand the activism that has always been a part of the culture within the UPR system. Our analysis uses Chicana/Latina feminist cultural studies and the four tenets: intersectionality and global solidarity, breaking down dualisms, the embracing of ambiguity, and the project of tracking decolonial agency. Our findings suggests that #HuelgaUPR movement illuminates how student activism issues of free speech have proliferated since the election of Trump, and how the students of UPR resist the “kidnapping” of their institution through civil disobedience and the use of social media.

An Investigation into the Impact of Ethnicity and Culture on the Motivation for using Facebook for Academics and Socialization in Guam

As most of the prior research on Facebook use and impact has been conducted within the continental US, there is a need to explore these issues in other countries and cultures. This article conducts this study on Guam, a US unincorporated territory. This article surveys Guamanian college students to investigate the impact of ethnicity and culture on Facebook use for socialization and academics among Chamorros and Filipinos, the two major ethnic groups on Guam. The following notes that Filipinos stay logged on longer per Facebook visit, and have significantly higher scores on Social Maintenance, Academic Outreach, and Hofstede's Individualism-Collectivism and Masculinity-Femininity cultural scales. A step-wise regression analysis showing that Facebook use is related to cultural background indicates that Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions can be used for exploring the use of Facebook for social and academic interactions. This also implies that Facebook can be a suitable tool for engaging students in both social and academic contexts.

The use of tobacco tax revenues to fund the Guam Cancer Registry: A double win for cancer control

Cancer registries that provide reliable data on cancer incidence, mortality and burden are essential to cancer control. However, establishing sustainable local funding mechanisms to support cancer registries remains a challenge in many countries.Guam, an unincorporated Territory of the United States of America in the Western Pacific, enacted a bill that raised tobacco taxes, and earmarked a percentage of tobacco tax revenues to support its Cancer Registry. This provided a reliable funding stream for the Registry, allowing for continued staffing and capacity building; at the same time, youth tobacco consumption decreased following the tax increase.Linking tobacco tax revenues to cancer registry support is a feasible strategy with a double benefit: higher tobacco prices from higher tobacco taxes reduce tobacco-related cancer risk while assuring the long-term viability of systematic cancer data collection and dissemination.

Refusing the Referendum: Queer Latino Masculinities and Utopian Citizenship in Justin Torres’ We the Animals

The U.S. Supreme Court decision of June 26, 2015, which ruled the ban on same-sex unions unconstitutional, created, for the first time, equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in all states, thus changing the civic status of members of the LGBTQ community in important ways, ranging from visitation rights to inheritance law. Justin Torres’s 2011 debut novel We the Animals performs Puerto Rican queer masculinity at the precise moment when the first formal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as expressed by then Attorney General Eric Holder, intersect with growing and increasingly aggressive hostility towards Latinx in the United States regardless of their legal status, and when Puerto Ricans on the island continue to be second class citizens ineligible, for example, to participate in presidential elections. In ongoing limbo as an unincorporated territory of the United States, the legal condition of Puerto Rico always already queers the myth of an egalitarian, democratic nation. A queer coming of age/coming out narrative, We the Animals features a first person narrator, the youngest of three Puerto Rican brothers, who grows up in a working class home in upstate New York and emerges as someone who rejects the very values that strive to “normalize” queer life via assimilation into legally defined and sanctioned coupledom. Embracing what José Esteban Muñoz has called a “queer utopia” the nameless narrator rejects the predetermined path of puritanically “virtuous,” materialistically productive, culturally assimilated, and politically predictable American masculinity and citizenship, and ends his narrative at the beginning of an alternative queer vision that does not depend on majoritarian approval, but unapologetically celebrates the possibilities of a “queer planet” (Michael Warner). In doing so, Torres, via his narrator, creates a model of queer Latino masculinity that offers an alternative to assimilationist narratives of “Americanization” and encourages us to imagine a utopian space in which civil and human rights are not tied to a compliance with heteronormative lifestyles.

Resisting-Political-Colonization-and-American-Militarization-in-the-Marianas-Archipelago

This article will explore the triangle of contemporary political colonization, increased American militarization, and the continued denial of Indigenous rights interlinked in the Marianas Archipelago. The 15-island chain is politically constructed as two separate insular areas of the United States: Guåhan (Guam), an unincorporated territory, and the remaining 14 islands are the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. Through its “Asia-Pacific pivot” foreign policy strategy, the US Department of Defense is expanding across the region, including the Marianas Archipelago. The environmental impact statement documents that describe the proposed military activities violate international and federal laws and neither invite nor require the consent of the Indigenous peoples. Chamoru (Chamorro) activists are utilizing social media sites to create solidarity across and beyond the archipelago. This article incorporates trending #hashtags used within the resistance campaigns.

The Pacific Written Tradition

The Pacific Written Tradition Craig Santos Perez (bio) In 2010, I read aloud from my new bookto an English class at one of Guam’spublic high schools. After the reading, I notice a student crying. “Whats wrong?”I ask. She says, “I’ve never seen our culturein a book before. I just thought we weren’t worthy of literature.” I wonder how manyyoung islanders have dived into the depthsof a book, only to find bleached coral and emptiness. They teach us that missionarieswere the first readers in the Pacific becausethey could decipher the strange signs of the Bible. They teach us that missionarieswere the first authors in the Pacific becausethey possessed the authority of written words. Today, studies show that islander students readand write below grade level. “It’s natural,”they claim. “Your ancestors were an illiterate, oral people.” Do not believe their claims.Our ancestors deciphered signs in nature,interpreted star formations and sun positions, cloud and wind patterns, wave currents andfish migrations. Always remember what navigatorPapa Mau once said: “if you can read the ocean you will never be lost.” Now let me tell youabout the Pacific written tradition, about howour ancestors tattooed their skin with defiant scripts of intricately inked genealogy, storiesof plumage and pain. Or how our ancestors carvedepics into hard wood with a sharpened point, [End Page 110] their hands, and the pressure and responsibilityof memory. Or how our ancestors stenciledhieroglyphic poems on cave walls with clay, fire, and smoke. So the next time someone tells youislanders were illiterate, teach themabout our visual literacies, about how we still read and write the intertextual sacrednessof all things. And always remember: if youcan write the ocean we will never be silenced. [End Page 111] Craig Santos Perez Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the author of three books, most recently from unincorporated territory [guma'], which received an American Book Award 2015. He is an associate professor in the English department at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Copyright © 2016 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents

Puerto Rico and the origins of US global empire: the disembodied shade

Drawing on a postcolonial legal history of the United States’ territorial expansionism, this book provides an analysis of the foundations of its global empire. Charles R. Venator-Santiago argues that the United States has developed three traditions of territorial expansionism with corresponding constitutional interpretations, namely colonialist, imperialist, and global expansionist. This book offers an alternative interpretation of the origins of US global expansion, suggesting it began with the tradition of territorial expansionism following the 1898 Spanish–American War to legitimate the annexation of Puerto Rico and other non-contiguous territories. The relating constitutional interpretation grew out of the 1901 Insular Cases in which the Supreme Court coined the notion of an unincorporated territory to describe the 1900 Foraker Act’s normalization of the prevailing military territorial policies. Since then the United States has invoked the ensuing precedents to legitimate a wide array of global policies, including the ‘war on terror’. Puerto Rico and the Origins of US Global Empire: The Disembodied Shade combines a unique study of Puerto Rican legal history with a new interpretation of contemporary US policy. As such, it provides a valuable resource for students and scholars of the legal and historical disciplines, especially those with a specific interest in American and postcolonial studies.

Living with the fence: militarization and military spaces on Guahan/Guam

The landscape of Guahan/Guam, an organized unincorporated territory of the USA and the largest and southernmost island of the Mariana Islands archipelago, is visibly marked by chain link fences that enclose land taken for use by the US military. This US military presence on Guam is evidence of a long military colonial history that has stressed, particularly under US rule, the importance of the island's strategic location. The ‘fence,’ a frequently used but rarely defined expression, refers to a multiplicity of lines, most of which recreate a dichotomous view of military/local relations, and help to make invisible the complex web of identities that go through, over, and beyond its real and imagined spaces. Working from an understanding that theory must be grounded in experience, this article draws on interviews to explore the multiple meanings of the fence. It focuses on the ways the colonized, militarized, and gendered spaces of the fence promote US values, interests, and security concerns but also mark points of resistance to militarization and colonization. Exploring the ways colonization and militarization are played out on the bodies of those who live and work on the island, the article concludes that tearing down the ‘fence’ must include both demilitarization and decolonization, but in ways that transcend, rather than reproduce its present gendered and dichotomous spaces.

‘from Organic Acts’: Tsamorita, Rosaries, and the Poem of My Grandma's Life

This creative nonfiction essay shares the process of writing my poem, ‘from organic acts,’ which was published in my second book of poems, from unincorporated territory [saina]. The poem is about my grandma's life, from her early childhood growing up on Guam during World War II to the point in her seventies when she migrated to California. In the essay I discuss the process of interviewing my grandma, writing the poem, and incorporating sources related to Chamorro orature, Catholic rosaries, US citizenship, and intergenerational storytelling.

“Surviving is not the same as living”: Cancer and Sobrevivencia in Puerto Rico

“Cancer survivorship” is an evolving concept that has been elaborated to a large extent in the mainland U.S. through the work of national advocacy organizations, and it has served as a source of cohesion for many people who have experienced cancer. However, anthropologists and other social scientists have argued that dominant meanings of survivorship—such as the idea of “cancer as a gift” or the role of positive thinking in influencing the disease course—reflect distinctively American cultural values, and survivorship outside the U.S. has remained largely unexplored even while the concept has gained some traction globally. This paper explores how the concepts of “survivorship” and “survivor” are engaged in the setting of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the U.S., and how well they are seen to explain the nature of post-treatment life. Ethnographic fieldwork for this study was conducted over 12 months split between two field visits (2 months and 10 months) between June 2010 and March 2012 in San Juan, the capital city, and Ponce, a smaller city on the southern coast. This paper is based on interviews with 23 participants treated for cancer as young adults. Participants drew from many of the prevailing discourses of survivorship—such as transformation and the importance of optimism—as well as from what they understood to be distinctive aspects of Puerto Rican culture and identity, in the crafting of a local understanding of post-treatment life. Support organizations played a key role in shaping roles and expectations associated with having had cancer, and in solidifying particular views of survivorship more broadly.

The Indignity of a False Citizenship

This article will explore the history and legacy of attempts to advocate for independence in Puerto Rico via the renunciation of United States (US) citizenship. The US acquired Puerto Rico over a century ago, and Puerto Ricans gained US citizenship in 1917, but the island remains an unincorporated territory. Various options, including independence and statehood, have been debated for decades. While voting records show that only a small percentage of the Puerto Rican population supports full independence from the United States, many pro-independence activists spurred debate by renouncing their US citizenship and claiming that they are citizens of Puerto Rico only. This raised questions as to whether they actually became stateless as a result. One of the most notable independence activists, the late Juan Mari Bras, caused confusion at the US State Department, which initially accepted his renunciation of US citizenship only to reverse its decision three years later. A discussion of the multifaceted meaning of ‘citizenship’ in the context of Puerto Rico illuminates the United States’ approach to the international right to a nationality.

Plebiscite Deliberations: Self-Determination & Deliberative Democracy in Guam

In 2015, Guåhan (Guam), an unincorporated territory of the United States, could hold a plebiscite to determine its political status. This self-determination plebiscite will give the electorate the opportunity to deliberate on one of three internationally recognized political plans for the future: Statehood, Independence or Free Association. This monumental event has received little attention in the United States, with little media coverage appearing despite the recent self-determination plebiscites held around the world (e.g., Puerto Rico and the Falkland Islands). Nonetheless, the U.S. has a large stake in this election process. The people of Guåhan are U.S. citizens, yet are simultaneously denied full voting rights in U.S. presidential elections. Thus, the opportunities for political participation on Guåhan are based upon a dependent relationship with the U.S. Moments of political participation in Guåhan occur primarily through actions that both depend upon and reinforce communicative channels directed against the U.S. nation-state. The phenomenon of political dependency creates a complex situation for public deliberation amongst the Guåhan electorate. Even in Guåhan there is much confusion, contradiction, and deliberation concerning plebiscite eligibility and the ballot initiatives on the political status options. Thus, we propose a process of public deliberation, facilitated through educational programming, to analyze the arguments for each plebiscite plan and encourage even wider public deliberation. Drawing from a rich international tradition of school debate and deliberative voting guide reforms, we develop a detailed proposal aimed at both increasing voter education and turnout in the Pacific. Our proposal also stresses the pressing need for more communication scholarship on the political connections between the U.S. and Guåhan.

From Unincorporated Territory to Commonwealth Connecting Decolonization and U.S. Empire

My essay examines the transition of the Philippines and Puerto Rico from U.S. unincorporated territories to U.S. commonwealths in the mid-twentieth century. It studies the ideas of progress that are associated with this shift in legal and political status in order to then consider how they promote particular historical narratives and analytical frameworks for U.S. empire. The essay begins by examining dominant assumptions about the meanings and implications of the unincorporated territory and commonwealth in U.S. culture and history. Building on scholarship by Amy Kaplan, Christina Duffy Burnett, and Todd Shepard, I consider interpretations of the commonwealth as either a continuation or rectification of the U.S. colony status, but also as removed from the contemporaneous historical movement of decolonization. To understand how commonwealth stories operate as ambivalent narrations of U.S. decolonization, I analyze two fictional works, Bienvenido Santos’s 1955 short story “Brown Coterie” and the well-known 1957 musical West Side Story. The concluding paragraphs point to the possibilities opened up by situating the U.S. commonwealth in relation to twentieth century global and geopolitical formations such as United Nations trust territories and the outré-mer, rather than only within U.S. nation-based frameworks.

"I Guess They Didn't Want Us Asking Too Many Questions": Reading American Empire in Guam

This article analyzes Chris Perez Howard's biography of his mother, Mariquita: A Tragedy of Guam , and selections from Craig Santos Perez's poetry book from unincorporated territory: [hacha] and explores their responses to the continued colonization of Guam by the United States. While these two authors use the same events, namely World War II and the multiple military occupations of their home island, to reflect on the contemporary situation in Guam, I claim that the United States is able to continue its colonization of Guam through the twin practices of denying its own imperial practices and ignoring the pleas of native activists. The United States is partially able to accomplish its denial by using a memorialization of rescue from coercive and repressive colonizers who are portrayed in contrast with its own "benevolent" stewardship of the island. This rhetoric of liberation has been one of the acceptable forms of narrative for past authors, but contemporary authors and activists are beginning to explore other forms of discourse. Both Perez and Howard use metaphors of the body in order to explore the disjointed nature of Guam's relationship to the continental United States. Howard portrays the dependent position of Guam through the metaphor of the willing and submissive female body of his mother, whereas Perez attempts to reclaim an independent body and nation that is continually under siege from the United States and its military ambitions. Despite their stylistic differences, these two authors both claim recognition for Guam and its peoples.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Sarah Banet-Weiser As most ASA members know by now, the American Quarterly will be moving to a new institutional home at the end of my editorial term on June 30, 2014 (the process to find a new institution is ongoing). In the meantime, the AQ Associate Editors and Managing Board will continue to work on engaging and intellectually stimulating quarterly issues of the journal, which includes the forthcoming special issues, “Speciesism, Racism, Sexism,” guest edited by Carla Freccero and Claire Jean Kim for fall 2013, and “Las Américas Quarterly,” guest edited by Macarena Gómez-Barris and Licia Fiol-Matta for fall 2014. While different institutions organize their efforts to house AQ, we would like to announce a few editorial board changes. First, we want to thank Professor Glenn Hendler (Fordham University) for his incredible work as AQ’s Book Review Editor for the past several years. In a historical moment where there are fewer and fewer venues for publishing book reviews—despite the fact that university personnel committees, deans, and provosts continue to expect book reviews in appointment, tenure, and promotion files—AQ has been steadfastly committed to not merely publishing reviews of recent monographs, but also to the book review as a publication form, to put scholarly monographs in critical and intellectual conversation with each other. Glenn has been remarkably dedicated to this kind of scholarship, and has organized, solicited, and edited many noteworthy reviews that are widely referenced in scholarship and used in the classroom. Some of the remaining book reviews edited by him are enclosed in this issue. Despite our regret that Glenn is stepping down, we are delighted to welcome Professor Cotten Seiler (Dickenson College) as the new Book Review Editor. Professor Seiler is equally dedicated to publishing intellectually engaging book reviews that help expand and enrich the field of American studies. His address can be found in an announcement in this issue of the journal, as well as on the AQ website (www.americanquarterly.org), so please send books and queries to him. [End Page ix] We would also like to welcome new members to the Managing Board and new Associate Editors. We welcome Richard Yarborough (UCLA) and Eric Porter (UCSC) to the Managing Board, and have already benefitted from their expansive knowledge of the field and sharp engagements with submitted articles. For Associate Editors, we want to first thank Danny Widener (UCSD) for his long (and extended) service as Associate Editor; thankfully he has agreed to remain on the Managing Board. We welcome, as new Associate Editors, Sarah Schrank (Cal State University, Long Beach), Michael Steiner (Cal State University, Fullerton), and Josh Kun (USC), who was already serving in the capacity of a Managing Board member. The addition of two more Associate Editors to AQ has already helped tremendously in shortening the time between submission to publication in the journal, and with the tireless volunteer labor of the Associate Editors and Managing Board, I am happy to say that the timeline is now shorter than it has been in years. In this issue, we continue with our practice of publishing more unconventional forms of writing and scholarship alongside scholarly articles. Here, we present a forum organized by Naomi Greyser and Margot Weiss on “Academia and Activism,” which features short pieces on activism and protest within institutions of higher education, as well as interviews with scholars and activists. Additionally, we have a supplementary webpage for this forum where readers can find media examples and further materials to supplement the printed forum (http://www.americanquarterly.org/interact/beyond.html). Also featured in this issue is Keith L. Camacho’s excellent essay which offers an ethnographic study of the ongoing activism against U.S. military build-up in the Mariana Islands and the U.S. unincorporated territory of Guam in the “post-9/11” era, while also situating this activism within the longer history of the cold war. Next, Miriam Thaggert looks at cinematic representations of the post-Civil Rights Movement Black female professional through a reading of the film Mahogany (1975), where in a compelling analysis, she asks us to revisit conventional readings of the film and think in new...

After 9/11: Militarized Borders and Social Movements in the Mariana Islands

In this essay, I provide an ethnographic study of militarization and social movements in the aftermath of 9/11. Drawing on activist, government, media, and military sources, I examine the roles of social movements in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the U.S. unincorporated territory of Guam. As colonies of America’s most westernmost “border,” the CNMI and Guam constitute the Mariana Islands. I argue that this archipelago has become another site wherein the United States has increasingly militarized its borders, and in ways that have garnered the critical attention of indigenous activists and labor activists. By focusing on their respective calls for freedom, I analyze how indigenous and labor activisms challenge, support, or transform narratives of U.S. military legitimacy since 9/11.