An open letter to Ken Govendo:

Lately Ken Govendo has been attacking my father for the decisions he has made politically. He hasn’t stopped there though, somehow it’s gotten personal- just a little too personal for many of us who have sat aside and said nothing. The sad thing is, Ken isn’t the only one doing this. I’m getting so tired of over-hearing conversations about Chamorro leaders and Chamorro “mentality”. I once heard someone say that if something makes too much sense, our leaders will surely bypass it or that it is so sad how Saipan is so lacking, so “backwards”. Enough is enough, here is my rebuttal.

Well, it must be nice to be a Stateside American. You can go all over the world and criticize governments and cultures because your government and culture is so morally perfect, so unriddled with controversy and corruption. You can travel the globe where everybody is expected to speak your language or else be subject to a subsistent economic existence. Everyone has had to adapt to your way of thinking, your view of what success is, your Hollywood ideology, but you don’t have to cow tow to anyone’s twisted conceptions of freedom.

You plant your fast food mentality and your fast food restaurants across continents and turn people into individualistic, entrepreneurial, tyrants and yet you preach harmony with the environment. You tell us not to swap our land to build golf courses, that nature is better than convenience and yet you build homes with automatic garage doors and start your mornings off with a hot bath and a cafe latte. You whine when you cannot “own” this land when we are happy just to borrow from our children. The whole world is yours to pillage, but this is Chamorro ground, not equity and not property asset.

You spend millions of dollars saving the African Elephant, but fight for the right to kill the unborn. You are so sure of what is “American” and “Unamerican” and you shove it down our savage throats without even the foresight to think of what you are destroying. You enact your laws all in the name of Human Rights and you forget to consider the humans you have wronged. You broadcast our atrocities on your nationally syndicated programs while every hour in your country someone gets brutally raped, murdered or inducted into a cult.

Someone once said to me while I was driving around San Jose that I was on American soil and had better remember it. You are wrong. This is the land that my ancestors (uncivilized to you as they were) inhabited thousands of years ago and still live on today. Your Marines were not the only ones to die on our shores. My people were scattered from beach front to mountainside, underneath ranch homes bleeding to death, inside caves hungry for food and peace, and on the ocean bottom all for the sake of liberation. You couldn’t fight your way on your own land, could you?

I see, our people were expendable, just like the Native Americans were. And today, we can have lunch with Japanese friends who are almost part of our extended families, but still are suspicious of you! And though no one can really decide what is better, conquest or Commonwealth, I do know this: being conquered is equally as condescending as being held prisoner by your hypocritical philosophies. But, none of these will change tomorrow and you will still come to Saipan to build your cafes, take us on the journey to the information super highway and walk your dogs on our scenic paths. But everytime you come, please don’t forget on whose soil you so arrogantly trod. Adahi na un malefa nu enao.

Yvonne Reyes-Gomez