In 1773, the people of Boston had enough. They had enough of paying tribute to and following the rules of a faraway overlord. They had enough of being ordered around. They had enough of having to follow all the rules of their boss\u2019s house, without getting any of the benefits. Most of all, they hated the humiliation, lack of respect, and sheer disregard for their welfare that came from their colonial master an ocean away.<\/p>\n
Bostonians dumped their colonial master\u2019s tea in the harbor. They formed their own status commission. Proudly, they declared independence: <\/p>\n
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them\u2026<\/p>\n
Our own schools in the Marianas teach us to admire the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. Everybody in America the Beautiful knows the early Boston freedom fighters\u2019 story.<\/p>\n
I went to American schools, and I learned the Boston Tea Partiers\u2019 story. I admired their willingness to stand up to their colonial masters in the name of self-determination and self-respect.<\/p>\n
And like any good student of history, I want to do more than admire the Boston Tea Party. I want to be inspired by it. <\/p>\n
We, the people of the Marianas, are not any worse than those early Boston colonists. Our skin is browner and our harbor is warmer, but our grievances are basically the same.<\/p>\n
As we try to eke out a living here on our remote islands, the U.S. federal government keeps pointing a finger in our faces. We can\u2019t hire who we want. We aren\u2019t allowed to pay island market wages; we have to pay the same wages as New York and Washington, D.C. The federal government forces us to follow their faraway rules on everything from how we manage our money to what food we\u2019re allowed to eat to how we can farm and mine our own lands. We aren\u2019t even allowed to distill our own tuba wine at home without a federal permit. <\/p>\n
Sure, the Americans got some of our well-meaning ancestors to sign some papers back in 1977. They promised to bring them prosperity and economic development. Look around you. Drive around anywhere in the Marianas other than Capital Hill and the federal buildings. Do you see the federal government bringing us any prosperity and economic development?<\/p>\n
The white colonists also tricked the Indigenous Native Americans to sign away their lands, their freedom, and their dignity, sometimes convincing Indigenous Native Americans to trade entire countries for a necklace or a bottle of whiskey. <\/p>\n
Nowadays we know that those deals weren\u2019t fair, even if there was ink on paper. Taking away people\u2019s land for some vague promises is obviously exploitative. Don\u2019t we have the sense to know that the same applies to the Covenant we were made to sign?<\/p>\n
All we got in return was Uncle Sam poking his finger in our eyes, and telling us when to sit, stand, lie down, and heel. We\u2019re even allowed to bark a little bit, in the U.S. House of Representatives. But we\u2019re definitely not allowed to bite, nor can our Congressional representative. <\/p>\n
Our supposed \u201crepresentative\u201d can\u2019t vote in Congress, and we can\u2019t either. Somehow we\u2019re lesser beings than Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to following Uncle Sam\u2019s rules, we\u2019re not given any exceptions or lenience. None. We have to follow every last rule, no matter how much it limits our wellbeing or how much it infringes on our traditional culture. Even though we can\u2019t even vote. Even though we can\u2019t even get adequate disaster relief or food stamps or funding for our electric grid or hospital. <\/p>\n
We have all the obligations, and none of the benefits. I definitely know how they felt in Boston back then. Do you feel it too?<\/p>\n
Are they going to tell me that I don\u2019t know about America? I\u2019m sitting in a hotel room in California as I write this. <\/p>\n
The people cleaning my hotel room are illegal immigrants. I see illegal immigrants openly working on every construction project and every farm here in the Land of the Free. I doubt they\u2019re being paid minimum wage or paying any taxes. Everybody knows it and nobody cares. But when illegal immigration happens on our islands, Uncle Sam raises a big commotion and uses it as a pretext to punish us some more and maybe downgrade our food rations and take away our bathroom privileges?<\/p>\n
I see meth addicts and dealers everywhere here in “perfect” California. Every emergency room is full of addicts. Every trailer park resembles the set of Breaking Bad. People shrug and say there\u2019s no way to stop it and it\u2019s a part of life. Yet we, the people of Marianas, are characterized as horrible monsters who don\u2019t deserve our U.S. passports because we have drug addicts among our people?<\/p>\n
I see environmental protesters at every factory and development project in California. Yet when we people of the Marianas object to our beautiful islands being made into a bombing range, we\u2019re denigrated as ungrateful traitors?<\/p>\n
I see corruption and malfeasance at every level of federal government, from post office clerks all the way up to the top. Yet we Marianas people are singled out, prosecuted, and persecuted in our lands and watched in our own homes and threatened with prison at every step, as if we invented corruption?<\/p>\n
I say: Enough. Basta.<\/p>\n
Enough kicking us.
\nEnough giving us rules made to keep us down.
\nEnough taking our lands.
\nEnough exploiting our waters.
\nEnough bombing our islands.
\nEnough FBI, CIA, DoD, ATF, SSA, and all the rest of the alphabet of exploitation.
\nBasta.<\/p>\n
We are not born to be America\u2019s punching bag or obedient pet. Basta.<\/p>\n
We listened in American History class. We\u2019re what every teacher is afraid of: we\u2019re the students who learned their lesson a little too well. We\u2019re going to take the example of the Bostonians and speak truth to power and stop the decades of abuse and humiliation we\u2019ve been subjected to.<\/p>\n
But unlike those supposed Tea Party heroes who went on a violent spree slashing containers and destroying ships and property, we the people of the Marianas are not thugs or vandals. I don\u2019t advocate violence. We island people are a lot less violent than those early American revolutionaries. <\/p>\n
I don\u2019t support spilling our exploiters\u2019 tea into the harbor. I don\u2019t support destroying the containers of noxious Spam and Marlboros they send over to poison us.<\/p>\n
What I do support is the most peaceful, most regular, and most humane path to our dignity and independence: the status commission. The status commission can let us sit down and discuss these issues for ourselves. With the knowledge of history and politics that maybe our ancestors lacked. With the lack of fear of the white man that maybe our ancestors needed a little bit more of.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say BASTA to the hypocrisy, to the fingers pointed at us, to being told \u201cno,\u201d to being treated like naughty stepchildren.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s find our self-respect. Let\u2019s stand up for ourselves. Let\u2019s sit down and think and talk about our real future, in a status commission that works for our future, by us and for us. Not somebody else\u2019s vision of how we can be useful to Washington.<\/p>\n
Join me. Let\u2019s stand for a new Marianas, free of the chains of subjugation, free of fear, free of exploitation. <\/p>\n
Basta. Enough being slaves on our own precious islands. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s find a new way.<\/p>\n
Juan Diego C. Blanco<\/strong> In 1773, the people of Boston had enough. They had enough of paying tribute to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12323,42,67,1743],"class_list":["post-273590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-boston-tea-party","tag-food","tag-people","tag-uncle-sam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs Lito<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"