In 1962 Saipan was a typical, peaceful, beautiful, sleepy tropical paradise. There were a couple guest houses, some small bungalows for rent at the golf course, Joeten and MSV stores and four or five others, one for each village, and a couple of bars run by Palauans. Fishing, farming, eating, making and drinking tuba, playing, sleeping, and having babies were the main activates. Idyllic is a word that comes to mind. When I got back in 1979, it was still idyllic but change was in the wind. The first elected governor was a year into his term, federal money was starting to come in and people were taking positions with the new government. The next couple of years saw the solidifying of the CNMI government departments and the expansion of the hiring of residents, mostly Chamorros because more of them had traveled off island for school or training and were more qualified.<\/p>\n
In 1982 girlie bars sprouted like tangan-tangan and the industry grew apace. In 1983 the first garment factory opened, followed by three more the following year. I was walking on Beach Road in CK one day in \u201984 (I think it was) and heard a lot or singing and clapping and laughing coming from the road from San Antonio and, my goodness, 60 to 80 Chamorro women were marching up the road toward Susupe and the mayor\u2019s office. They had signs saying, \u201cClose the bars,\u201d \u201cBar girls out\u201d and \u201cSend the bar girls home.\u201d As far as I know that was the first protest ever on Saipan by women and I don\u2019t even remember who the participants were but they were very courageous. Chamorro custom allowed them to say or do pretty much whatever they want inside the household but public displays of any kind were verboten and, for the most part, still are. I never heard or saw these marchers again so I asked a Chamorro lady friend what she thought might have happened. She said: \u201cThis is what probably happened that night\u2014the husband came home, slapped his wife and shouted, as she fell backward into the kitchen counter, \u2018Don\u2019t ever embarrass me like that in public again.\u2019 Her hand grabbed a frying pan and slapped him upside his head with it and, as he falls backward into a chair, she looks at him and says, \u2018OK, honey, oh, what would you like for supper?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2010 Census indicates that women outnumber men 53 percent to 47 percent so, naturally, my question is this: Why have you only elected one woman in the past 30 years to the CNMI Senate? And to you Maria T. Pangelinan, why did you let the men make you \u201clegislative secretary\u201d? That\u2019s a pretty demeaning, stereotyped position. You have the power but you are still just kept, basically, barefoot and pregnant, \u201cstay in the kitchen, woman,\u201d housewives. Ladies, it ain\u2019t 1814 anymore. What happened to the courage your moms and grand moms showed in the \u201980s? The CNMI desperately needs about 50 women\u2019s hands on the tiller of our government right now. We men have messed it up for 32 long years and with eight, men only, pictures on gubernatorial billboards going up all over the islands, I guess you are still regulated to the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Gary DuBrall<\/strong> In 1962 Saipan was a typical, peaceful, beautiful, sleepy tropical paradise. There were a couple…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[160,50,133,135],"class_list":["post-40212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-beach-road","tag-power","tag-run","tag-san-antonio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40212","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nChalan Piao, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"