By Robert T. Torres
For Variety

BEFORE the Time of the Great Development, our parents and grandparents would occupy the down time on the farm with various games. As you all know by now, I was raised on the farm and learned the value of earning your keep by the sweat of your brow. Yup, that was me. OK well, maybe more often in my imagination.
The boat-shaped game board with many bowl-shaped depressions would usually be found in the living room. Right next to Nang’s table where San Jose joined Santa Maria and Kristo Rai and saints such as San Isidro or San Antonio for our nightly novenas. Each day we’d play with Nang, who would patiently wait as we tried to count the shells and tried to learn the game. That would be after we picked out the seeds from the cotton tree pods but before feeding the pigs (actually, make that Jeff, Tony and Blas). We had to learn the number of shells to put in each hole, when you would drop, and where you could scoop up the big pile to continue your streak. Nang would smile when we’d run out of shells and then she took over with her wisdom and conquer us all. Eventually we learned and she smiled, losing graciously when we started winning. Somewhere in the South today two young lads, Chas and Tyler Hutton, have probably had to explain the game of chongka and the board in their home, to neighborhood kids unfamiliar to the strange game they learned in a place over 8,000 miles away in a strange place they’ve never heard of.
The game has transcended cultures and time. I’m not sure of its origin or how it came to the islands. The Filipino national hero Jose Rizal describes the game in his book “El Filibusterismo” (“The Reign of Greed”) about life in the Philippines during the Spanish reign before independence came. I wonder if these times would stir us to a call to arms to argue for the promise of our Covenant: the economic development of our islands from our political relationship with the United States, and to prevent the exploitation of our people. Yes, a filibusterismo would sound like a good thing that a senator friend in the U.S. Congress should try out when considering legislation for our islands. I’m not sure who would say we are in a Reign of Greed in our islands today and who, if anyone, is the victim of such greed. But I’m not so sure that sending our commonwealth into economic oblivion is what we signed on for. Who is our revolutionary?
But someone has said that instead of hiring lobbyists we should show our “Brown and Proud” faces in the halls of Washington, D.C. This is so that they know who we are and what we are all about. We The People. Not our legislators? Not our leaders? Not our chamber of commerce? Why, I thought they’d never ask! But do you mean they don’t know us by now? Comforting to know major decisions affecting our lives are being made by an ignorant few. Ok, well then I’d suggest we invite the pitbull legislators from California and Massachusetts to sit down with Chas and Ty there in Tennessee to play a game of chongka. I’m sure their little sister Tory could also tell them a thing or two about life in our islands.
I’d also suggest we go there and shiver in the winter weather to explain how each day here we try to figure out how to move shells around and count ahead of time to win the game and not run out of shells. The best chongka player today should be the secretary of finance. I’d suggest we send each a friend or foe in D.C. a courtesy set so that they can amuse themselves during the deep freeze of a D.C. winter if the warm sun of our islands isn’t that inviting anymore. You don’t know me? You don’t know me. You. Don’t. Know. Me.
Maybe we should create a Marianas Political Status Commission II and send the second generation of our commonwealth to march up those steps on Capitol Hill, Chongka board in one hand and a copy of our Covenant in the other. Let’s send Candy up there. We’ll do the Mas Dance! So if Washington, D.C. is now telling us how to persuade people in Washington, D.C. to listen to us, consider the source. Is the message that we are unable to think and speak for ourselves and now we need to be told how to do it? Gee, we seemed to do just fine sending young gentlemen farmers to D.C. in 1976. Wasn’t there something similar like that in 1776 in Philadelphia? We know how to play the game. They just want to change the rules.