It is ironic if a police officer assists in the commission of a crime because, by definition, policemen are supposed to prevent crimes. It would be ironic if Mau Piailug got lost on his way home from the grocery store because he is arguably the greatest navigator remaining on planet Earth. And it is ironic when Chamorros invoke their Catholicism and their church when making a case for indigenous rights.
Before the arrival of Magellan, the Chamorros were a beautiful example of an ancient and flourishing culture. They had a religion, based heavily on ancestor worship. The indigenous people had “Men’s Houses” and they kept the preserved and venerated skulls of their ancestors in their latte stone houses. They worshipped the Taotaomona, who they believed protected them from evil and just happened to live in the proximity of the banyan trees.
And then the Spanish Catholics arrived, fueled by the insanity of the Inquisition. They were appalled by the behavior of the indigenous Chamorro people, whom the priests saw as sub-human. The Catholic priests ordered the destruction of the Men’s Houses. They forced the locals to bury the skulls of their ancestors. At the point of a sword, they forced their religion upon the locals, who did not want to convert to Christianity. So, by the thousands, the Spanish killed those Chamorros who refused to abandon their vibrant culture and religion until they had decimated the local population and forced their perverted religion upon the cowering survivors. In a very brief period of time, the Catholic Church managed to utterly destroy the true Chamorro culture.
This irony seems to be lost on the descendents of those original inhabitants of the Marianas. Rather than rebel against this organization that effectively committed genocide against their ancestors, modern Chamorros proudly proclaim themselves as “Catholic.” They ignore the overwhelming evidence that the Catholic Church has never been a friend of indigenous peoples. The Catholic Church willfully destroyed the local culture, murdered their leaders, bastardized the native language and to this day continue to keep Chamorros uninformed, unenlightened and forever in morbid fear of hellfire.
I look forward to the day when the indigenous population comes to recognize what is undeniable fact: Despite the poor treatment under the Spanish, the Americans and especially the Japanese, the greatest enemy of the indigenous people of the Marianas has always been the Catholic Church. There can be no liberation in the Marianas until the indigenous people recognize the cruel and bitter irony of aligning themselves with an organization that would have gladly killed them all, in the name of God, if the locals would simply have fought a little harder for the right to maintain their culture.
MATT WERTZ
Beijing, China
