The Not-Quite States of America

by Doug Mack

  “I group the Pacific Islands into three levels of situation,” an American named Gary (who asked that I not use his real name) told me. “There’s developed, dependent, and life support.” Gary put the Marshalls in the second category, having seen far worse situations—like Kiribati and Tuvalu—in his years of working and living across the Pacific.

  There’s significant investment in the Marshall Islands’ infrastructure, Gary pointed out, including by many other countries. The National Gym had been funded by the government of Japan, the airport security system by “the people of the United States.” Walking around Rita, past well-kept houses holding garage sales and shanties formed of Jengaed piles of cinder block and scrap metal, I saw dozens of water catchments given by the European Union, a medical van donated by India, and countless signs, including outside one of the municipal city halls, reading GIFT FROM THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA. The last was particularly curious, because the government based in Beijing is the People’s Republic of China. The signs, Gary explained, represented Taiwan and its attempts to assert its own independence from China (which claims Taiwan as its own). Taiwan even had an embassy here, one of its twenty-one on the planet; most are in cash-strapped island nations, some of which, Gary said, essentially sell embassy rights to the highest bidder, Taiwan or China. For Taiwan, the point is recognition on the world stage. For China—which between 2006 and the beginning of 2015 donated $1.5 billion to eight Pacific Island nations, according to a Lowy Institute study—the aim is “to help demonstrate that it is a responsible power that supports other developing countries.” In other words: to expand China’s influence while softening its image.

  As an independent nation, even a tiny one, the Marshall Islands has a place at the international table in a way that the territories do not. “I think the CNMI has lost a lot by not being an independent country,” Angelo Villagomez said when I met him at Tide Table one day; he was on Majuro to give a presentation about marine conservation. “To have your own nationality . . . I think a strong case is to be made for actually being a country and not being a territory.”

  But the gains in international standing come with the trade-off of less leverage in Washington, particularly with regard to nuclear compensation. “Guys like my father argued against the compact,” a middle-aged man named Ben Chutaro told me. “Why would you, as a negotiator, compromise that leverage?” We sat on Ben’s deck at the edge of the Majuro Lagoon, where a couple of catamarans bobbed in the water, with the shell of an old ferryboat rusting nearby. His father, Chuji, who shuffled outside to greet me at one point, was a Marshallese leader in the early 1980s. Ben looked the part of a businessman off the clock, in shorts and a T-shirt. At the time of the compact referendum, which passed with more than 60 percent of the vote, becoming a commonwealth instead of a freely associated state wasn’t a clear option, Ben said, “but I think if the Marshall Islanders were given a choice of becoming a U.S. commonwealth, clearly, my suspicion is that they probably would have.”

  If you’re going to be dependent on outside help, would you rather have one benefactor or many? Better the devil you know or the multitudes you don’t? Better to manage a single big check, and the gamesmanship that comes with it, or a fistful? If you don’t trust the USA—and, really, not many people in Micronesia do—is the solution to make your relationship to Uncle Sam stronger or to cut ties?

  In 1951, the USA built a base on Kwajalein Island, forcing the Marshallese who lived there to move to the nearby island of Ebeye, one-tenth the size. The Island Hopper had stopped on Kwajalein, where passengers were warned not to take photos out the window. (I hope I’m not revealing any national secrets when I say that there was a golf course on one side of the runway and there were some domed structures on the other, and it all looked rather pleasant, like a forgotten Florida Key.) Ebeye, Ben said, is bursting with overpopulation and a “raw-sewage smell and constant blackouts.” Days earlier, a restaurant had burned down in part because the island had no fire truck. But the base was still active—when Maren and I were departing MSP Airport, a headline had scrolled by on CNN: “Missile defense system passes key test in the Marshall Islands.” The Marshall Islands had no intention of kicking out the Americans, because they counted on the lease payments and, for that matter, many of the goods available at the base. At the Majuro airport, a young Marshallese man in a navy blue track suit pushed a cart with large boxes full of sandwiches, easily a hundred of them, fresh (or at least fresh-ish) from the Subway on Kwajalein. His expression was triumphant.

  But it’s hard to see a bright future for the Marshall Islands, in large part because, on top of everything else, the nation is facing a genuine existential threat from climate change. The official highest point on Majuro is twelve feet, on a bridge between two of the atoll’s islands. A bit farther west, the distance between ocean and lagoon is merely the width of the two-lane road. I threw a stone across Majuro, watching it plunk. Soon, that stone-toss will be even shorter. The extra-high king tides were already coming more often, Jack Niedenthal told me said. “It’s just mind-blowing, people running from their houses with their goods.” And on Kili Atoll, the Bikinians were preparing to move yet again, due to increased flooding. From one man-made calamity to the next.

  Ben hadn’t given up hope for the Marshall Islands. He was working on increasing tourism, using the remoteness as a selling point, along with the crystalline waters and world-class diving and surfing. Big-wave surfer Kelly Slater had been out a few times.

  “It’s a nice place. I mean, I like it,” Ben said, looking out at the lagoon, where raindrops were starting to fracture the glassy surface. He had gone to college in the USA and expected his children would do the same. “Maybe not in my lifetime, but hopefully my kids will be able to come back here,” he said.

  He paused for a second. “If we haven’t overfished it or if the islands are still around.”

  AS I CHATTED with Angelo at Tide Table, the two of us reflecting on Saipan from afar—as so many have done before—he said, “My father was not born an American citizen but he died one. And he was able to take advantage of the American educational system. He went to law school in Washington, D.C. He came back and he helped write the constitution that was modeled after the United States Constitution. You know, he was able to live the American Dream. He was born a poor fisherman and the relationship with America provided opportunities for him that wouldn’t have been available otherwise. At the same time, he was also very critical of America.”

  I told him about my conversations with Lino and Chun, and how, in their own ways, each had felt left out of the broader conversation on the island, and how no one on Saipan or in Washington seemed to have a good handle on how to set the territory on a better path. The CNMI’s problems defied easy solutions or standard political party-line answers; in Nobodies, John Bowe writes that “my most conservative friend on the island . . . was all for [federal] takeover [of the CNMI]. As he put it, ‘This place has to decide: Do you want to be part of the United States, or not?’ Liberal Pam Brown, on the other hand, was largely against the idea. She, like others, felt skeptical that federal officials could ever do a good job of making decisions regarding a complex, faraway place about which they knew little.”

  At Tide Table, Angelo put it this way: “You’re Spider-Man and Venom at the same time, the United States. Two different feelings, but it plays out every single day in every way of your life.”

  It reminded me of something Foster Rhea Dulles had written back in 1932, in his book, America in the Pacific: “It has always been difficult for the United States to know just where it stands, with principle ever warring against expediency, protestations of altruism denied by an aggressive nationalism. . . . [The USA has] always decried imperialism while creating an empire.”

  The story of the U.S. territories is the story of a nation that really, truly believes itself to be exceptional but also can’t make up its mind what, exactly, that means. More powerful or more just? Ever more culturally diverse, the d
efinition of “American” constantly expanding, or increasingly assimilated around a specific set of static cultural norms? How do you strike the right balance? And who gets to make the judgment?

  Empire-building is easy enough: you just keep acquiring new lands, setting up additional outposts. Building a functional, cohesive nation—trying to form all those lands into one coherent, truly egalitarian body—that’s much harder.

  * In 2015, a new owner purchased the property and began a major renovation effort, with plans to reopen it as the Kensington Hotel in mid-2016.

  ‡ That’s according to Don Farrell, who was referred to me by officials at American Memorial Park. Other estimates—including signs at the site, government documents, and other official and unofficial sources—range from hundreds to ten thousand.

  ‡ Today, in addition to the three American territories, the UN lists fourteen colonies: Western Sahara, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Montserrat, Saint Helena, Turks & Caicos, Gibraltar, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, and Tokelau. The great majority of these are held by the United Kingdom (the Falklands are disputed with Argentina), plus two for France, one for New Zealand, and one place, Western Sahara, where . . . it’s complicated.

  § This list comes from a 1998 report by California Congressman George Miller, along with reporting by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, although these documents do not specify the years during which each individual company was using manufacturing facilities on Saipan.

  ¶ The islands that now comprise the Federated States of Micronesia were also claimed by the Japanese before World War II and were the site of much fighting. The Chuuk Lagoon was the primary base for the Japanese Imperial Navy fleet until the Allies sank dozens of the ships in a series of air attacks in February 1944. Today the lagoon is a popular scuba diving spot that the New York Times has called “the biggest graveyard of ships in the world.”

  Chapter 5

  BE TRUE

  TO

  YOUR HOME

  Puerto Rico

  FIVE MONTHS LATER AND NEARLY HALF A WORLD away, I was in a light- and art-filled home on Puerto Rico’s northeast coast, considering the question of balance in a different, more concrete context. In front of me, a woman was levitating. Her bronze-toned body was arched, her arms outstretched. A long strip of turquoise fabric draped between her bare breasts and twisted loosely around her thigh, hanging so it just grazed the floor. She was a sculpture, called Levación, created by the artist I’d come to see, Samuel Lind. And even though I knew her every inch had been calculated, I couldn’t figure out how she managed to stay upright, ascending from her base at a sharp angle.

  Samuel’s two-story studio/house/gallery was down a long driveway in the town of Loíza, about fifteen miles east of San Juan and known as the heart of Puerto Rico’s African heritage, founded by escaped slaves who hid in the mangroves. I’d been brought here by a man named Jesus Ayala, a native Puerto Rican, Vietnam War vet, and retired NYPD cop, who was dressed smartly in slacks and a tucked-in polo and a red MARINES baseball cap. Samuel wore rectangular glasses and a brown shirt with the sleeves cut off, looking more like a trim computer tech than your wild-haired stereotype of an artist.

  As my unofficial tour guide for a few days, Jesus was adamant that I understand the depth and complexity of Puerto Rico’s cultural roots, and in Samuel’s home, where we’d come less than twenty-four hours after I touched down in San Juan, there were ample lessons. From the impeccably lit main gallery area on the ground floor, we moved to a small, windowless studio. On a pedestal was a bronze statue, a couple of feet tall, of a woman dancing the bomba, for which Loíza is known, and which dates to the days of slavery. Women dancers traditionally wear white dresses, long and modest, as required by the slave owners, Jesus said, but their movements tell a different story, energetic and flamboyant. In the bomba, there’s just one dancer at a time, accompanied by three or four drummers, one of whom has to match the dancer’s movements. “The dancer leads the beat—you understand?” Jesus said.

  Upstairs was more gallery space, more studio space, and Samuel’s living area. We stepped into the kitchen and he took a peeled orange off the countertop as a tabby cat brushed against his legs. It was airy up here, with high ceilings and lots of natural light and a balcony. On one side of the room was a table with a scattering of prints: salsa and bomba festival posters, and scenes of jibaros, Puerto Rico’s iconic field-workers of the mountains, with straw hats and white work shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Samuel explained what I was seeing, pausing to nibble on orange sections while Jesus offered his own commentary. The bomba is still popular here, he said—he even knew a guy who teaches a bombaerobics exercise class.

  “And, um . . . Que es eso?” I asked, pointing to a wooden purple forearm standing upright on the table, with an eye in the palm of the hand.

  “That’s the Power Hand,” Samuel said, a symbol of Espiritismo, a belief system that, like Santería, mixes elements of Catholicism and the Yoruba mythology of Western Africa—plus, Jesus added, books by a nineteenth century French mystic.

  “So it’s a synthesized, crazy version of everything,” Jesus said. As the stories continued, this was his refrain: Puerto Rico is many cultures, united. Samuel nodded.

  But as in any history with two tellers, the versions didn’t always line up. At one point, Jesus and Samuel disagreed about the precise way that Moorish traditions had filtered, via the Spanish, into modern Puerto Rico. There was a momentary pause and Samuel said, “You are with me but no . . .”

  Jesus chuckled and turned to me: “He believes in independence; I believe in statehood.”

  “The most important thing is, Puerto Rico is very different,” Samuel said. “Puerto Rico has . . . I don’t know, Puerto Rico has a different history, no?”

  “America wants diversity,” Jesus countered. “Texans are Texans, Floridians are Floridians . . . My point is, we could become a state with our own identity.”

  “But we are another thing here!” Samuel said. “We are a nation like you! When the United States came, we had already made everything for hundreds of years. We have our own culture, our own history, no?” He touched my arm slightly, familiarly, speaking more to me than to Jesus.

  The conversation had veered, abruptly and conclusively, becoming a verbal tennis match between two longtime, friendly rivals. Independence, statehood, independence, statehood. They agreed that the status quo was unacceptable, and in their deep-seated pride in being Puerto Rican. For twenty minutes, and backed by a soft chorus of birds on the balcony railing, Jesus and Samuel traded points in English and Spanish.

  Basically: We’re financially better off as a state, and though it’ll be a struggle to keep our cultural identity intact, we’ll figure it out. Versus: We’re culturally better off independent, and though it’ll be a struggle to keep our already-faltering economy intact, we’ll figure it out.

  They both anticipated every volley, prefacing every point and counterpoint with knowing smiles and small sighs that said, Well, I’ve heard that line a thousand times. They seemed to enjoy the conversation, the camaraderie of the debate, and their tone was consistently warm if sometimes impatient or sarcastic, a collegial urgency in their voices as they detailed their own hopes for Puerto Rico’s future.

  Finally, Samuel looked at me and laughed. “Sorry for the politics.”

  He plucked a print off the table. It depicted five jibaros having a late-night jam session around a lantern, each playing a different instrument. Jesus explained: The güira (a gourd scraped with a metal comb) and maracas originated with the indigenous Taínos. The handheld drum, a pander, came from Western Africa; the drummer kept a particular beat, called a clave—“bumbum bum bum bum,” the root of Puerto Rico’s native music. The last two jibaros held a guitar, from Europe, and a cuatro, “our own local guitar.” The heyday of the jibaro had come and gone by the early twentieth century, Jesus added,
as industrialization took off, but they still made for a popular local legend.

  “You like this?” Samuel said, pointing to the print. I nodded.

  He smiled. “I give to you.”

  He signed it and added the title: Tertulia Borincana, which he translated as “Puerto Rican Talk-Together.” Given Jesus’s brief history lesson, and the conversation that had just unfolded between Jesus and Samuel, I imagined the jibaros’ song to be a lament: From this rich, proud history, what comes next?

  IN THE WEEKS before I flew to Puerto Rico, the island was suddenly in the national headlines—not front and center, but more prominent than the back-page sidebars where I’d usually tracked down the latest territory information. The news wasn’t great: Puerto Rico was facing an economic crisis, its government more than $70 billion in debt; people were moving to the states by the thousands; there was a worrisome crime wave (one Puerto Rican friend-of-a-friend offered to accompany me for my entire trip, because she was so concerned for my safety); and, most recently, there had been an alarming uptick in the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus. Meanwhile, there was the percolating hot topic of an upcoming referendum on Puerto Rico’s political status—it wasn’t on the election schedule yet but maybe, possibly, would be sometime soon-ish . . . whatever that meant.

  Uncertainty shapes the everyday mood in the territories in subtle but undeniable ways. Sometimes it translates into a sense of despair. Sometimes it hardens into cynicism or a dark, brooding shrug-and-carry-on fatalism. I arrived in San Juan, on a warm winter’s day, to a different sort of vibe, a fatalism with a live-it-up edge. The atmosphere was at once electric and anxious, underscored by a restless bohemianism manifest in graffiti (a stylized Virgin Mary, a big-eyed purple cat, a stenciled #STOPTHENSA) and in the salsa and hip-hop blasting from clubs and cars and apartment windows.