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Death Rituals and Identity in

Contemporary Guam (Mariana Islands)
David Atienza de Frutos & Alexandre Coello de la Rosa
Version of record first published: 10 Dec 2012.

To cite this article: David Atienza de Frutos & Alexandre Coello de la Rosa (2012): Death Rituals
and Identity in Contemporary Guam (Mariana Islands), The Journal of Pacific History, 47:4, 459-473

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 The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 47, No. 4, December 2012

Death Rituals and Identity in Contemporary

Guam (Mariana Islands)
DAVID ATIENZA DE FRUTOS AND
ALEXANDRE COELLO DE LA ROSA
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ABSTRACT

Despite cross-cultural exchange and ethnic mixing over the last five centuries, Guam remains
culturally a Chamorro society. Rather than stressing the acculturative forces of colonialism,
this study focuses on the survival of Chamorro local traditions and identity by bringing death
rituals and native Catholicism to the fore. This study corroborates the work of several scholars who
have emphasised the vital role played by Chamorro women and female symbolism before and
after Spanish contact. It adopts a theoretical position, well expressed by historian Vicente M. Diaz,
which conceives colonialism as an ambivalent and fluid process, involving appropriation and
creative syncretism on the part of the colonised.

CONTEMPORARY DEATH RITUALS ON GUAM, THE SOUTHERNMOST ISLAND OF THE

Mariana Archipelago, say much about the complexity, depth, and resilience of
indigenous Chamorro identity throughout the last five hundred years. Ferdinand
Magellans visit in 1521 was followed by one-and-a-half centuries of interaction
with the Spanish galleon trade, then over two centuries of formal Roman
Catholic missionisation and Spanish rule. US naval administration began in
1898, the island was occupied by Japan during World War II, and thereafter
Guam was integrated into the US as an unincorporated territory. During these
five centuries, the Chamorro people underwent great demographic upheaval,
including decimation; relocation; wide-scale intermarriage with Mexican,
Filipino, and Caroline Islander immigrants; and, more recently, mass emigration

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. E-mail:
alex.coello@upf.edu
David Atienza de Frutos, Anthropology Program, University of Guam, Mangilao. E-mail: atienza.
david@gmail.com
Acknowledgements: Our warmest thanks to the Chamorro people of Guam for sharing their culture with us.
We also thank the anonymous readers for their helpful comments and the journals editorial staff. Alexandre
Coellos research has been conducted within the frameworks of AHCISP (Antropologia i Historia de la
Construccio dIdentitats Socials i Poltiques), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and GRIMSE (Grup de
Recerca en Imperis, Metropolis i Societats Extraeuropees), Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He wants to thank all
his colleagues in these two research groups for their comments and support.

ISSN 0022-3344 print; 1469-9605 online/12/04045915; Taylor & Francis

! 2012 The Journal of Pacific History Inc.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2012.743431
 460 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

and a sharp decrease in the fertility rate.1 Though Guams Chamorros became
US citizens after the passage of the 1950 Organic Act, Guam effectively remains
a US military outpost with no end to US domination in sight.2 Yet distinctive
Chamorro heritage and identity survive.3 This paper argues that death customs
serve as a vital means of integrating and regenerating Chamorro society and
perpetuating links in the present to the pre-colonial past.
Combining historical research with contemporary ethnography of funerals in
Guam, this paper also highlights the centrality of Chamorro women and female
symbolism in death customs. The leading role of women in these customs
resonates with their longstanding status, which in Guam was formerly supported
by ancient structures of matrilineality and matrifocality.4 Central too in funeral
practice today are devotions to the Virgin Mary. These preserve both traditions
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of heterodox Catholicism (such as worship of Our Lady of the Light, discussed

below) and ancestral Chamorro praxis. Whereas Chamorro men can appeal to
symbols of Indigenous warriorhood that mesh (sometimes ambivalently) with the
militarism of US rule,5 Chamorro women have found in Catholicism certain
domains of influence and continuity. These mesh with an identity discourse and
ritual practice distinct from the American regime and serve to recreate the
Chamorro social body despite the onslaughts of colonialism and death.6
This paper contributes to a growing literature that challenges narratives of
Chamorro demise.7 Jesuit historiography, for example, has generally perpetuated

1
See Shui-Liang Tung, The rapid fertility decline in Guam natives, Journal of Biosocial Science, 16:2 (1984),
23139. The fertility rate in Guam dropped from 3.9 births per woman in 2000 to 2.4 in 2011.
2
For an interesting analysis of the US Navys contradictions in propagating democracy while denying it to
the Chamorro people, see Penelope Bordallo Hofschneider, A Campaign for Political Rights on the Island of Guam
18991950 (Saipan 2001), 96. For a more recent study dealing with Chamorro nationalism and Guams self-
determination dilemma, see Frank Quimby, Fortress Guahan: Chamorro nationalism, regional economic
integration and US defence interests shape Guams recent history, The Journal of Pacific History, 46:3 (2011),
35780.
3
Guams Political Status Education Coordinating Commission (PSTC) asserts that the amalgamation of
Chamorro, Spanish, and American cultural traits does not preclude the existence of a specifically distinct
Chamorro heritage. See PSTC, Hale-ta: Hinasso: Tinige Put Chamorro Insights: the Chamorro identity (Hagatna
1993); PSTC, Hale-ta: I Ma Gobetna-na Guam Governing Guam: before and after the wars (Hagatna, 1994); PSTC,
Hale-ta: Kinalamten Pulitikat Sinenten i Chamorro Issues in Guams Political Development: the Chamorro perspective
(Hagatna 1996).
4
Laura Marie Torres Souder, Daughters of the Island: contemporary Chamorro women organizers on Guam (2nd edn,
Lanham 1992), 4377; Anne Perez Hattori, Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy health policies and the Chamorros of Guam,
18981941 (Honolulu 2004), 9293, 12123, 14748. For the widespread and distinctive importance of matriliny
in Micronesian societies, see Glenn Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies: adaptation, integration and political
organization (Honolulu 2009), 6869.
5
On the interrelated processes of masculinisation and militarisation among Guams Chamorro men in the
US armed forces, see Keith L. Camacho and Laurel A. Monnig, Uncomfortable fatigues: Chamorro soldiers,
gendered identities, and the question of decolonization in Guam, in Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho
(eds), Militarized Currents: toward a decolonized future in Asia and the Pacific (Minneapolis 2010), 14780.
6
Some of these conclusions were previously presented at a roundtable discussion in Guam. David Atienza,
Suicide in Guam: an anthropological view, paper presented at the Roundtable Meeting on Suicide in Guam,
Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores Catholic Theological Institute for Oceania, Yona, Guam, 30 Nov. 2010.
7
See Nicholas J. Goetzfridt, Guahan: a bibliographic history (Honolulu 2011), 35; Vicente M. Diaz, Simply
Chamorro: telling tales of demise and survival in Guam, in David Hanlon and Geoffrey M. White (eds),
Voyaging through the Contemporary Pacific (Lanham, MD 2004), 14170.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 461

narratives of utter conquest and successful evangelisation of the Mariana Islands,

dating from the arrival in 1668 of the Jesuit founder of the Spanish mission,
Diego Luis de San Vitores.8 The authors think otherwise. Rather than stressing
the acculturative forces of colonialism,9 this study corroborates the work of
several scholars who have emphasised the vital role played by Chamorro women
and female symbolism before and after Spanish contact.10 It adopts a theoretical
position well expressed by historian Vicente M. Diaz, who sees colonialism as an
ambivalent and fluid process, involving appropriation and creative syncretism on
the part of the colonised.11 Despite over three centuries of cross-cultural exchange
and ethnic mixing, Guam remains culturally a Chamorro society. By focusing on
death rituals and native Catholicism, this paper emphasises the ability of
Chamorro local traditions and identity to survive by adapting to cultural
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elements Hispanic, Filipino, and American from beyond their shores.

Death Rituals and the Construction of Chamorro Cultural Identity

Maurice Halbwachs famously stated that collective memory is a (selective)
reconstruction of the past.12 For people to form a collective identity distinct from
others around them, they must seek the natural and cultural attributes that can
distinguish them. These elements or feelings of self-imagery have to do with
collective memory, traditions and symbols that cannot simply be considered as
fetishised representations of the cultures they represent but rather are always
historical and ever-changing social alignments. To 21st-century Chamorros,
the past only makes sense when the historical deeds are chosen and interpreted
in response to contemporary priorities and agendas of the present.13
As Vicente M. Diaz points out, on Guam the cultural and political energies
keep oscillating between two opposite poles: while Western colonial policies
are openly rejected, at the same time certain apparently Western elements

8
See in particular Pedro Murillo Velarde, Historia de la provincia de Filipinas de la Compana de Jesus. Segunda
parte que comprende los progresos de esta provincia desde el ano de 1616 hasta el de 1716 (Manila 1749); Antonio Astrain,
Historia de la Compana de Jesus en la asistencia de Espana (Madrid 1925); Horacio de la Costa, The Jesuits in the
Philippines: 15811768 (Cambridge, MA 1989 [1961]); Francis X. Hezel, From Conquest to Colonization: Spain in the
Mariana Islands, 1690 to 1740 (Saipan 1989).
9
Vicente M. Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary: rewriting the histories of colonialism, native Catholicism and
indigeneity on Guam (Honolulu 2010), 8.
10
See fn. 4 above.
11
Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary, 89. For other scholars working with similar visions, see Hattori, Colonial
Dis-Ease and Keith L. Camacho, Cultures of Commemoration: the politics of war, memory, and history in the Mariana
Islands (Honolulu 2011). For a discussion of indigenous agency as distinct from indigenous resistance,
see Keith L. Camacho, The politics of indigenous collaboration: the role of Chamorro interpreters in Japans
Pacific empire, 191445, The Journal of Pacific History, 43:2 (2008), 20708.
12
Maurice Halbwachs, La memoire collective (Paris 1968).
13
Eric R. Wolf, Europa y la gente sin historia (Mexico City 1987), 46572; Tim Ingold, Key Debates in
Anthropology (London 1996), 199239.
 462 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

are upheld as quintessentially Chamorro.14 After the beatification in 1985 of

San Vitores, the Spanish Jesuit who founded the mission on the island in 1668,
Diaz also wondered: Whats up with that? Why, when the rest of colonized
Oceania is trying to decolonize itself, are Guams indigenous leaders and laity
celebrating the islands more conspicuous colonial figure?15 But to Diaz,
the historic and contemporary effort to canonise San Vitores can also be seen as
the final result of a mutual but unequal process of appropriations between the
Spanish (Catholic) colonisers and the Chamorro colonised a process through
which Chamorro identity has been repeatedly formed and re-formed.16 Death
customs can similarly be seen as part of this process of appropriation and
re-formation.
Maurice Bloch has stated that death is a challenge to the social order and
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funerary practices are ways of transcending individual death to maintain the

continuity of that order.17 Many anthropologists would agree. Even in societies
where life and death are considered stages of a continuous journey, there is some
recognition that a break, social disruption, or an ending has occurred.18 Funeral
practices can resolve this break by regenerating life, culture, and society at a
ritual level or, more precisely, as Metcalf and Huntington argue, by ordering
vitality.19 Thus, in Rene Girards words, every death gives rise to a unifying
phase of mourning, and every death, in society, becomes a major resource for
life.20 Unsurprisingly, women are normally associated with mourning practices
and their regenerative consequences in the wide sense of the power to reproduce,
whether people, plants or animals, or even more generally the community
in its symbolic form.21
Death customs are therefore of basic importance for cultural identity.
As Girard has argued, There is no culture without a tomb and no tomb
without a culture; in the end the tomb is the first and only cultural symbol.22
Fennel has defined tombs and funeral practices as core symbols that serve
within a culture to express fundamental elements of a groups cosmology and
sense of identity within the world.23 While we see this expressive and generative
14
Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary, 171. We have verified Diazs initial statement by passing out a survey to
more than sixty students at the University of Guam. Their responses showed this same ambiguous attitude
towards Spanish colonialism since Catholicism, brought by the Spaniards, is a key part of their identities.
15
Ibid., 4.
16
Vicente M. Diaz, Pious sites: Chamorro culture between Spanish Catholicism and American liberal
individualism, in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (eds), Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC
1993), 14144; Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary, 4.
17
Maurice Bloch, Death, women and power, in Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (eds), Death and the
Regeneration of Life (Cambridge, UK 1982), 218.
18
Katherine Dernbach, Spirits of the hereafter: death, funerary possession, and the afterlife in Chuuk,
Micronesia, Ethnology, 44:2 (2005), 120.
19
Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington, Celebrations of Death: the anthropology of mortuary ritual (Cambridge,
UK 1991), 610.
20
Rene Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Stanford 1987), 82.
21
Bloch, Death, women and power, 226.
22
Girard, Things Hidden, 83.
23
Christopher C. Fennell, Crossroads and Cosmologies: diasporas and ethnogenesis in the New World (Gainesville,
FL 2010), 7.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 463

capacity as crucial for societies under destructive exogenous influences,

Jay Dobbin has expressly excluded Guam and the Marianas from his study of
the traditional religions in Micronesia on the grounds that long-lasting Catholic
missionisation has stamped out most of the local religion.24 For us, however,
the deep aesthetic and symbolic similarity between Christian devotions and pre-
contact Chamorro beliefs and rituals concerning death facilitates a semiotic shift
and negotiation that, though difficult to unravel, have conserved pre-colonial
elements.
Chamorro families are now organised into ambilineal lines. They maintain a
clan structure oriented towards the extended family, although residence reflects
a nuclear pattern. The ancient matrilineal roots described by colonial accounts
and still in place in the rest of Micronesia evidently assimilated to the patrilineal
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customs imposed by the Spaniards.25 The result today is an apparent and legal
patrilineal structure but one in which the decision-making, especially regarding
family affairs, falls to women. The eldest woman in each family line takes
leadership in family affairs, especially concerning death and other life crises.
Thus women are responsible for generating and maintaining the Chamorro
communitys cohesiveness beyond and through the use of death.26
Death has always been intensely celebrated in the Mariana Islands. Before the
Jesuits arrival in 1668, the Capuchin friar Juan Pobre de Zamora (1602) wrote
about the burial of the dead and described the rituals accompanying the death
of the chief from the village of Atetito, today Teteto on the island of Rota. During
the deceaseds burial close to the house of his brother, the mourners had made a
great fiesta.27 Normally, two of the deceaseds female relatives, who are among
the oldest women of the village lay pieces of the tree bark or painted paper on
the body and begin singing and crying for many hours; the deceased is carried
away and buried in front of the most prestigious relatives house; and the
mourners return to the home of the deceased, where each one drinks from a
mortar filled with ground rice or with grated coconut mixed with water.28
In a report from Manila in 1676, which gathered information from the letters
of the first Jesuit missionaries in the Mariana Islands, Father Luis de Morales
(16411716), one of the first Jesuits who went to Guam with San Vitores,
recounted the post-mortem beliefs of the marianos, or inhabitants of the islands:
Specifically they say that the souls do not die but only the body; and after death
those souls who died a violent death were supposed to go up to a place high in the
sky, called Sarrasaguan, or the dwelling place of Chayfi, who heats them in a forge and

24
Jay Dobbin, Summoning the Powers Beyond: traditional religions in Micronesia (Honolulu 2011), 12.
25
For colonial accounts, see e.g. Francisco Garca, The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father Diego Luis de
San Vitores, of the Society of Jesus, First Apostle of the Mariana Islands, and Events of these Islands from the Year Sixteen
Hundred and Sixty-Eight through the Year Sixteen Hundred and Eighty-One (Mangilao, Guam 1968), 172; for
matrilineal systems in other parts of Micronesia, see Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies, 6869; for the
influence of Spanish law favouring patriliny, see Souder, Daughters of the Island, 5868.
26
See Bloch, Death, women and power, 21130.
27
Marjorie G. Driver, The Account of Fray Juan Pobres Residence in the Marianas, 1602 (Guam 1989), 23.
28
Ibid., 24.
 464 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

beats them incessantly. Those who died naturally, however, descended to a paradise
to enjoy the trees and other fruits on the earth.29
Good or evil conduct apparently had no influence in determining the destiny
of the soul. Father Morales also wrote:
Furthermore, according to them, it is neither virtue nor crime that leads them to
those places [pre-Christian hell or heaven]. Good or evil deeds are not useful for that.
All depends on the way they actually died [violent or natural].30
The Jesuit historian Father Charles Le Gobien, who drew upon observations by
Father Morales, described death rituals thus:
The mourning lasts seven or eight days, sometimes even longer . . . Mournful chants
and sessions of weeping go on all the time. Meals are consumed beside the tomb for
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a tomb is invariably raised on the spot where the body lies, or immediately beside
it . . . The grief of mothers who lost their infants is inconceivable . . . They have cords
or necklaces in which there are as many knots as nights have passed since the infants
death.31
In these descriptions, similarities with some elements of current Catholic
funerary practices in Guam can be discerned: the post-mortem destiny, the
length of mourning, the structure of ritual, the fiesta, and the rosary. These
similarities may seem to indicate that pre-Christian practices were influenced
by Catholic beliefs and rituals through cross-cultural interaction with Spanish
ships as well as with Spanish sailors who took residence in the Marianas during
the early years of the galleon trade.32 A closer analysis, however, may also suggest
a pre-Christian origin of these traditions since they share many structural
characteristics with other current non-Christian Malayo-Polynesian mortuary
rituals.33
In 1887, just a few years before the SpanishAmerican War (1898) and the
Crown of Spains loss of Guam, the French botanist Antoine-Alfred Marche
witnessed a case that stunned him. A 20-year-old Chamorro youth fell from a tree
and fractured his arm in the fall. Stating a lack of money, the family refused

29
Luis de Morales, Relacion de las empresas y sucesos espirituales y temporales de las islas Marianas,
que antes se llamaban Ladrones, desde el ano 1668 en que se introdujo la fe en ellas por los Jesuitas, Manila,
24 May 1676, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, cortes 567, bundle 10 9/2676, ff. 2r2v. The translation is
ours. See also Garca, The Life and Martyrdom, 173.
30
Luis de Morales, Historia de las islas Marianas, convertidas recientemente al cristianismo y de la muerte
gloriosa de los primeros misioneros que en ellas predicaron la fe, Arxiu Historic de la Companyia de Jesus a
Catalunya, Barcelona, FIL HIS 061, E.I, c-05/2/0, f. 38. The translation is ours. See also the first Spanish
edition of Luis de Morales and Charles Le Gobien, Historia de las islas Marianas, ed. Alexandre Coello (Madrid
2012), forthcoming.
31
Charles Le Gobien, quoted in Louis Claude Freycinet, An Account of the Corvettte LUranies Sojourn at the
Mariana Islands, 1819 (Saipan 2003), 141.
32
For some indication of these early trading and social relationships, see Frank Quimby, The hierro
commerce: culture contact, appropriation and colonial entanglement in the Marianas, 15211668, The Journal
of Pacific History, 46:1 (2011), 126.
33
For an analysis of Malayo-Polynesian mortuary rituals, see Peter Metcalf, A Borneo Journey into Death:
Berawan eschatology from its rituals (Philadelphia 1982).
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 465

to call the doctor, and the youth died eight days later of septicaemia. At the
funeral, Marche was amazed at the pomp:
The family, who had no money for a doctor and for medicine, had a high mass as
well as other ceremonies, so that the expenses at the church cost approximately
seventy-five francs, and, after the religious ceremony, the family invited friends and
acquaintances to a chinchouli which cost fifty francs. With half that amount of money,
the sons life could have been attended to and saved; but though money is found for
any kind of revelry, there is none to pay for a doctor and necessary care.34
Perhaps Marche did not appreciate the crucial validation and workings
of inafamaolek or reciprocation within the extended family in these rituals or
the funerals generative nature.
On Guam, Catholicism and especially Catholic baptisms and funerals play
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a central role in Chamorro families, which are identified as sanctuaries

of traditional culture, and also provide a basis for collective identity. Catholic
religious practice may well have been reinforced as a feature culturally
differentiating Chamorros from people on Guam identified as Japanese,
German, or American, particularly from the commencement of the US naval
administration in 1898 and during Japanese occupation in World War II.35
Catholicism, specifically devotion to the Virgin Mary through saying the lisayo
(rosary), continues to underpin Chamorro identity.
San Vitoress establishment of the first permanent mission on Guam in 1668
heralded a radical rupture in the post-mortem fate of the islanders souls.
Baptism was a controversial rite in the early years of colonial occupation to the
extent that San Vitoress martyrdom in 1672 by Chamorro chief Matapang
(assisted by fellow chief Hirao) was the result of the Jesuit priests determination
to baptise the Chamorros newborn against the fathers will.36 In those turbulent
times of evangelisation, martyrdom, disputation, and repression,37 the symbolism
of baptism was especially charged. For the Jesuits, probably inflamed by fervour
for Saint Francis Xavier, whose life and works had been published, baptism
became the main objective.38 The souls of the baptised dead reached Christian
heaven, while those who had not received this sacrament were destined to an
34
Alfred Marche, The Mariana Islands, ed. Robert D. Craig, tr. Sylvia E. Cheng (Guam 1982), 8.
35
Although Japanese occupiers sought to impose on Chamorros worship of the emperor of Japan, the
longer history of Christianisation on Guam than in the South Sea Islands mandate made the Japanese recognise
the difficulty of replacing religion with a political ideology and the figure of Jesus with that of the Japanese
Emperor. Wakako Higuchi, The Japanisation policy for the Chamorros of Guam, 19411944, The Journal of
Pacific History, 36:1 (2001), 26.
36
The martyrdom of San Vitores was triggered by this difference over baptism but has to be read in a wider
cultural, sociological, and political perspective. See Lawrence J. Cunningham, Pre-Christian Chamorro
courtship and marriage practices clash with Jesuit teaching, in Lee D. Carter, William L. Wuerch, and Rosa
Robert Carter (eds), Guam History: perspectives, 2 vols (Mangilao, Guam 1997), II, 6080; Garca, The Life and
Martyrdom, 25156.
37
Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Colonialismo y santidad en las islas Marianas: los soldados de Gedeon
(16761690), Hispania, 70:234 (2010), 1744; Francis X. Hezel, From conversion to conquest: the early
Spanish mission in the Marianas, The Journal of Pacific History, 17:3 (1982), 11537.
38
Orazio Torsellino, De vita Francisci Xaverii, qui primus e Societate Iesu in India, & Iaponia Euangelium
promulgauit (Rome 1594); Orazio Torsellino, Vit S. Francisci Xaverii: qui primus e Societate Jesu in Indiam &
Japoniam evangelium invexit, libri sex (Cadomi [Caen] 1677).
 466 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

uncertain fate. Chamorros associated these non-Christian souls with the mananiti
(spirits). In Chamorro thinking, these were potentially malign, while the earliest
missionaries likened them to the devil; yet for Chamorros later they became
taotaomona or spirits of the ancestors.39 After the Christianisation and pacification
of Guam, all persons without exception were baptised and could thus attain
the promise of Christian heaven. These historical circumstances support our
ethnographic observations,40 from which we conclude that today many
Chamorros can believe, so to speak, in two fates after death: one earthly on
the island itself and another celestial, secured through baptism, properly saying
the novena (a series of prayers over nine days), and performing a Catholic
funeral.
The earthly destination is located in isolated and pristine parts of Guams
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jungle. Here live the souls of the ancestors, the taotaomona, who have become the
emblem of an authentic and unpolluted pre-colonial identity. The taotaomona
are no longer feared or feared so much; rather, they are respected as ancestors
and images of a utopian past. Today, encounters with these spirits are frequent
and innocuous as long as the taotaomona are treated with the respect they deserve.
The second destination is Catholic heaven or langet, ensured through baptism,
funerals, and novenas, the latter invoking the failsafe intervention of the Virgin
Mary. The survival of Chamorro identity as handled by the female manamko
(elders) in each line is reflected in the structure of funerals and the socio-cultural
function they serve. The symbolic force of death has not diminished in Guam
over the past century; if anything, it has been enhanced. Though speaking of the
more northerly island of Saipan in the Mariana chain, Luis Camacho, almost 60
years old, recalls how in his youth the funerals lasted barely three days.41 The
technological possibility of keeping the corpse well preserved has facilitated the
integration of the novena before the burial, thus lengthening the pre-burial
funeral celebrations by almost another week. These novenas were traditionally
celebrated either in honour of a familys patron saint42 or after the burial of a
deceased person. Lilli Iyechad highlights World War II and its catastrophic
consequences for the people of Guam as a turning point, after which the
celebration of death became more prominent.43 Other factors, however, have
also contributed: the massive diaspora of Chamorro to the US in recent years
requires that the burial be postponed as long as possible in order to allow the
transoceanic family members to attend; technological improvements have made
39
Department of Chamorro Affairs, Division of Research, Publication, and Training, The Official Chamorro-
English Dictionary Ufisiat Na Diksionarion Chamorro-Engles (Hagatna, Guam 2009), 21. The lexical change to
taotaomona as spirits of the people of before (ibid., 364) might have taken place to avoid this symbolic load
while keeping the pre-Spanish ancestor worship alive.
40
David Atienza has lived in Guam since 2006 and has performed intermittent ethnographic studies since
then.
41
Luis Camacho, pers. comm., May 2010.
42
Georg Fritz, The Chamorro: a history and ethnography of the Marianas, ed. Scott Russell, tr. Elfriede Craddock
(Saipan 1989), 51.
43
Lilli Perez Iyechad, An Historical Perspective of Helping Practices Associated with Birth, Marriage, and Death
Among Chamorros in Guam (New York 2001), 135.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 467

it possible to preserve the corpse in refrigerated chambers; families higher

purchasing power and access to foodstuffs have improved the redistribution
system and boosted the pageantry; and, most important of all, the Catholic
funeral is a source of identity and agency, its very structure continuously re-
semanticising and regenerating the Chamorro social body. Consequently, it is
important briefly to describe contemporary funeral rituals among the Chamorro.

Contemporary Funeral Practices

Where possible, funeral rituals commence in the last few days of life, during the
chaflek or agony. If the death is predictable, contact with family members
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begins, especially with those living in the US, who will need time to prepare for
their trip to the island in order to participate in the requisite rosaries and the
burial. It is at this time prior to death when the soul of the deceased may visit
family members to bid them farewell, especially those living in faraway lands,
thus strengthening the ties across the diaspora. Even today on Guam, one can
hear many stories about apparitions of the dead person and visits to close
family members grandchildren, cousins or siblings in the hours prior to or
just after death.
The death is experienced firsthand in a calm way. Family members and
friends are allowed to enter the hospital rooms or intensive care units with hardly
any restrictions. After the death, a temporary funeral chapel is opened in the
hospital itself, where the body remains until it is moved to refrigerated chambers.
There it will remain until the burial nine days later. Now the entire system is
set into motion: preparations, phone calls, and calculations of expenses.
Kinship networks are mobilised. The first novena begins the next day or two
days later.
In order to activate the redistribution system, an obituary is published in the
local newspaper the Pacific Daily News or the Marianas Variety. The obituaries
occupy one-quarter page, one-half page, or an entire page and are sometimes run
in full colour. The text accompanying the photograph of the deceased person
states his or her surname, the names of all blood relations (alive and dead),
in-laws, or family members to a third degree of affinity, and the venue where
the novena will be held. These obituaries are placed in the middle pages of the
newspaper since it is extremely important, especially for the older women,
to consult the deaths periodically in order to determine whether one of the
deceased or his or her direct family members attended the funeral of the older
womens own relatives. If so, these women are then obligated to go and help
at the funeral.
The novenas revolve around two main elements: a rosary and a meal. Two
novenas are held: one publicly before the burial and a second more privately
after. For nine days, the family and friends gather together mid-morning and late
afternoon to say the rosary in the deceased persons church or home. The techa
(prayer leader), usually one of the senior female prayer leaders of the familia or,
 468 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

failing that, a professional techa from the parish, who is offered a small stipend
at the end of the funeral rites says the rosary in English or Chamorro.44
She seems to be a repository of local knowledge that has been assimilated by the
Catholic Church.
The Marian devotion of saying the rosary is essential for salvation among
the Chamorro. Many Chamorro tacitly believe that none of them will go to hell
as long as their family properly says the rosary at the moment of their death.
The individual conversion of the dead person matters less than the salvation
attained by ritual attitudes and collective devotions; even a recalcitrant murderer
might reach heaven if the rosaries needed are offered up to the Virgin.
Hell unquestionably exists, but Chamorro tend not to go there, except in cases
of serious crimes or transgressions.
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A spectacular meal is always served after the rosary, usually at the deceased
persons home, the home of his or her elder sister, or at another suitable venue
in the parish. When the rosary falls on a Sunday or on the third and on the ninth
days after the burial, the meal is particularly copious. On the days of the novena,
many family members and friends will have to stop by to be seen (aannok) and
join the closer family members in their mourning. It is crucial for there always
to be a great deal of food, something that the in-laws must ensure.
The deceased is buried after the last day (finakpo) of the first novena. This
time, the rosary and mass are held in the presence of the corpse. Similarly,
a presbytery in the church is used to confer the last rites and say the mass with the
body present. For the entire morning, the body of the deceased is visible and
uncovered, and the casket is not closed until the end of the funeral mass, when it
is transported to the cemetery. During the wake, everyone in attendance
approaches the dead person and touches him or her; some kiss the body, and all
say a brief prayer in silence. After blessing themselves, they move on. The closest
family members sit in the first few rows of the church in front of the casket.
A small wooden box shaped like a traditional house, the ika or chenchule,45 is
placed not very far from the family. The ika is one of the most characteristic,
interesting features of funeral rites in Guam. Here guests can place their
contributions after greeting the direct relatives of the deceased and thus being
seen. At the end of the mass with the body present, the casket is closed. At this
moment and at the final burial of the deceased, the most heartrending displays
of grief are expressed.
One element of great interest is the spatial localisation and organisation of
the cemeteries in Guam. The majority are located close to the shorelines, and the
graves are normally oriented with the feet towards the ocean and the head to
the interior. Adrian Cruz,46 Chamorro mortician from Guam, mentioned that,
44
Lilli Perez Iyechad, Reciprocity, reunification, and reverence among grieving Chamorros in Guam: an
ethnographic history of death rituals, in Carter, Wuerch, and Carter, Guam History, 268.
45
Ika refers to a monetary contribution. Donald M. Topping, Pedro M. Ogo, and Bernadita C. Dungca
(eds), ChamorroEnglish Dictionary (Honolulu 1975), 94. Chenchule is a more general term that includes non-
monetary contributions such as physical assistance or food. The Official ChamorroEnglish Dictionary, 72.
46
Adrian Cruz, pers. comm., Mar. 2012.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 469

not long ago, those who committed suicide were buried with their feet oriented to
the interior. Jose Q. Cruz has analysed the traditional rituals associated with
miscarried babies in the Marianas and has found that many of them, since they
have not been baptised, are still buried under the pillars of the houses (haligi),
under the shadow of the roof (maktan), or under the stairs of the house (guaot).47
These present-day burial practices connect directly with pre-Christian traditions.
The post-burial novena begins on the day following interment. This novena
is more family-oriented and intimate. Only the closest family members attend
the rosary, which this time takes place in the house of the widow(er) or, in their
absence, the older sister, older daughter, or mother of the deceased. Any possible
economic, inheritance, or other problems that might have remained pending
during the persons lifetime are resolved on these days. This is also the time to
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review the chenchule and carefully to note down who contributed how much.
These tabulations are entered into a notebook, and all the adults share the
information since, just as they received the ika, they will have to religiously
return it. This reciprocity is rigorously observed; failure to observe it would mean
expulsion from the system and would signal an enormous lack of respect. For this
reason, obituaries must provide precise information on the deceased persons
lineage or family. This information is vital for keeping the system of reciprocity
and redistribution alive. Attendance at the funerals of people who participated
in the funerals of ones own family members is compulsory, as is a monetary
contribution equal to or greater than the one received.
The funeral rites conclude one year after the burial with an anniversary
novena that closes the cycle of becoming dead and ensures that the deceased
person has entered heaven, from our point of view a vestige of the pre-Christian
secondary treatments.48 During this period, the widowed woman tends to wear
black, a colour not removed until the anniversary of the funeral rites is
celebrated. Often anniversaries are also celebrated ten and twenty years after the
fact, although usually only close family members and friends attend them.

Coda: The Virgin of Our Lady of Light

The pre-Christian centrality of women to Chamorro death rituals and what Diaz
calls a powerful tradition of motherhood converged with Catholic Marian
devotion.49 Prior to contact with the Spaniards, Chamorro religiosity was
primarily organised around ancestor worship.50 This worship transformed and
assumed Marian imagery and symbolism, thus conveying multiple meanings

47
Jose Q. Cruz, Rituals of continuity for miscarried babies, paper presented at the 33rd Annual Research
Conference of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, University of Guam, 13 Mar. 2012.
48
For an interesting parallel in Chuuk, Micronesia, see Katherine Dernbach, Spirits of the hereafter, 100.
Concerning the secondary burial among the Berawan, a Malayo-Polynesian culture, see Metcalf and
Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 79107.
49
Diaz, Pious sites, 163; cf. Anne Perez Hattori, Colonial Dis-Ease, 12225.
50
This was a general characteristic of Micronesian religion. Dobbin, Summoning the Powers Beyond, 1516.
 470 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

beyond the Churchs control.51 The female manamko of the family, in their
management of life crises and the regeneration of social ties, have created for
their people a flexible yet steadfast identity like palm trees in a typhoon. The
Virgin Mary, in the form of Guams patron saint, Santa Marian Kamalen
known as nurturing mother and Protectress of Guamanian children52 is in
a sense first among manamko. As Jorgensen has pointed out, she appears as
Guams key symbol of Chamorro Catholic faith and culture.53 In embracing
pre-colonial continuities, Santa Marian Kamalen has, in a sense, helped
Chamorro reproduce a cultural core throughout colonial history.54 When
Diego Luis de San Vitores dedicated the first church in Guam to the Virgin
Mary in 1669 Dulce Nombre de Mara (Sweet Name of Mary) he effectively
mediated between Chamorro and the Blessed Mother and marked the early
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stages of a syncretic process through which an identity in danger of extinction

has survived.55
More specifically, the crucial roles and symbolism of women in Chamorro
culture interlocked with the cult of Our Lady of the Light a cult that imputed
even greater power to the Virgin Mary.56 The worship of Our Lady of Light goes
back to the 18th century. In 1722, a very devout woman born in Palermo, Italy,
had a vision of the Virgin holding the soul of a man about to be devoured by
a leviathan in Hell.57 She quickly shared her vision with a Jesuit named Giuseppe
Maria Genovesi (16811757), who commissioned an anonymous painter
to capture the image on canvas. It showed angels crowning the Virgin Mary
as the Queen of Heaven. In keeping with the iconography of the Immaculate
Conception, she was dressed in a white tunic, an enamelled sash at her waist and
a blue mantle symbolising her purity and chastity. While her right hand held the

51
A further insight into the contemporary importance of honouring ancestors is offered in Anne Perez
Hattoris account of how Senator Antonio (Tony) R. Unpingco integrated a photograph of his long-lost
grandfather, which Hattori discovered in a medical journal, into family observances; see Anne Perez Hattori,
Re-membering the past: photography, leprosy and the Chamorros of Guam, 18981924, The Journal of Pacific
History, 46:3 (2011), 293318.
52
Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary, 185.
53
Marilyn Anne Jorgensen, Expressive manifestations of Santa Marian Camalin as key symbol in
Guamanian culture, PhD thesis, University of Texas at Austin (Austin 1984), 124.
54
Chamorro scholar Keith Camacho points out how Chamorro views of God and the Virgin Mary assisted
Chamorros in making sense of the war. Keith L. Camacho, Cultures of Commemoration: the politics of war, memory,
and history in the Mariana Islands (Honolulu 2011), 89.
55
Diaz, Repositioning the Missionary, 17576. Modern historiography acknowledges a direct linkage between
the cult of Santa Marian Kamalen and a statue brought by Father San Vitores. This image is commonly
associated with the church of the Dulce Nombre de Maria, which, together with the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception, has become linked with the present-day Basilica as the direct descendant of the modest San Juan
de Letran chapel built by San Vitores in San Ignacio de Agana in 1668. Jorgensen, Expressive Manifestations,
2122.
56
Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Lights and shadows: the inquisitorial process against the Jesuit
Congregation of Nuestra Senora de la Luz on the Mariana Islands (17581776), Journal of Religious History
(forthcoming).
57
Norman Neuerburg holds that the claim that this woman was a nun is inaccurate. Norman Neuerburg,
La Madre Santsima de la Luz, Journal of San Diego History, 41:2 (1995), n. 11, available online at https://
www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/95spring/laluz.htm, accessed February 2010.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 471

soul about to fall into the monsters jaws, in her left an Infant Jesus held a
burning heart, the symbol of Gods charity and love.58
On 2 July 1732, this painting left Italy and was brought to the hospice at the
Villa de Leon in the bishopric of Michoacan in New Spain.59 It was later
relocated to the cathedral church, whereupon its worship extended beyond the
limits of the parish. Not only were copies made of the Most Holy Mother
of Light, but books, novenaries, devotional texts, and papers were published,
which spread all around New Spain (Mexico City, Santa Fe, Puebla, Zacatecas)
and the Philippines (17501760s). Significantly, the Jesuits were not the only
order to adopt this particular Marian devotion; the Dominicans did so in 1734,
and the Franciscans on the border missions from Texas (1756) to the Sierra
Gorda de Queretaro (1760s), including Chihuahua and Upper California
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(1770s), also did so. There several military churches and congregations were
founded in her honour.60
The cult of Our Lady Mother of Light contributed to social cohesiveness and
continuity in the Mexican communities, especially those around the Marian
Congregations founded close to the Jesuit Colleges in New Spain.61 Despite the
popular fervour, however, her worship was soon questioned by church
authorities. They deemed it inappropriate that the Virgin act directly as a
saviour instead of mediating between the worshipper and her son Jesus, who with
God is the only source of salvation. That powers of direct intercession were
attributed to Our Lady of Light has been argued by Neuerburg from a reading of
the 1737 Spanish translation that recounts the creation of the original painting:
the Virgin not only holds the soul, preventing it from falling into hell, but also
helps it leave the inferno.62 This aspect of salvation in the worship of Our Lady of
Light was already present in some Jesuit works that were widely disseminated
in Europe and Mexico, such as El infierno abierto (1701) by Pablo Seneri, which
also reached the Mariana Islands.63 In order to avoid eternal condemnation,

58
Jose de Tobar, Invocacion de Nuestra Senora con el ttulo de Madre Santsima de la Luz (Madrid 1751), cited in
Enrique Gimenez Lopez, La devocion a la Madre Santsima de la Luz: un aspecto de la represion del jesuitismo en
la Espana de Carlos III, in Enrique Gimenez Lopez (ed.), Expulsion y exilio de los jesuitas espanoles (Alicante
1997), 214.
59
As William B. Taylor points out, why the Italians would have let the painting leave the country is one of
many silences in the streamlined legendary account of La devocion de Mara Madre Santsima de la Luz. William B.
Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: religious life in Mexico before the Reforma (Albuquerque 2010), 60.
60
Neuerburg, La Madre Santsima de la Luz.
61
J. Carlos Vizuete Mendoza, En las fronteras de la ortodoxia. La devocion a la Virgen de la Luz (Madre
Santsima de la Luz) en Nueva Espana, in Ricarado Izquierdo Benito and Fernando Martnez Gil (eds),
Religion y heterodoxias en el mundo hispanico, siglos XIVXVIII (Madrid 2011), 256, 267.
62
Giovanni Antonio Genovesi, La Devocion de Mara Madre Santsima de la Luz (1737), cited in Neuerburg,
La Madre Santsima de la Luz; note 10. See also Gimenez Lopez, La devocion a la Madre Santsima, 214.
63
Pablo Seneri, El infierno abierto, para que le halle el Christiano cerrado (Valencia 1701). Seneris work was also
associated with the popularisation of imagery of hell. See Abraham Villavicencio, Suplicios eternos: El
infierno abierto del cristiano de Pablo Seneri, SJ, in Alexandre Coello de la Rosa and Teodoro Hampe
Martinez (eds), Escritura, imaginacion politica y la Compana de Jesus (siglos XVIXVIII) (Barcelona 2011),
185209. Significantly, a copy of Seneris book was found in the inventory of worldly goods conducted at one of
the Jesuits homes in the province of Merizo, Guam. Arxiu Historic de la Companyia de Jesus a Catalunya,
Barcelona, FIL EXP. 01, E.I d. 01, f. 127.
 472 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY

one had to call upon first the Holy Spirit but also the Virgin Mary as the
Queen of Angels and Helper of Christians.
In 1758, the Jesuit Father Franz Reittemberger founded the Congregation of
Our Lady of Light in San Ignacio de Agana (todays Hagatna). The power
of the Virgin Mary to forgive sins fuelled her popularity as a patron saint and
Mother Redeemer among the mestizu population (indigenous Chamorro of mixed
descent) in the Mariana Islands.64 Not surprisingly, following the expulsion of
the Jesuits from the Marianas in 1769 and the banning of Our Lady of Light by
the Fourth Provincial Council of Mexico in 1771, her worship nearly disappeared
in the Mariana Islands.65 Traces of the presence of Sainan Ina (Our Lady
Mother of Light) remain on the island of Rota, now part of the Northern
Marianas.66 Some of its unique features, particularly her own mediating role,
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also became integrated into the worship of Guams patron saint, Santa Marian
Kamalen.

CHAMORRO TRADITION HAS to be considered in a general sense as a syncretic

and dynamic culture, with Catholic prayers intertwining, interacting with and
layering on top of Chamorro rituals. Catholicism is unquestionably an essential
part of traditional Chamorro society to the point that they are two parts of the
same whole.67 Despite 112 years of American rule, which was accompanied by
Protestant missionary activity and on occasion some tension with Spanish
Catholicism, one of the most prominent features of Chamorro identity remains
Catholicism.68 Ninety-eight per cent of the Chamorro population of Guam and
the Northern Marianas Islands still define themselves today as practising
Catholics.69 As we have demonstrated, funerals are important because they
are key moments that trigger the reciprocity system, the inafamaolek practices.
As is well known, Pacific societies generally revolve around networks of
reciprocity, and for Chamorros, death rituals are the main events at which
reciprocity is enacted. If funerals are very much about life and about revitalising

64
One legacy of colonisation on Guam is mixed heritage. For an understanding of the distinction in the
vernacular between mestizo (which is the term for the product of Euro-American forms of mixing) and mestizu,
see Laurel Monnigs, Proving Chamorro: Indigenous narratives of race, identity, and decolonization in
Guam, PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana-Champaign 2007), 2728; 15063.
65
Coello, Lights and Shadows. The Jesuits did not return to Micronesia until 1921, a year before the
Japanese occupied Pohnpei. Teresa del Valle, Approaching missionary activity in Micronesia as a genderized
phenomenon, in Beatriz Moral (ed.), Micronesia, visiones desde Europa (Madrid 2004), 10203.
66
Don A. Farrell, Rota (Tinian 2004), 27.
67
Robert G. Underwood, The practice of identity for the Chamorro people: the challenge of
Hispanicization, in Miguel Luque Talavan, Juan Jose Pacheco Onrubia, and Fernando Palanco (eds), 1898,
Espana y el Pacfico: interpretacion del pasado, realidad del presente (Valladolid 1999), 53334.
68
On 19 July 1900, Captain Leary was relieved as governor and naval station command by Commander
Seaton Schroeder. Leary took several measures against the Catholic church on Guam and Schroeder abolished
the Spanish ecclesiastical tribunals. Robert F. Rogers, Destinys Landfall: a history of Guam (rev. edn, Honolulu
2011), 123. Despite these policies, Roman Catholicism became an abiding spiritual heritage of the people of the
Marianas. Ibid. 106.
69
Jonathan Blas Diaz, Towards a Theology of the Chamoru (Quezon City 2010), 163.
 DEATH RITUALS AND IDENTITY 473

the reciprocal bonds between the living, then ancient Chamorro practices and
beliefs are still alive.
However ambivalent this tradition may seem, Chamorro history and culture
cannot be regarded as static and immobile but drawing, rather, on a perpetual
process of hybridity and flux regardless of geographical location, birthplace or
migrant patterns.70 Chamorros not only resisted the onslaught of colonialism,
but they also have defined themselves as a hybrid people who benefited
from cross-cultural encounters with many oceanic foreigners, including the
Jesuit missionaries. For Jesuit historians, the evangelisation of the Marianas was
about the heroic effort to convert the Chamorro heathens to Christianity,
emphasising the demise of Chamorro cultural agency. Against this canonical
understanding, we concur with the approach taken by Vicente M. Diaz and
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other scholars who conceive colonialism as an ambivalent and dynamic process

on the part of the coloniser and the colonised. As Diaz points out, Chamorro
history and culture need not be understood in terms of an immutably bounded,
neatly contained thing that was once upon a time characterised by essential
qualities, pure and untainted, as they had (a)historically been conceived and
represented. On the contrary, they have to be viewed as contested sites on
which identities and communities are built and destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed,
in highly charged ways.71

70
Michael P. Perez, Chamorro ambivalence and diaspora: beyond U.S. racial formations, in Lan-Hung
Nora Chiang, John Lidstone, and Rebecca A. Stephenson (eds), Global Processes, Local Impacts: the effects of
globalization in the Pacific-Asia region (Mangilao, Guam 2003), 40.
71
Diaz, Simply Chamorro, 143.