History and Identity in the Mariana Islands
Narratives and Tropes of the Seventeenth Century Encounter By David Atienza Associate Professor in Anthropology University of Guam Abstract: We narrate identities, so they require verb tense and historical contexts where the plot occurs and develops. Like liquid in a container, every story adapts to the main ideological structures of its contemporary historical context. Therefore, speaking about identities is speaking about ideology, history, and the novel. This presentation analyzes some "historical tropes" developed in the last decades that strongly influenced the construction of identities in the Mariana Islands. These tropes had affected the interpretation of the encounter between CHamoru/Chamorro and non-CHamoru people in the Seventeenth Century, and therefore the self-construction of identities.
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