Translating Historical Distances
"Translating the Garrido Manuscript"
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Marianas Variety
3/26/14
This Thursday, March 27 a very special
presentation will be held at the University of Guam and titled “The Garrido
Manuscript: A Unique Glimpse of the Chamorro Language in 1798.” The public is
invited to come and learn about the translation of the oldest document known
written in the Chamorro language, from 1798, more than 200 years ago. The
presentation will begin at 6 pm and take place in the College of Liberal Arts
and Social Sciences Lecture Hall at UOG. This presentation is sponsored by the
Micronesia Area Research Center and the Chamorro Studies Program.
Dr. Carlos Madrid, a research associate at MARC
has spearheaded the project with essential assistance from Jeremy Cepeda, a
Chamorro teacher at Simon Sanchez. Lenoard Iriarte from I Fanlalai’an Oral
History Project, Pale’ Eric Forbes, Rosa Palomo from the Micronesian Language
Institute and myself also assisted in various ways with the translation and
interpretation.
The background of the document is interesting
in and of itself. In 1798, Manuel Garrido a Chamorro who worked for the Spanish
Government of the Marianas was asked to translate into Chamorro an official
proclamation from the Spanish Crown. Spanish and Filipino soldiers had repelled
an attack by British ships in Zamboanga, Mindanao and this proclamation was
meant to congratulate them for their great deeds in defense of the Spanish
Empire.
The document was occasionally incomplete with
the wear and tear of two centuries obscuring parts. The handwriting and
spelling of Garrido presented its own challenges, as in some places the style
and choices of the translator made it difficult to determine what would be the
proper way to pronounce this word. Garrido was using a Spanish way of writing
to give life to Chamorro on the page and it is interesting to see the choices
he made and some things he invented in order to pull this off.
Translating the manuscript required working in
three languages. Carlos Madrid took the complete Spanish account and provided
an English translation of it. This English translation was important in terms
of helping decipher the Chamorro, especially in cases where Garrido used words
that were not familiar to Chamorros today. By working in this trilingual
context, the team was able to develop theories as to what certain unknown words
might mean. The chance to peer into the mind of a Chamorro 200 years ago, and
the way that he would take one universe of meaning (Spanish) and transfer it
into another universe (Chamorro), is definitely something you don’t want to
miss.
The Spanish period of Guam’s history lasts for
several centuries, but is not given much historical attention. As the Spanish
are “so two colonizers ago” the legacy of their influence is something no one
can deny, but people still aren’t sure how to reconcile with the politics of
the present. The Spanish had an impact, everyone knows that, but do we
determine their impact to be positive or negative? Do we look at it as a time
drenched in nostalgia? Or as a time of oppression and lack of freedom? Even if
we know things are more complicated than this, there is always a pull to
articulate the past as one or the other, to try to keep things simple.
What I detest about the way this period is
generally written of, is that Chamorros barely factor into their own history.
Most historians write of this time as a changing of Governors, the heroic work
of Spanish priests, and the Chamorro people are mindless extras that move from
one scene to the other, without any clear will of their own. For those of you
who don’t know Carlos Madrid, this is for me, why his work is of the utmost
importance to the study of history and Chamorro culture in the Marianas
Islands. He is not like many other historians who simply write around Chamorros
during the Spanish period, he has attempted in this project and in others, to
try to find the Chamorro experience, the Chamorro voice in a time of
colonization and difficult religious, political and social changes.
For example his book “Beyond Distances”
chronicles the stories of political prisoners from Spain and the Philippines in
Guam during the second half of the 19th century. This is something
most histories of Guam cover, however most histories of Guam implicitly or
explicitly argue that the presence of thousands of revolutionaries and
reformers on Guam at a time when the Spanish Empire was going through an
identity crisis had little to no effect on Chamorros, and that they just went
on with their lives. Carlos shows through events from that period that
Chamorros were clearly affected by the reforming rhetoric of the time and found
their own ways of protesting the abuses of the Spanish Empire in their part of
the world. For example Luis Baza, sued and successfully ousted a Spanish
Governor, while Jose Salas actually assassinated a Spanish Governor. Carlos’ work shows that during this crucial
period of Guam history, Chamorros were not mere bystanders, but actors, who
could understand what was happening around them and found ways to express
themselves or change their island for the better.
Carlos Madrid will soon be leaving island for
an exciting job in the Philippines. We have been lucky to have him here for the
past few years to help us gain new insight into the Spanish period of Guam
History.
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