“Having Connections––Roots of the Pare Pare System on Guam” seeks to explore the historical roots of the ‘pare pare system’ on Guam, an island in the Marianas Archipelago inhabited by the indigenous CHamoru people. Since 1898, Guam has been an American territory; in 1950, after the passage of the Organic Act, it gained status as an unincorporated territory of the United States.
The ‘pare pare system’ is a Guamanian term referring to systemic corruption in the island’s government and bureaucracy. The term primarily refers to systemic and normalized nepotism, as the popular perception on Guam is that its local government (‘GovGuam’) is dominated by elite families and their friends, but can also refer to the widespread financial corruption and personality politics on the island. On Guam, the term ‘pare pare’ is thrown around very liberally, especially surrounding local politics, but no in-depth academic paper has thus far explored the topic or even used the term until this one. This research project will make the following argument: the conditions for the Pare Pare system were set from 1898 to 1950, when the U.S. Navy directly ruled over Guam, as colonial policies repressed the education and power of the commoner CHamoru class. When Guam gained civilian rule in 1950, this meant that a power vacuum opened up for an opportunistic local elite to quickly take over Guam’s local institutions, taking advantage of unclear, lax American laws that paralyzed clear policy enforcement on the unincorporated territory.