Guam

Guam is an island in the western Pacific, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands, in Micronesia. An unincorporated territory of the United States, whose people are US citizens, it is the westernmost point of American territory, hence its motto: "where America's day begins". About 170,000 people live there, around the capital, Hagåtña. The Chamorro, the Indigenous Austronesian people, form its core, along with Filipinos and other communities from the Pacific and Asia. The island holds a strategic position and houses huge American military bases.

Guam is a tropical island of contrasting landscapes. The north is a raised limestone plateau edged with cliffs; the older, volcanic south has green hills, rivers and waterfalls. All around, a coral reef encloses lagoons and beaches such as Tumon Bay, where most of the tourism is. The climate is tropical, hot and humid all year, and the island is exposed to sometimes violent typhoons. Military bases take up a large part of the island.

Settled more than three thousand years ago by the ancestors of the Chamorro, Austronesian seafarers, Guam saw Magellan pass in 1521, the first Pacific land he reached on his voyage around the world. Spain colonised and converted it from 1668; war and epidemics devastated the Chamorro population, which rebuilt itself through intermarriage. In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Guam to the United States. During the Second World War the island was occupied by Japan, then retaken by the Americans in 1944 after hard fighting. It has been a major US military base ever since, and the Chamorro continue to press for recognition of their people and identity.

In Guam, English is the official and common language, alongside Chamorro, the Austronesian language of the Indigenous people, long discouraged and now undergoing a revival. The island is overwhelmingly Catholic, a deep legacy of Spanish rule: faith is central to Chamorro life, with its parishes and village fiestas for patron saints. This Catholicism sits alongside respect for the ancestors, the taotaomo'na, spirits of the old ones, in a society where the extended family matters a great deal.

Guam's culture is that of the Chamorro people, Austronesian, with Spanish, Filipino and American influences. Its central value is inafa'maolek, harmony and mutual help within the community, along with respect for elders. Outrigger canoe voyaging, long forgotten, is being revived, as are Chamorro dances, songs and weaving; big village fiestas bring everyone together for huge meals. People eat kelaguen (meat or fish with lemon and coconut), red rice coloured with achiote, barbecue and kadon pika, a spicy stew.