ABSTRACT
Guam’s prewar history under US naval colonial rule, what the Navy dubbed as the ‘long road to rehabilitation,’ was comprised of or constituted through public health, public works and public education. The Navy targeted the pattera, many of whom doubled as suruhåna and who relied on Chamorro medicine and massage to treat women during different life cycles, because they were directly responsible for ‘delivering the body,’ literally and discursively. The Navy’s long-term vision was that the younger and more ‘adaptable’ and pliable cohort of nurse-midwives would replace their older kin and predecessors, and hence, the US Navy recruited and trained the younger recruits precisely to ‘incapacitate’ or render obsolete their older predecessors. The pattera articulation of health and progress, building upon their records of success and Chamorro families’ trust and confidence in them, also provided the grounds for building trust in American doctors.
