Reflections on a Movement - Mark Bautista - James Estillore - Paolo Garcia - Nadia Mohebati

Nĩ RefŖge in RefŖgee

During the Vietnam War, U.S.-colonized islands became the stepping stones for many Vietnamese refugees before they traveled to their final destination ê the United States. The material and ideological conversion of U.S. military bases on these islands into refuges discursively transformed America from violent aggressor in Vietnam to benevolent rescuer of its people. In ‘Militarized Refuge(es)’, however, Espiritu challenges this logic and reveals the violent roles these military bases played in the war-induced displacement of the Vietnamese people.

In 1975, 92% of the first-wave Vietnamese refugees who fled to the United States trekked through the Philippines, Guam or Wake Island ê islands that were prominent with U.S. military bases. These islands that were colonized by the U.S. were transformed into strategic sites for advancing American economic and military interests, and specifically allowed the military outpost and stepping stones to China and the Asian mainland.Espiritu argues that the Philippines was the United States’ “first Vietnam,… in order to demonstrate America’s normalization of imperialism and exploitative militarism in the Asia Pacific region. She points out the Philippines-American War, which resulted in the death of a million Filipinos as well as annexation.Because Guam is the largest island between the Philippines and Hawaii, the United States placed a key interest on this Micronesian island. In the early 1950’s, the United States controlled close to 60% of the island. Today, military installations occupy one third of Guam.During the Vietnam War, Espiritu points out that places like Guam and the Philippines became dumping grounds for Vietnamese refugees. Through this action, we see how the U.S. continues to regard indigenous land as “empty… land and brown bodies as fit for tossing around without any implications.

The creation of the “good refugee… enabled the United States to convey the Vietnam War as a “good war.…In the context of war, Americans valorized the U.S.’s efforts in saving refugees but failed to recognize the destructive actions such as the Nixon Doctrine and Operation Babylift that tore Vietnamese families apart and killed many innocent “internal… refugees. The Philippines and Guam served as receiving centers for these Southeast Asian refugees before many of them were brought to California. Displacement via United States militarism demonstrated raw, brutal, and destructive forces.When the Vietnamese were brought to the U.S., many forget that the majority of Americans didn’t welcome them to the point where Americans urged the government to not allocate any government assistance to them.The U.S. represented Southeast Asian refugees as the white man’s burden, and the United States as the magnanimous rescuers, suggesting that it was a humanitarian intervention. However, in reality the whole process was “militarized violence… and represented the “destructive forces that Western imperial powers unleash on these islands and bodies of racialized peoples across time and space.…