HANGA ROA, Easter Island — Not long ago, as some elders of the Rapanui
people wistfully recall, a sense of profound isolation pervaded this
windswept speck of land in the Pacific. Horses were the dominant mode of
transportation, flights to the outside world were few and far between,
and the island’s Polynesian language enjoyed dominance in most spheres
of life.
Now, so many cars roam the roads of this fragile island (it is smaller
than Martha’s Vineyard) that Rapanui grimly joke how they may outnumber
the moai, the prized towering statues their ancestors carved from
volcanic tuff, beguiling archaeologists. Spanish, the language of Chile,
which annexed Easter Island in 1888, now prevails across much of the
island. New luxury hotels catering to rich Chileans and moneyed foreign
visitors charge $1,100 a night, accentuating a festering income gap.
And there is yet another feature of life in Chile, a nation grappling
with fierce antigovernment protests by students and indigenous groups,
which has made it here: violent clashes with security forces.
Inspired by other parts of Polynesia that have obtained a considerable
degree of political autonomy or are in the process of seeking
independence, leaders of the Rapanui people are mounting a slow-burning
rebellion against Chile. Their movement on the island — which they call
Rapa Nui, not Easter Island — presents a unique test for a Latin
American country: quelling a challenge to its rule in the middle of the
South Pacific.
“Our nearest border is with the Pitcairn Islands, not Chile,” said
Leviante Araki, 54, president of the Rapa Nui Parliament, a
pro-independence organization, referring to the British overseas territory more than 1,200 miles to the west.
Newcomers from mainland Chile, which is almost twice that distance in
the other direction, are fueling a sharp increase in Easter Island’s
population, increasing it by 54 percent to 5,800 over the last decade.
Continentals, as mainland Chileans are called here, now slightly
outnumber Rapanui on the island, at about 3,000 to 2,800, according to
the mayor, Luz Zasso Paoa.
Protests here have crystallized around the thwarted efforts by one
prominent Rapanui clan, the Hitorangi, to reclaim land on which a luxury
hotel was recently completed. But other sources of ire among the
Rapanui have also emerged, including bitterness over privileges like
subsidized housing that have been extended to some mainland Chileans,
competition for jobs in the lucrative tourism trade and the mainland’s
control over the island’s affairs.
Security forces violently evicted Rapanui protesters in 2010 who had
occupied buildings and other sites. Images captured on cellphone cameras
showed bloodstained Rapanui, drawing admonition
from the United Nations last year over the use of force to resolve the
island’s problems. Though the situation has calmed somewhat since then,
nonviolent protests by the Rapanui have continued well into this year.
Despite the agitation, Easter Island still awes. Nearly a thousand monolithic moai
remain strewed around volcanic craters and sandy shorelines, guarding
the secrets of an island settled more than nine centuries ago by
Polynesian explorers. Clusters of horses wildly roam the hills, as if
Easter Island belonged to them.
But unresolved disputes over land and sovereignty, between the Rapanui
and continentals — and even among some of the Rapanui themselves — are
clouding this superficially easygoing outpost. Rather than subjugating
the autonomy movement, the crackdowns seem to have added to the
resentment here, with the Rapa Nui Parliament now taking its fight to
the courts by filing a lawsuit on the mainland this year seeking
independence.
The group says the island’s annexation, under an 1888 treaty, was made
illegitimate by Chile’s inequitable administration of it, including the
removal of Rapanui from ancestral lands, their forced confinement to the
town of Hanga Roa and the leasing of almost the entire island for
decades to the Williamson-Balfour Company, a Scottish sheep-ranching
concern.
Some Rapanui contend that their last king, Simeón Riro Kainga, was
poisoned in 1898 during a visit to Chile’s coast. The Rapa Nui
Parliament last year unilaterally declared Valentino Riroroko Tuki, the
81-year-old grandson of the last monarch, as the new king, a step in its
legal battle to void the annexation treaty. Still, other Rapanui groups
have their own aspirants to the throne, reflecting the island’s
fractious internal politics.
“This island was operated like a concentration camp,” said Mr. Riroroko
Tuki, a mild-mannered farmer who gained fame for resisting oppressive
rule in the 1950s, when Chile’s Navy prohibited Rapanui from leaving the
island and publicly flogged islanders as punishment. He escaped on a
fishing boat to the Cook Islands, more than 3,200 miles away.
Leaders of the Rapa Nui Parliament said they fully expected to lose the
independence lawsuit on the mainland, viewing it as a step to pursue the
claims in venues like the International Court of Justice. They are
drawing inspiration from similar movements elsewhere in Polynesia, which
may seem far-fetched in mainland Chile but not in the shifting
political winds of the Pacific.
One model under study here is the Cook Islands, a self-governing parliamentary democracy in a “free association” with New Zealand. Another is New Caledonia, a French overseas territory where France is grappling with an independence movement.
Still, pro-independence sentiment, while supported by sizable factions
of Rapanui, is by no means unanimous. Alberto Hotus, head of the Council
of Elders, from which the Rapa Nui Parliament splintered off, pointed
out that the island still depended on Chile for its health care, food,
telecommunications and flights to the mainland.
“If we cut ties to Chile,” he said, “we will return to eating pasture.”
The authorities on the mainland are cautiously following the talk of
independence. Carlos Llancaqueo, President Sebastián Piñera’s
commissioner to Easter Island, said officials were well aware of the
island’s problems and were moving ahead with plans to improve the power
grid, potable water systems and bilingual education in both the Rapa Nui
language and Spanish.
Additionally, Mr. Llancaqueo said new legislation governing migration
and residency was under preparation, but Chile’s Constitution required
the Rapanui people to be consulted before the law is enacted, a process
just getting under way. He said another proposal would give Easter
Island greater control over its own finances, though the idea has
languished for years; as it stands, the island is a province of the
Region of Valparaíso, so decisions regarding funds for everything from
education to infrastructure are made on the mainland, a five-hour flight
away.
“What is concrete are the very important problems affecting the island,
which after 50 years of neglect this government is addressing, despite
the political cost,” Mr. Llancaqueo said. He described the
pro-independence lawsuit as “a subject for the future,” calling the
Parliament “just one organization among many” representing Rapanui
views.
While such divisions persist, the Rapanui have endured bigger problems
in the past. They grappled in the 1870s with the megalomaniacal rule of a
French mariner, Jean-Baptiste Dutroux-Bornier, a tyrant to rival
Conrad’s Kurtz. Devastated by Peruvian slaving raids and a smallpox
epidemic, their population dwindled to as low as 111 before Chile
annexed the island, imposing austere military rule for decades.
The movement here is unfolding at a time when a major rethinking
of Easter Island’s history is emerging, with scholars rejecting
theories that the ancient Rapanui overexploited resources like trees,
suggesting instead that they pioneered sustainable fertilization
techniques on an island with poor soil. “Before the arrival of
Europeans, the Rapanui succeeded in total isolation in a highly
challenging environment,” said Terry Hunt, an anthropologist at the
University of Hawaii. “Now, they are vulnerable because the island is
not solving its problems locally.”
Making matters more complex, disputes fester over squatting on ancestral land, and intermarriage is increasingly common.
“The Chileans treated us like dogs, and now we want what is ours,” said
Lorenzo Tepano, 58, a fisherman who, with his wife, lives as a squatter
in a wooden shack in the Rapa Nui National Park, just steps away from
some of the monolithic stone figures lined up near the shore. As Mr.
Tepano denounced Chile, his son-in-law, a continental, sat next to him,
gazing at the waves and quietly sipping a beer.
