Posted on 08/10/2010 5:44:04 AM PDT by DJ MacWoW
Goshen — Minutes before Chilean special forces were to swarm government and private buildings held by indigenous Easter Islanders on Monday, a cell phone in Goshen crackled with a voice updating a local resident on the events a continent away.
Holding that phone was Santi Hitorangi, one of a handful of Rapanui people living abroad. The farmer, sculptor and filmmaker, who has lived in Goshen with his wife, son and daughter for three years, found himself thrust into an international struggle for his people's rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at recordonline.com ...
The article says: Little of the police action has been covered by the press, Hitorangi said.
Well, they way I read it - the indigineous population has revolted and occupied Chilean buildings etc ... and the Chilean Government is not accepting this as an acceptable method of conflict resolution (*grin*) so I dont know if your statement is accurate.
The tactic might work though! Get public opinion on thier side and Chile might think twice before resorting to violence ...
How large is Easter Island? How many people live there? I thought it was mostly uninhabited.
Because of indigenous protests and a larger movement toward decentralization, the Chilean government held a referendum and determined that Easter Island and the Juan Fernandez islands would become a special territory with a certain level of autonomy.
This enraged the radical wing of the indigenous movement which wanted total independence, even though that option lost at the polls.
So these radicals have seized government buildings and the private property of Chilean citizens opposed to independence.
The Chilean government has sent troops in to restore order.
Yeah. That's why it had a question mark. I hadn't seen anything else about this.
The article says: Chile fenced off islanders onto forced labor camps, sold their property to sheep farmers and foreign developers, and nearly drove them into extinction, Hitorangi said.
So if this is true and the indigenous people are revolting, I can understand why.
Easter Island is about the size of Washington DC and 5,000 people live there. 3,000 are Rapanui and 2,000 are Spanish.
Very likely true and I too sympathize!
Did Chileans vote or just the Rapanui?
I’m not sure there is any such thing as a native Easter islander any more. As I understand it they were on the verge of extinction when the Island was discovered and then they quickly interbred with the new arrivals.
All of this is news to me so I only know what's in the article.
The worst insult you can give to an old Easter Islander is “I have part of your grandmother stuck between my teeth.”
Seems they had a little problem with cannibalism there a few hundred years ago and it still scars the descendants.
This is a simplification.
Easter Island was inhabited by about 3,000 Rapanui in 1863.
The island was technically Spanish territory before this, but was raided by Peruvians in 1862 - they seized pretty much all the males over 10 years of age and a number of the women and brought them as slaves to Peru.
The (French) Catholic bishop of Tahiti formally protested internationally, but by the time there was any intervention, most of the kidnapped people were dead or lost.
After this incident, a French mercenary came to the island to "organize the defense" of the island, but he caused a split in the community. Half the people left for the mainland and about 250 stayed. In 1877, after an outbreak of tuberculosis, the mercenary was killed and 111 people were left.
In 1888, Chile signed a treaty with the remaining Rapanui. New immigrants lured by the newfound political stability - English, Spanish and Chilean - purchased property there and established sheep farms.
A Scottish merchant named Alexander Balfour wound up buying out most of the smaller farmers and consolidated the holdings into one large ranch, which he fenced off to prevent the fairly common Rapanui practice of sheep rustling.
Most of the western part of the island was Balfour property and most of the east was owned by the Rapanui, including the capital Hanga Roa.
Most of the Rapanui worked for Balfour (not as "forced labor" but as employees) and, far from being "nearly driven into extinction" by Balfour, from 1900 until 1953 (when the Chilean government seized the farm for the Chilean Navy) the Rapanui population increased from about 200 to over 5,000.
When the Chilean government seized the farm, over a thousand Rapanui headed to the mainland to look for work.
As part of the economic renaissance in Chile the government began selling the old Balfour land to private individuals and businesses and the resultant growth in the number of well-off mainlanders has caused unrest.
Ok. But wouldn’t “outsiders” getting rich off “your” land tick you off a bit?
Thanks for the history and geography lesson. Are the ancient monuments there safe from destruction?
According to the first European observer in 1722, there were maybe 3,000 Rapanui at that time.
There have very likely never been more Rapanui alive in earlier times than there are today.
It's a very small island and the Rapanui were subsistence farmers.
The article did say that not all 5,000 live there. And thanks for all the info.
I didn’t even know that there WERE an indigenous people on Easter Island. lol
Absolutely.
But the handful of ancestors that the Rapanui had made a conscious decision to sell land in exchange for the Chilean government protecting them from adventurers and raiders.
It sucks that they were too small to defend themselves independently from their enemies, but that's life.
Chile has given them 122 years of freedom from outside attacks, and they have now responded by attacking Chileans.
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