Hardest

I'm at odds with the post about Easter Island. I try and try, but it doesn't come out -neither here nor in Spanish. It's proving to be the hardest to write so far.

It's not that I don't have things to say. On the contrary, I have too many!

Easter Island is amazing and strange -and such a good excuse to talk about Polynesia. 

At times, I have burst into a happy laugh amazed at the actual, physical sight of the Moai -especially at the Ahu Tongariki, that I visited twice. 

At times, I was almost at the limits of my comprehension contemplating the isolation of the place: At the top of many of its hills, the modest remains of long ago extinct volcanoes, it is easy to see (almost) the whole island and nothing else than the vast ocean around it.

The Polynesians were the greatest navigators of all times. It took the Chinese and Europeans seventeen centuries to emulate them.

From somewhere in Samoa or Tonga, the descendant of the Lapita culture gave up their beautiful pottery in favour of the vast ocean. They explored the whole area of the so called Polynesian Triangle, its 3 angles being Aoratea (New Zealand), Hawaii and Easter Island. They settled on every island that could sustain human life, bringing with them chickens, pigs and dogs; taro, yam and manioc. They flourished. They maintained their ties across the ocean: trade, religion, warfare.

There was one exception: Easter Island. After having settled on the Island, those amazing seafare people lost any interest in crossing the ocean. It seems that they came to Easter Island fleeing the imminent destruction do their homeland, or even the known world. Most probable, they thought their island was the only remaining emerged inhabited land. For them, it was the navel of the world. That way, they were cut off from any outside influence for seventeen centuries -Not bad for a social experiment

You see: this is my problem with this post. Look how long it is already and I still haven't talked about Easter Island, the development and collapse of megalithic culture, the new religion, the almost total annihilation of the local population, the Tahitian influence, the Chilean element, the aliens, ... My experience.

I was captivated, bewildered by Easter Island -I still am, though have left already. I therefore find every angle interesting, intriguing and all of them relevant.

At the same time, from almost the moment I arrived, I felt there was something odd about Easter Island; something on which I can't totally put my finger, beyond the isolation and the unanswered questions.

As I was seating looking at the Moai of the Ahu Tongariki for a second time, the strangeness comes from the fact that Easter Island doesn't really exit. What those of us twice lucky enough to visit and leave see is some kind of mirage, a stage, a performance, an act of will.

The Polynesian, the Rapa Nui society that thrived on the island collapsed twice: first, in the XIV century, the megalithic society and culture developed during one thousand years apparently suddenly disintegrated. The new religion, social structure and power sharing arrangements that followed -those the Europeans found in their first visits in the XVIII century- almost disappeared when  the few survivors of the Peruvian guano mines (slave traders kidnapped about one thousand islanders) returned bringing with them new, unknown deceases. The total population of the Island was reduced to about one hundred, only 36 of reproductive age. A handful escaped the island to Tahiti, to come back years later with their Tahitian families.

This two big disruptions mean that a good part of the oral tradition was lost (their written system hasn't been decoded) and that the gaps were filled with Tahitian traditions.

The island is now populated by the descendants of those 36 survivors, the Tahitian families, and a growing number of continental Chileans. As a matter of fact, the Chilean element is rather strong -after visiting three other polynesian countries, Easter Island for doesn't feel very Polynesian. Much more than in Samoa and Tonga, and even in the so French French Polynesia, there is in Easter Island a clear willingness, maybe a form of resistance, to maintain and care for the old traditions. In the other three countries, in spite modernity, it's a given. The Rapa Nui (all I met had both islander and foreign fore parents) are engaged in doing so in a very earnest way, which is, at the same time, a very Chilean attitude.