Rapanui re-visited
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
Past and future collide on the Chilean Pacific island of Rapa nui, otherwise known as Easter Island.
Explorer Thor Heyerdahl is re-examining ancient stone sculptures and construction crews are preparing to build an emergency airstrip for US space shuttles.
Heyerdahl, who visited Eas ter Island in 1955 during his famous voyage across the Paci fic, has been warmly welcomed since he returned to Rapanui on January 22. He is digging for new artifacts to test his theory that the earliest Polynesians sailed west from ancient Perns, rather than east from Asia.
In March, soon after the Norwegian explorer leaves, a Chilean construction crew is to begin dynamiting a hillside for landfill to lengthen the island’s airstrip so that NASA space shuttles, launched southward from California’s Vandenberg Air Force base, may land in the event of a faulty liftoff.
Whether the space project means progress or disruption is a matter of controversy in this remote land of dormant volca nos, famous for its huge Moai statues.
Heyerdahl’s investigation of the stone sculptures in 1955 and his focus on the island’s people, spurred material growth and self-interest in their heritage.
“He looked like a white god,” recalled Sergio Rapu, then a boy of five and now the first native-born governor of the Chilean possession. Heyerdahl, now 71, noted recently that Easter Island has undergone great changes since his 1955 visit.
“Easter Islanders are one of the few people who are taking the long jump from the 17th to the 20th Century without surrendering their traditions,” he said.
The 2060 islanders now have a hospital, two discotheques, 100 telephones, 200 cars, 255 motorbikes, and 600 television sets. Half of them live on the US$l million generated annually by tourism.
Chilean law allows the 1200 native Polynesians to own land
and requires schools to teach their Rapa Nui language along with Spanish. Innovation is so gradual and life so easy that few leave for good.
Many fear, however, that the 420-metre airstrip extension is a precipitous leap into the space age. The recent explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger, underlined the possibility that a shuttle might be forced to make an emergency landing here and revived local opposition to the SUS 9 million NASA-financed project which Chile accepted last August. * “The Chilean government imposed this project without our consent,” said Alberto Hotus, 56, president of the Council of Rapa Nui Chiefs which represents the island’s 36 extended families.
He and Governor Rapu do not recognise each other’s authority and hardly speak to each other in public.
Hotus and other critics claim the island’s association with a shuttle program that includes US military missions could compromise its security. They also object that lengthening the runway could mean filling in the ancient Vaia Tare rock quarry, with its 100 known altars, pet roglyphs and other man-made formations.
While declining to endorse the NSASA project, Heyerdahl has said the quarry is of re latively little archaelogical im portance.
Some islanders welcome the governor’s promise that lengthening the runway will cre ate 150 construction jobs and attract larger planes with more tourists. But others say they could do without the construc tion bosses from the Chilean mainland, or the 20 NASA technicians who would stand by during each California shuttle liftoff, or the 450 who would rush in after an emergency landing.
Rapu wants islanders to play a bigger role in their own modernisation after a century of rule by French priests, British wool merchants and Chilean naval governors. Richard Boudreaux, Associated Press.