"The Easter metaphor". This is how Ignacio Ramonet titled in “Le Monde Diplomatique” an article on the cover of the December 2017 issue dedicated to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 23) held in Bonn. Throughout that event, scientists repeatedly recalled the Easter metaphor in allusion to the ecological disaster that shook Easter Island, Rapa Nui (Polynesian name meaning Rapa Grande). Between the years 800 and 1,200 AD. (Anthropologists and historians of the Rapanui culture cannot specify the period more exactly) it seems that a Polynesian expedition arrived on the beach of Anakena, with its king Hotu Matua, who was isolated for centuries from the rest of the planet.
They baptized it with the name of "Te pito o te henua" which means the "navel of the world". The island, in the shape of a triangle of 163 square kilometers, is located 3,760 kilometers from Chile and 4,300 kilometers from Tahiti.
It is the top of a volcanic cone that rises from 3,000 meters from the seabed. Originally it was covered with exuberant vegetation and large palm trees; surrounded by waters rich in fish, with coasts full of shellfish and millions of migratory birds that nested there. It was a paradise. However, Ramonet writes: “In a few decades, the Rapanuis multiplied and developed a brilliant civilization (that of the moais), which still amazes the world today. But they did it based on excessive and unlimited exploitation of the island's wealth. Result: in a short time, there was not a tree left, not a fish in its seas, not a mollusk on its coasts, not a bird in its nests... When the French writer Pierre Loti visited Rapa Nui in 1872, only a few hundred inhabitants remained. “It was a town of ghosts, naked, skeletal and hungry; last remains of a mysterious race” (1).
Jared Diamond, a biologist from the University of California, in his essay "Collapse" (2) dedicates an extensive chapter to the twilight of Easter Island and the history of its splendor and decline. The enigmas of his writing, the “rongo-rongo”, based on thousands of hieroglyphic signs, have not yet been deciphered. Deforestation and man's action on the natural environment caused famine and demographic decline. They even had to resort to the practice of cannibalism. The Rapanuis exploited the resources at a rate that did not give them time to regenerate and this would be one of the main causes of their downfall.
After the Bonn COP, the Easter metaphor continued to be used to explain the planetary climate and ecological crisis. Some members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) still mention it. But, paradoxically, these same scientists do not refer to the environmental degradation currently suffered by the island, its progressive loss of biodiversity, erosion and contamination suffered by its groundwater tables.
This silence favors the inaction of the responsible authorities and does not help to inform the population of the real state of the territory that supports them. Most of the almost 7,800 inhabitants, of which 3,000 are Rapanui, are unaware that their model of growth and progress is leading them to a collapse similar to that suffered by their ancestors.
Before the first information circulated about the impact that climate change would have on the coast and on the conservation of the ahus and moai erected on its shores, the future of Rapa Nui already began to worry environmentalists, ecologists, archaeologists and anthropologists. In 1995 UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site, although this honor did not bring sufficient financial aid and adequate and constant assistance to protect this legacy, unique in the world, but very fragile.
One of the first to express his criticism of the tourism model introduced by the "tour operators" was the ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) at a conference on "Sustainable tourism in the 21st century. My experience as an explorer and scientist” organized by our Una Sola Terra association in the Barcelona City Hall on June 5, 1999 World Environment Day.
The promoter of the famous "Kon-Tiki" expedition, which in 1947 crossed the Pacific on a raft from the port of Callao to Polynesia taking advantage of the force of the trade winds, carried out three archaeological expeditions in Rapa Nui in 1955-56 1986 and 1987-88 (3), and learned about the deficient environmental management of the island and the risks of advertising that promoted it as a “dream tourist destination”. Heyerdahl argued that the first settlers were Amerindians.
Studies published in 2020 by the journal "Nature" on genetic analysis have shown ancient crosses between Amerindians and Polynesians (4).
In the last excavations of the explorer in the Rano Raraku and in the ahu Nau Nau, on Anakena beach, the Catalans Francesc Amorós, historian, and Antoni Pujador (1948-1993), a young businessman and pilot by profession who ended up being part of the of the Council of Elders (“Te Mau Haatu O Rapa Nui”). Pujador became a kind of international ambassador who claimed broad autonomy for the Rapanui culture and proposed the exercise of the right to self-determination.
In 1982 it was baptized as "Manuheuroroa" ("bird of many colors that comes from afar"). Among other initiatives, he financed the publication of the first Archaeological-Tourist Map of the island, drawn up by Pujador, Amorós and the Chilean Pablo Teutsch.
Another benchmark that discovered the beauty and need for protection of the coastline, as an expedition led by Jacques-Yves Cousteau did in 1976, was "Operation Rapa Nui", organized in 1975 by Antonio Ribera, a Catalan interested in the so-called Unidentified Flying Objects. (UFOs); co-founder of the Center for Recovery and Submarine Research (CRIS) and the Center for Interplanetary Studies (CEI). In 1958 he translated into Spanish the book "Aku-Aku" by Thor Heyerdahl. That was the first Spanish expedition to Easter Island (5).
My friendship with the Norwegian explorer and Francesc Amorós (6) and the fact that my hometown of Olot -a volcanic region made up of forty small extinct volcanoes- was twinned with Hanga Roa by means of a municipal agreement dated July 2, 1982 ( promoted by Pujador) - motivated my interest in Rapanui culture. To this twinning was added an invitation to the sculptor Manuel Tuki to carve a moai with a basalt from a quarry in the region.
In December 2000, our environmental association invited the mayor of Hanga Roa, Pedro Edmunds Paoa (elected seven times and one of the most popular politicians in Chile for his constant defense of the Rapanui culture against centralism applied by the Chilean government). During his stay, he was the protagonist of a controversy when he disagreed about the place where the moai had been placed, next to a busy road and consequently with a polluted atmosphere. “It is not the place for the spirit of an ancestor. Look for a more dignified natural space or I'll take it with me”. The blood did not reach the river and finally the moai is still located in the small square of Easter Island, converted into one of the most beloved and emblematic sculptures of the city.
In November 2001 I made a prospective trip to Rapa Nui commissioned by the Catalan Energy Institute (ICAEN) with the aim of analyzing the ecological state of the island in terms of energy, mobility, waste treatment and the implementation of energy renewable. That was an unforgettable experience that has committed me to the Rapanui culture for the rest of my life and that I tried to reflect in my novel “L´ànima del volcà” (7). But what I saw about environment management disappointed me. I will explain it in the second installment.
Santiago VILANOVA
Journalist, president of the Una Sola Terra association
(1)Pierre Loti, “Easter Island, Diary of an aspirant to “La Flore”, Éditions La Simarre. Joué-lès-Tours, France, 2016.
(2)Jared Diamond, “Collapse”, Gallimard, Paris, 2006.
(3) Thor Heyerdahl, “I-I”, Juventud Editorial, Barcelona, 1958.
(4)Hervé Morin, The Kon-Tiki adventure revisited by DNA”, “Le Monde” 10/7/2020.
(5) Francesc Amorós, "Easter Island: the impossible dream of Antonio Pujador", Sirpus, Barcelona, 2006; "Rapa Nui A lost world in eastern Polynesia”, Sirpus, 2010.
(6)Antonio Ribera, “Operation Rapa-Nui”, Pomaire Publishing House, Barcelona, 1975.
(7) Santiago Vilanova, “The soul of the volcano”, Editorial Base, Barcelona, 2015.
