In the article “Issues on Land and Sovereignty: The Uneasy Relationship Between Chile and Rapa Nui”, anthropologist Riet Delsing focuses on the Rapa Nui, also named Easter Island (or Isla de Pascua), and the way it has been administrated by Chile for the past 150 years. Delsing gives a general historical overview of the history common to the island and the mainland, and examines the successive laws that had an impact on the population and the landownership of Rapa Nui.
Chile gained independence from Spain in 1818, but was still consolidating its territory in the 1880s: the integration of the Mapuche territory in the south and the annexation of former Bolivian and Peruvian territories in the north were the context in which Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888. Policarpo Toro Hurtado signed the Agreement of Wills with the Rapanui leaders. From this date, Rapanui ancestral customs, specifically regarding landownership, were disrupted. After the annexation of the island, and especially because of the civil war of 1891, the Chilean nation-state lost interest in Rapa Nui. Everything changed in 1917, when the Chilean Republic started to consolidate its hold on the island by sending the navy as a colonial agent applying strict military rules on Rapa Nui.
The history of Rapa Nui is intrinsically linked to landownership. Before Chilean colonization, the kainga as a form of collective landownership was exclusively applied. With the arrival of Chilean settlers and moreover with the passage of the Ley Pascua of 1966, private landownership was introduced. It was reinforced by the Ley Pinochet in 1979. In opposition to those laws, the Ley Indígena of 1993 established norms of protection, promotion, and development of Chile’s indigenous people, and recognized land as the lifeblood of indigenous cultures. Nevertheless, Rapanui people were not spectators in this process of assimilation. They often fought the Chilean government, organizing themselves into a Council of Elders in 1980 and creating a Rapanui Parliament with demands of autonomy. Eventually, in 2007, the island was granted a Special Status, thanks to a constitutional reform.
Delsing’s article highlights the evolution of the relationship between Chile and its Pacific colony through a detailed examination of landownership on Rapa Nui. It identifies the specificities of Rapa Nui, both its peculiar indigenous social organization and the policy of the Chilean government towards it, as opposed to mainland indigenous territories.
Delsing, Riet. “Issues of land and sovereignty: the uneasy relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui (Easter Island)” in Decolonizing Native Histories: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Language in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/515052
Chile's relationship to Rapa Nui
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