Chile: "The Indian Problem"

Although colonialism has historically targeted Latin America, such effects on the Latin American people have not been enough to stop their own imperialist efforts. Issues of land and sovereignty: the uneasy relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui  details the case of Chile, where the state’s imperialist efforts were inspired through their conquering of Peruvian and Bolivian land. The resolution of the War of the Pacific granted Chile land from the beaten countries, making Chile somewhat of an imperialist state over those newly gained territories. Here, they gained the Mapuche land, which allowed them to garner exploitive methods that would expand to the newly gained territory of Rapa Nui.  Through merchant trade, Chile saw a possibility in Polynesian territory and annexed Rapa Nui.
The relationship between the Rapa Nui and Chile is complicated and has remained ambiguous across Chile’s changing government regimes. When Chile annexed Rapa Nui, it was due to a misunderstanding between the Chilean representative and the island’s chief who gave them the blessing to use the land for agricultural purposes but without ownership. Chile took this ritual as acceptance to their land ownership, which came back full circle when the Chilean Navy practiced gifting land to newly married Rapa Nui couples. In their terms, this gifted land could be used for agricultural purposes, but it was to be understood that the owners were still the state. The Rapa Nui also understood this as holding property ownership, which attests to the confusing nature of these two group’s relationship, as well as its legitimacy.
The Rapa Nui have used this confusing relationship to circumvent Chile’s rule as the laws passed such as the Inscription of 1933, La Ley Indigena of of 1933, and La Ley Pascua, which subjected the Indigenous people of Chile to regulations. These laws have created unforeseen consequences that have been to the advantage of the Rapa Nuis’ autonomy. The Inscription of 1933 made it so no foreigners could invest or own the land on the island, which benefited the Rapa Nui peoples as they didn’t have to worry about the threat of foreign land ownership. Unlike other Latin American Indigenous groups who have and are subject to foreign attractive forces, the Rapa Nui were guaranteed against that.  La Ley Indigena of 1933 made it so land redistribution became a norm amongst Indigenous groups of Chile, which was a polarizing issue amongst the island.
Since Rapa Nui culture was founded on the practice of the Kainga, ancestral lands pertaining to each klan, land redistribution would force Rapa Nui to go against the Kainga and take ownership of a specific land not spiritually given to them. The Kainga made it so land could be used communally and without specific ownership because each group claimed their own land spiritually or through historical patterns. Then La Ley de Pascua was passed in which the Rapa Nui peoples were recognized as Chilean citizens and given the right to vote, which created greater pressures on the island to distribute land in a way that would create individual land ownership. Throughout the regime transitions of Chile, the factor that has remained the same is the pressure to instill land privatization that is a characteristic of the neoliberalist policy, but such pressures to enhance this practice undermine the cultural importance of the Kainga to the Rapa Nui, which indicates an instilled sense of the state that the Rapa Nui have not assimilated to Chilean culture and are therefore undeserving of practicing that culture.
The issue of Chile to recognize the cultural importance of land to the Rapa Nui and instead pressure them into privatizing their land is indicative of their lack of understanding of indigeneity that is described in the chapter “The Problem of the Indian” in Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality. In this essay Jose Carlos Mariategui discusses how others attribute the “Indian problem,” in terms of it being an educational, religious, or administrative issue. The problem is not purely socio-economic, but it is also not purely a problem of the administrative policies or the education of some. It is also not just a land tenure problem, although that area is highly focused on as it is the most visible discrepancy of Indigenous peoples from state civilians. The complexity of what the “Indian problem” entails is similar and a relation to explaining why Chile has lacked in being able to police the Rapa Nui in the way that they have over the Mapuche. Instead of policing their land, their cultural habits, and the way they present themselves to outsiders as they have with the Mapuche, Chile has forgoed much intervention with the Rapa Nui, although they do, technically, own their land. By testifying that the problem of Indigenous assimilation or prosperity under the state is not merely due to a department of the state, but all combined, which makes the “issue” one almost impossible to define or fix.
https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.carleton.edu/chapter/515052
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/7-interpretive-essays/index.htm