Riro, Rapu and Rapanui: Refoundations in Easter Island Colonial History

Abstract

Rapanui is the world's most remote continuously inhabited place and this isolation enclosed its remarkable prehistory and shaped its tragic chronicle of relations with the outside world. In 1862, Rapanui began its incorporation into a world system of labor and trade, culminating in the alteration of the local order with the assassination of king Riro in 1899. For over half a century, the island was cut off socially from the rest of the world, until 1965 when a modern Rapanui hero pushed it back into the position it occupies today. King Riro and Alfonso Rapu are compared for their sources of leadership and the effects they had, the consequences for local knowledge of colonial space and time are explored.