Clara Alarcón Pakarati

Portrait of a nomadic woman

Text: Consuelo Martínez

My great-grandmother, Elizabeth Rangitaki, was brought from Tahiti: the Church paid thirty gold coins to marry her to my great-grandfather, Nicolás Ure Potahe, a Rapa Nui man who had been taken away as a child and trained as a deacon in Papeete. They were united to form a family, because after the theft of the people, there was hardly anyone left. She brought back what had been forgotten: the mahute clothing, the kai kai. Without her, none of that would exist now. From that bloodline I was born, in a cave, and I left it barefoot at sixteen. My world was the stone, the horses, the tides. We lived as a tribe, we were nomads, moving between Anakena and the caves near Rano Raraku according to the tide. One doesn’t need much to live: a place to sleep, a large fire, a large cooking pot. That’s what we had.

My mother, María Esperanza, was the eldest of fifteen sisters and the matriarch of the tribe. She and her two sisters did men’s work; my grandfather taught them to fish and do about everything. She worked like an animal, washing coral and making necklaces from seashells, from that we ate. She wouldn’t let me do any of that: she didn’t want me to end up like her. She dreamed of me being a secretary, because when governors came to town, they brought a secretary in high heels with red-painted nails, sitting at those little machines, and for her, that was the highest title a woman could have. I hardly knew my real father: he was my mother’s cousin, and the Church separated them, they shipped him on a Chilean vessel, and took him away. That’s why they forbade me the surname I was supposed to have, which is Teao.

When I was four, a man from the mainland adopted me, Benito, He was well-read and knowledgeable. He took my nine siblings as well on a Navy ship. I’ll never forget his mother opening the door in Santiago and seeing all of us, dark-skinned, next to her son. “You brought me an Indian with her whole tribe,” she said. And he, who was next to me, replied: “If my family isn’t welcome in this house, neither am I.” Then the woman hugged him and let us in.

On the mainland, I was a different child. I was the first granddaughter of that house, a precious little darling that everyone passed from arm to arm. I left the island naked, and suddenly I had clothes, shoes, and love. Benito worked in Bata, and then he sold what my brothers carved. We traveled from exhibition to exhibition all over Chile. Benito bought a house in Macul, and that house filled up with Rapa Nui people: whole families arrived, and slept up to ninety people. We used the house like a cave and lived outside, with the fire and the big cooking pot, just like always.

I returned to the island at thirteen years old and had forgotten life here. The airport was a paddock and it was like getting off a bus. They took me to the cave and I fell into a terrible depression. My mother took my clothes to share with my cousins who had nothing. I watched my aunts washing seashells all day and learned without anyone teaching me.

At seventeen, my father enrolled me in the NCO School. During training, they threw us in the field to survive on whatever we could find: “There’s the river, eat whatever you find,” they told us. I had an advantage because I had helped my brothers butcher animals so many times. I saw some goats up on a hill and immediately organized the group. I graduated as a Corporal and worked at the Ministry of Defense, in the military prosecutor’s office, and at the Military Geographic Institute, I was also assigned to train conscripts. I did that until 1990.

I met Patrice while I was still in the military. He was a Frenchman who came to the island for a visit, and we dated, until he said to me, “Why don’t you come? We’ll get married and leave.” I resigned and went sailing with him. At twenty-four I went to Antarctica; at thirty, to Polynesia. Patrice was a yacht captain for an American company: Mooring. They hired me, but first they sent me to their culinary school because I had to cook for the wealthy. He forbade me from speaking with Polynesians for six months so I would learn French properly, and that’s how I started reading the history of my island in French. I was a tatamareti, at ATM, a French yacht company, and I did the shopping, the guards, the maneuvers. We traveled through Melanesia and Micronesia, I learned to ski and windsurf.

Once, we went on vacation to Switzerland. On a boat, some people i had been a guide for, recognized Patrice and took us to their mansion. The owner, president of a golf club, invited us to a gala dinner just as we were. I found a short pareu, a yellow fabric flower crown, and a Polynesian handbag; when I appeared, all native, everyone stood up to stare. They thought I was a Polynesian princess.

Now I’m sixty-six and I’m back. I didn’t have children, I raised only nephews and nieces. I consider myself an art professor at my own university: I paint, draw, make mahute, kai kai, and design kahu tupuna. I worked for a year with Cecrea, and the Minister of Culture hired me as an artist. I held workshops in La Ligua, Valparaíso on drawing, carving, costume making, and I put together a children’s dance group. I have a PDF book with the paintings and their descriptions in Spanish and English, which I want to give to all the fourth-grade students in Chile so they know who we are.

What I am truly proud of is how this town has grown since 1888, when we were nobody: now the young people graduate with professional degrees; there are doctors, dentists, engineers, and architects. We are one hundred and ten, almost all of them my family; those I haven’t seen since they were little now call me “auntie.” In winter, I collect seashells, go out to torch at night, and when the tide is right, I go fishing on the rocks. I’ve gotten rid of the material: I’ve given away almost everything; I have nothing. When I fish, I talk with God, and sometimes I argue with him, because he knows my heart. I tell him that I have already fulfilled a part of my life and I am satisfied, but I feel that I have much more to do.