Seeking to reaffirm his maternal blood and culture, Tito Hormazábal calls himself Mokomae. “I was born on the Island.  I’m a half-breed who loves both cultures.  From my mother I inherited the pride of being Rapanui, their spirituality and the ancestral customs.  Although I don’t speak fluently, I like the language and continue to learn it.  From my father, who arrived on the Island to work with the company which was building the airport, I learned discipline and respect for the family.  In all of my 34 years, I have never heard him even raise his voice to my mother.  We are five siblings and all very protective of each other.”  Mokomae remembers the teaching of Tricia Allen, an anthropologist expert in Polynesian tattoo who visited the Island in 1992, when the Kevin Kostner film, “Rapa Nui”, was being shot.  “She began to invite me and Andrés “Panda” Pakarati to conventions of tattoo in Tahiti, so that today we have the technology and access to modern equipment.  Now there is a strong interest among the young people to tattoo themselves, both men and women, principally for the aesthetic aspects, but also to reaffirm their Rapanui identity.  Some come to me because it’s fashionable.  Others come because they are drunk and afterward they are sorry.  I simply don’t accept to work on those,” Mokomae confesses.