{"id":809751,"date":"2026-08-01T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T07:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/clara-alarcon-pakarati\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T19:06:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T19:06:56","slug":"clara-alarcon-pakarati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/clara-alarcon-pakarati\/","title":{"rendered":"Clara Alarc\u00f3n Pakarati"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Portrait of a Nomadic Woman<\/h2>\n\n

text: Consuelo Mart\u00ednez<\/em><\/p>\n\n

My great-grandmother, Elizabeth Rangitaki, was brought from Tahiti: the Church paid thirty gold coins to marry her to my great-grandfather, Nicol\u00e1s 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. <\/p>\n\n

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Algunos de sus sobrinos vistiendo <\/mark>kahu tupuna hechos por Clara<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Mi mam\u00e1, Mar\u00eda Esperanza, era la mayor de quince hermanas y la matriarca de la tribu. Ella y sus dos hermanas hac\u00edan el trabajo de hombre, mi abuelo les ense\u00f1\u00f3 a pescar y hacer de todo. Trabajaba como un animal, lavando corales y haciendo collares de pipi, de eso com\u00edamos. A m\u00ed no me dejaba hacer nada de eso: no quer\u00eda que terminara como ella. So\u00f1aba con que fuera secretaria, porque cuando llegaban los gobernadores tra\u00edan una secretaria de tacos altos y u\u00f1as pintadas de rojo, sentada en esas maquinitas y para ella ese era el t\u00edtulo m\u00e1s grande que pod\u00eda tener una mujer. A mi pap\u00e1 verdadero casi no lo conoc\u00ed: era primo de mi mam\u00e1 y la Iglesia los separ\u00f3, lo embarcaron en un buque chileno y se lo llevaron. Por eso me prohibieron el apellido que me tocaba, que es Teao. <\/p>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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El bisabuelo de Clara, quien lleg\u00f3 junto a Policarpo Toro, en 1888 desde Tahit\u00ed, casado con una polin\u00e9sica de Tuamotu, Elizabeth Rangitaki Tehuataua.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Johni Tuki Hucke y su hija Niki, Vaiatare Tuki<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Elo\u00edsa Pakarati At\u00e1n, <\/mark>prima de la madre de Clara<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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1989 en Breta\u00f1a, aprendiendo a hacer cr\u00eapes<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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Navegando en Suiza<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Moai Haka Nononga en Brucelas<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Festival Interc\u00e9ltico en Breta\u00f1a<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n
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En su visita a B\u00e9lgica<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Navegando en Hennebont, Francia<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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De pesca en G\u00e2vres,<\/mark>Breta\u00f1a Francesa<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

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, Valpara\u00edso 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. <\/p>\n\n

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Un siglo despu\u00e9s, Clara contin\u00faa el oficio que su bisabuela trajo de vuelta de Tahit\u00ed<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Grandes lienzos con iconograf\u00eda rapa nui <\/mark>son el orgullo de Clara<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Portrait of a Nomadic Woman text: Consuelo Mart\u00ednez My great-grandmother, Elizabeth Rangitaki, was brought from Tahiti: the Church paid thirty gold coins to marry her to my great-grandfather, Nicol\u00e1s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":809770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}