{"id":810882,"date":"2026-10-23T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/?p=810882"},"modified":"2026-09-23T17:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T17:54:13","slug":"orietta-rapu-life-work-rapa-nui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/orietta-rapu-life-work-rapa-nui\/","title":{"rendered":"Orietta Rapu: a life in c onstruction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Consuelo Mart\u00ednez<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Orietta was born in Santiago and says little about her parents: that her father, Joaqu\u00edn Rapu, left the island at nineteen. That he met her mother on the mainland. That in those years, the connection to Rapa Nui depended on a ship, and her father would return to visit the family on the mainland. Later, he settled permanently on the island while his children continued their studies abroad, in a constant coming and going of ships and absences that she doesn’t describe with nostalgia, only as the way things were at that time.<\/p>\n\n

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“The Rapu family are very good builders. We children grew up seeing that. When I was little, they taught me to gather stones, to secure the poles, and that’s how I developed the desire, because construction starts with the earth, not with anything else. Even the boyfriends I had when I was young studied construction,” she says, laughing. In her family and on the island, she says, that talent is inherited through custom and observation.<\/p>\n\n

She started working in construction at twenty, without a degree, thanks to her then-husband, a contractor, and took charge of entire projects with the talent that ran in her blood. But she decided that wasn’t enough: “No, I’m going to study,” she said firmly. It was after the birth of her son, Joaqu\u00edn. She began by studying for a Technical Degree in Construction in Valpara\u00edso while overseeing half of fifty-four five-story industrial buildings. From the technical degree, she moved on to a degree in execution Engineering and then to a degree in Construction Engineering: the first woman of her generation to earn that university degree.<\/p>\n\n

“Being a woman in an almost exclusively male environment was a real challenge,” she recalls. She had barely begun her studies when they were already bringing her into the office to explain bracing and calculations. “And suddenly I had to study all night, understand what it was all about, so that the next day I could give precise orders.” In one of her first jobs, no contractor could manage to drill through a section of solid rebar. She found an elderly expert and went to talk to him. “I told him: ‘You know what? We have this problem, everyone went in pairs when drilling.’ And the old man taught me: ‘You’re going to take a small drill bit and start with that one, because after the small drill bit you start with the bigger ones, and that was the perfect solution.”<\/p>\n\n

From this stems her entire philosophy: “You have to get involved, you have to ask questions, you shouldn’t feel bad if you’re working with people. We’re all workers. If you’re sweeping, you’re working. If I’m watching you sweep, it’s because that’s what I had to do. But I shouldn’t feel superior to you, because for me, we’re all human beings.” She didn’t allow herself to make mistakes, nor did she allow anyone else to: “If you make a mistake, you’ll have to take things apart, and I didn’t like taking things apart.” She would stay on the construction site until the end of the day, even if it wasn’t her turn. She’d arrive at nine and not leave until three in the afternoon, “because I liked to watch.” Unlike other colleagues who would relax as soon as they could and leave her finding things poorly done when she returned. “It made me angry,” she says. “It doesn’t cost you anything to get up and go see what people are doing.” <\/p>\n\n

She even signed off on projects for large buildings, and people sought her out for that. \u201cI don\u2019t like it when you mess something up, because it\u2019s money, it\u2019s time. One day, a boss came to my business in Valpara\u00edso, and we all assumed he\u2019d talk to my husband. But he came straight to me and asked me to take charge of a project,\u201d she says, laughing. Her first project as a construction engineer was the Hanga Roa Hotel, then the Lorenzo Baeza Vega School, followed by the hospital and other projects in Vi\u00f1a del Mar.<\/p>\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve been divorced twice, I\u2019ve had three husbands,\u201d she says, without drama. \u201cI\u2019ve been through a lot. But if you ask me if I suffered, no. Always moving forward, with laughter and all.\u201d That energy is evident when you see her: she just turned seventy, though no one guesses her age. She travels when she can; her favorite destination is the Dominican Republic, and she complains about cruises: too many old people on board, she says, laughing. She has been quietly successful, works quietly, doesn\u2019t seek the limelight, and prefers not to talk about her degrees and businesses unless asked. She has granddaughters on the mainland whom she enjoys visiting whenever she goes there.<\/p>\n\n

She recalls that during her studies she also started a commercial diving course, but had to drop out halfway through, without taking the final exam. “I grew up around the sea; I loved going fishing with my father. I used to do ‘haka nini’ on a piece of plywood as a child.” Today, with her current husband, she’s building cabins and a new workshop on their land. “Why pay someone else when we enjoy building things ourselves.”<\/p>\n\n

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She also runs a family business near the airport where she sells her paintings: sarongs, plates, and printed t-shirts. She learned by watching, painting the plates with her finger, without a brush, until she gradually improved. It’s a craft she inherited from her “super hard-working” mother, she says, and passed on to her children from a young age. She paints moai, ahu, palm trees, and seascapes, and everything sells, but she hasn’t sat down to paint in years. She has an easel that one of her sons gave her, still unused, and paints stored away.<\/p>\n\n

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She recognizes the same talent in her children. Roberto, Rodrigo, Joaqu\u00edn, Alexis, Pamela, Grettel, and Romina are building their own additions, houses, or workshops and ask her and her husband for advice. Nane returned from Austria in August to build two new cabins together; she and Joaqu\u00edn have a very playful relationship, greeting each other with shouts and laughter when they meet on the island’s streets. She says her daughters are workaholics, even more so than she is, and she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging their achievements: “I’m proud of my children, because at least I gave them a little bit of guidance.” Pamela started out selling small items at Roberto’s shop and now has her own stall at the market, which is doing increasingly well.<\/p>\n\n

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When she began her professional life, very few women worked in construction or studied building engineering. The little girl who used to gather stones and secure poles ended up signing off on plans for large buildings and was the first in her family to add a university degree to that inherited talent.<\/p>\n\n

Today, when she crosses the island, she sees her work in the walls of the hospital, in the classrooms of a school, in the cabins she builds with her children. The same keen observation she had as a child gathering stones and securing poles led her to become an engineer\u2014the first woman of her generation, and the first Rapa Nui woman, to do so\u2014and to sign off on plans for large buildings. Today she divides her time between the cabins, the workshop, and the crafts for the airport business. On the easel, still unused, awaits the paint, which is what she enjoys most: \u201cI want to end my life doing what I love,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n

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By Consuelo Mart\u00ednez Orietta was born in Santiago and says little about her parents: that her father, Joaqu\u00edn Rapu, left the island at nineteen. That he met her mother on the mainland. That in those years, the connection to Rapa Nui depended on a ship, and her father would return to visit the family on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":810880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[307,308,120,309,306],"class_list":["post-810882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonials","tag-construction-in-rapa-nui","tag-rapa-nui-artisans","tag-rapa-nui-culture-en","tag-women-of-easter-island","tag-women-of-rapa-nui"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810882","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=810882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810894,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810882\/revisions\/810894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}