Reseña

“Rongo” is a moving saga from the middle of the Pacific Ocean which reveals from original sources the precarious life of the Rapanui people in the period between the rebellion of the prophetess Angata in 1914 and that of the school teacher Alfonso Rapu in 1964. Its originality and strength comes from the construction of this work with the very witnesses and protagonists of the time. Over five years, day by day, the journalist and memorialist, Patricia Stambuk, wandered through the town of Hanga Roa and its environs to listen, from the heart of this Chilean-Polynesian people, to their tales of oppression, abuses and marginalization that are now masterly articulated in these pages. She made it possible to rescue and conserve for posterity the innumerable and valuable testimonies on the customs and most relevant events of the Twentieth Century by recurring to one of the pillars of the Island culture: oral tradition, which allows them to fall back within their memories to long before their own existence.

This reserve of the collective memory of Rapa Nui, unique in Chilean historiography, was made possible by the vision and generosity of more than thirty women and men who wanted to relate their survival, with wisdom and resistance, over all the varied and various misfortunes in the most isolated spot on the planet.