Life and Solitude In Easter Island

by Darío Verdugo-Binimelis

Easter Island is a popular exotic tourist destination, and you can find many of the modern amenities we take for granted. There's also a growing population of several thousand, mostly mainlanders. But a mere 55 years ago, Easter Island had none of these.In 1952, Dar¿o Verdugo-Binimelis, an idealistic Chilean physician, and his wife, Adriana, pulled up stakes and brought their four young sons to Easter Island for what would become an incredible adventure and educational experience for the family. Appointed by the Chilean Ministry of Health to serve a two-year stint as the island's sole physician, Dr. Verdugo had the responsibility for the health of the island population of about eight hundred, and he also affectionately ministered to the patients isolated in the islands leper colony.Dr. Verdugo has written a lyrical memoir of culture shock melting into affection for the native "Pascuenses" and their simple, carefree culture. He reflects on the day-to-day struggles amid stunning natural beauty and on strengthened family ties and deep friendships reinforced by the profound isolation of this tiny island sitting by itself in the middle of the vast South Pacific.Life and Solitude in Easter Island adds a unique personal and family perspective to the growing body of Easter Island literature, and complements the material found in scholarly texts or in tourist guides.This is an updated English edition of the original Spanish-language memoir, Vida y Soledad en Isla de Pascua, published in Chile in 1999.

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Cristián Moreno Pakarati · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author was a medical doctor living on Rapa Nui in the first half of the 1950s, during the last year of the Compañía Explotadora de Isla de Pascua and the beginning of the Chilean State taking charge of everything under the military regime of the Navy.

Even though the book is novelized and very personal, it is interesting as the kind of travel-book that used to be written in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. However, as a Historian dedicated to Rapa Nui, I really would have liked much more detailed and exact information: dates, names, places, documents. It's a fun Reader's Digest kind of reading, but a bit shallow in depth. We're left wondering a bit more about the last days of the Sheep Company, the tensions between the Community and the strenghtened grip of Chileans over the island, more details of the role of the Catholic Church during those times. But it's not ethnographic at all. It's a memoir and devoted fully to personal and family observations.

There are some photographs in ridiculously low resolution, embedded into the pages. But no plates. I would recommend it to people wanting to understand how was life for a non-rapanui family on Rapa Nui in the 1950s. As such it's a fun reading. But don't expect to learn much from the Island or the islanders.