1987. Alcuni ricordi da una missione archeologica nel Deserto Meridionale della Giordania

di Pietro Villari, 27 Luglio 2023. Tutti i diritti riservati.

 

Le nuove generazioni degli establishment filo-occidentali nel periodo globalista.

Le missioni scientifiche provenienti da Paesi del Blocco Occidentale, che oggi giungono in Giordania trovano una realtà culturale in parte non molto diversa da quella di alcune nazioni dell’Europa Meridionale e in parte di migliore efficienza, quali le infrastrutture governative di stampo anglosassone. A primo acchito, la causa è attribuibile a fenomenologie collaterali a processi di acculturazione agli standard occidentali, come la diffusione del commercio globalizzante e il costante contatto con il turismo di massa proveniente dai Paesi Occidentali (1). Tuttavia, vi è anche un’altra causale raramente presa in considerazione dai media, sviluppatasi contemporaneamente al disastroso progetto globalista del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale. Cospicui gruppi di elementi selezionati tra le nuove generazioni delle classi medie e alte dell’establishment di Paesi anche non strettamente legati al sistema dominante occidentale, sono state inviate a soggiornare diversi anni nelle migliori università occidentali per perfezionare i loro studi universitari. Un piano che ha provocato profondi cambiamenti in quelle università, rappresentando ormai gli allevamenti all’ingrasso del novellame dei regimi filo-occidentali, dove le grandi compagnie multinazionali vanno a caccia di talenti da legare ai loro carrozzoni.

La primaria finalità politico-economica di questi periodi di emigrazione all’Estero di quella che, nei loro Paesi di appartenenza, è stata valutata quale la crème delle giovani generazioni, è di sottoporla a processi di manipolazione per acculturarla e standardizzarla ai modelli anglosassoni, in particolare nordamericano e britannico. I legami stabiliti con istituzioni e personaggi dell’establishment dei Paesi Occidentali da una parte di questi allievi nel corso della permanenza formativa, continueranno a essere intrattenuti, rinnovati e eventualmente intensificati al ritorno nei loro Paesi di origine.

È utile anche ricordare che al loro arrivo nelle Università straniere, le Istituzioni di competenza del Paese accogliente aprono un fascicolo personale al quale ogni soggetto interessato non avrà mai formale notizia, né la facoltà di poterli visionare in futuro. Non vi sarà alcuna possibilità, quindi, per richiedere eventuali rettifiche per la presenza d’informazioni parzialmente errate o totalmente infondate. Nel fascicolo vengono conservate le informazioni salienti, comunicati dagli archivi municipali e giudiziari delle autorità del Paese di provenienza, alle quali vengono aggiunti i dati raccolti nel corso della permanenza nel Paese ospite (monitoraggio iniziale, controlli periodici, eventuali menomazioni fisiche e psichiche sopraggiunte e altri eventi di particolare interesse ai fini attitudinali, ecc.).

Si tratta di una raccolta di dati che purtroppo non è condotta solo da agenzie governative, ma anche da strutture informative operanti al riparo di permessi conferiti per ricerche di mercato, al servizio di grandi società private, dove l’incrocio con le strutture dei Deep States nazionali e organizzazioni lobbistiche soprannazionali costituisce forse il lato più inquietante, in quanto si tratta ormai di situazioni tecnicamente impunibili senza l’introduzione di nuove leggi condivise a livello internazionale.

È quindi ovvio che tutte le informazioni relative a vicende proprie della sfera professionale quali la corruzione o le connivenze con ambienti criminali, o comportamenti della sfera privata considerati borderline o eticamente sconvenevoli, costituiscono una preziosa arma utile a determinare eventuali future coercizioni con effetti sia sul decorso sia della vita professionale che di quella privata. Esse possono difatti concorrere a determinare le dimissioni o il licenziamento da importanti cariche governative o in società private, sino all’avvio di procedimenti penali gravemente infamanti. Il dossieraggio spesso condotto con metodi spregevoli e ben farciti di falsità, è oggi tra le maggiori cause di morte sociale.

 

Un mondo arcaico scomparso in pochi decenni

La Giordania di oggi è una realtà culturale impensabile al tempo del mio soggiorno, ormai datato a trentasei anni fa. L’incremento demografico e la necessità di disporre di risolse idriche per soddisfare i bisogni anche delle coltivazioni e degli allevamenti, cresciuti in modo esponenziale, hanno costituito una delle principali problematiche governative da risolvere. Negli ultimi due decenni, gli sforzi hanno impegnato buona parte delle risorse economiche disponibili, essendo strettamente collegate ai programmi di sviluppo nel settore del turismo, della cultura, delle risorse energetiche, della ricerca scientifica e nella istituzione di ospedali. Il risultato è quello di essere divenuta la nazione del Vicino Oriente maggiormente emancipata e stabile, sia a livello politico che economico.

Uno dei pilastri su cui si fonda questo benessere è l’approvvigionamento e la diffusione delle risorse idriche, grazie alla presenza di un enorme giacimento acquifero fossile nel Deserto Meridionale giordano, che oggi rifornisce anche parte del territorio dello Stato di Israele. Sono stati attivati molti pozzi, tra i quali quello di Qa Disi, che con una estrazione annuale di circa 100 milioni di metri cubi rifornisce di acqua potabile la capitale Amman e diverse coltivazioni estensive (2).

Nel Marzo 1987, Qa Disi era ancora un accampamento beduino con le tipiche tende di spessa lana nera, i cammelli, le greggi di vivaci capre nere, i pazienti asinelli arabi, alcune jeep. Era popolato da poche centinaia di beduini, fedeli osservanti delle leggi coraniche e tradizionalmente devoti al loro sceicco.

La missione archeologica italiana presso la quale conducevo le mie ricerche scientifiche era alloggiata alla meglio, poco distante dalla dimora dello sceicco, fra i resti della “Bonifica Italiana” della quale nelle cronache recenti sembra essere svanito persino il ricordo. Fu un tentativo a quel tempo decisamente prematuro di sedentarizzare i beduini, tentando una conversione tout court da pastori ad agricoltori.

Conclusa la cooperazione e partiti gli esperti italiani, la popolazione era da parecchi anni tornata alle ataviche attività. In uso era rimasto solo il pozzo artesiano, dal quale veniva pompata una deliziosa acqua fresca che a quel tempo non sapevamo fosse altamente pericolosa assumere senza particolari trattamenti (3).

Lasciate inutilizzate, le casette in mattoni e cemento erano ridotte in pessime condizioni. Era stato necessario “bonificare la Bonifica”, faticando parecchi giorni per rendere abitabili le stanze di alcune per uso privato di ogni ricercatore, e quelle necessarie alle attività di studio, la cucina, il refettorio e non ultime le latrine e le docce.

Sin dalla prima metà degli anni 1970, il territorio era esplorato dal Prof. Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern, direttore dell’Istituto di Antropologia dell’Università di Firenze e del prestigioso Centro Studi per l’Ecologia del Quaternario in quello ospitato. Quell’area del Deserto Meridionale giordano apparteneva a una tribù bedu il cui sceicco, Juleil Soudan Abu Kayed risiedeva a Qa Disi e sin dagli inizi aveva sempre assicurato una benevolente protezione e assistenza alla missione italiana, anche tramite la sua gente.

Una situazione oggi inimmaginabile, essendo quella nostra area di studio divenuta parte del Parco Nazionale di Wadi Rum, che dal 2011 è un sito protetto dall’UNESCO World Heritage. Ampio 700 chilometri quadrati, per accedervi oggi è necessario acquistare un biglietto dal costo corrispondente a Euro 6,42 e osservare il regolamento di standard internazionale. In base a dati pubblicati nel 2018, nell’anno precedente il parco aveva attratto 162.000 turisti, con un incremento del 97% rispetto al 2016.  Il 13% proveniva dalla città di Aqaba, sul Mar Rosso, che aveva registrato ben 640.000 turisti alloggiati nei suoi alberghi (30.000 di questi provenienti da crociere) (4).

 

L’abbraccio della “Ministrona”

Marzo 1987. Assieme ad alcuni colleghi partecipanti alla missione ero partito da un aeroporto di Roma alla mattina, se non ricordo male da Ciampino, con un volo diretto contenente pochi passeggeri destinazione Amman, la capitale della Giordania. Quando atterrammo, sulla scaletta dell’aereo ci accolse una forte calura a me familiare nelle estati siciliane e maltesi, così come il medesimo paesaggio brullo attorno a quegli aeroporti.

Fummo subito prelevati da un delegato del Ministero della Cultura giordano che, affiancato da alcuni militari, ci scortò sino a un’ampia sala adibita per le operazioni di controllo doganale. Vi erano già state deposte le nostre attrezzature scientifiche, contenute in una decina di casse lignee di forma a parallelepipedo, dipinte in verde e con tipiche scritte a stampatello in bianco. Ottenute da una dismissione dell’esercito italiano, le casse erano state cedute all’Istituto parecchi anni prima e bisogna ammettere che a prima vista l’insieme sembrava riferibile a una fornitura di armi usate di equivoca provenienza.

In una era contenuto un potente cercametalli statunitense di ultima generazione che, appresi in quell’occasione, era un dono che soddisfaceva un espresso desiderio dello sceicco che ospitava la missione archeologica italiana a Qa Disi. Colui che a quel tempo esercitava informale potere di vita e di morte su ogni cosa si muovesse tra le nude rocce e le dune di sabbia costituenti il Deserto Meridionale giordano.

I militari presenti al controllo iniziarono a rilevare problemi relativi sia al cercametalli che alle apparecchiature fotografiche, in particolare i potenti e ingombranti zoom per catturare immagini a lunga distanza e i palloncini a elio ai quali venivano fissate le macchine fotografiche per le serie di foto dall’alto in autoscatto (i droni furono inventati decenni dopo).

Il responsabile della missione archeologica, Prof. Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern, era uno scienziato che conoscevo da circa quattro anni. Nutrivo una profonda stima per le sua preparazione professionale quale paletnologo e nel campo delle scienze naturali applicate all’archeologia. Inoltre, al netto delle sue eccentricità che a volte sfioravano la paranoia, mi aveva colpito la sua istintiva onestà e propensione al bene da gentiluomo d’altri tempi.

Edoardo, come con sana umiltà preferiva farsi chiamare anche dai giovani laureati, tentò di spiegare che era tutto regolare trattandosi del medesimo equipaggiamento adoperato negli anni precedenti, e che da lì a poco sarebbe arrivata la funzionaria responsabile per le Antichità della Giordania.

Aspettammo ancora un’ora è alla fine si materializzò un drappello di uomini in abito scuro, con al centro una donnona in tailleur XXL che si diresse a braccia aperte verso il nostro Edoardo, di taglia piccola e gracile, che immobile la guardò con sguardo rassegnato. “Eccola, quella è la Ministrona” mi disse con fare divertito il collega Fabio Vianello “Guarda quello che gli fa adesso!...”. La giovane collega Barbara Ingels, fedele assistente del Borzatti, si rifugiò alle nostre spalle dove iniziò a ridere e tossire.

Come se temesse che potesse sfuggirle, la funzionaria allargò le braccia e raggiunse con eccezionale rapidità il Prof, avvinghiandolo in un abbraccio surreale. Fu una scena da cartoons: la minuta figura vestita alla esploratore tedesco, con sahariana e pantaloni alla zuava bianchi, cintura e bandoliera in cuoio bruno così come gli alti stivali, sprofondarono sin quasi a scomparire, immerse nell’abbraccio della donna, che lo sollevò e lo scosse come un fuscello, le gambe e le braccia di lui tese ai lati, con le mani aperte per lo spasimo.

La testa immersa nell’enorme seno, con il volto rosso rivolto in alto, in cerca d’aria, Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern riuscì nonostante tutto a pronunciare una delle sue note esilaranti battute, brevi e sarcastiche, con accento fiorentino: “Com’è buona lei!”. La frase era presa in prestito da un film comico degli anni 1970, con l’attore Paolo Villaggio del ruolo del ragioniere Fantozzi.

Il nostro Edoardo a quel tempo era così. Non perdeva mai l’occasione per una battuta, allentando eventuali tensioni o spezzando la monotonia delle lunghe ore di studio che tutti assieme trascorrevamo nel Laboratorio di Ecologia del Quaternario, a Firenze, così come nelle lunghe marce del deserto. Era un umorismo alla toscana, spietatamente caustico, eppure contaminante.

Dopo averlo spupazzato con autentica gioia, la donna mollò la presa per dedicarsi alla formale stretta di mano ai partecipanti, stritolando quella di Fabio nell’impeto scaturito dall’emozione di rivederlo. Ridemmo ancora nel vedere il nostro prof ansimare privo di fiato, con i lunghi baffi scombinati e il vetusto casco da esploratore germanico adesso pendente sugli occhi. La funzionaria lo fissò preoccupata chiedendogli “Per lei qui è piuttosto caldo, eh?” Avendogli rivolto la domanda in Inglese, lingua ostica sia a lui che al Pardini (noto per la ricorrente frase “Non parlerò mai quell’idioma da pescatori nordici…”), rispose solo con un gesto di convenienza.

 

Qa Disi, marzo 1987

Essendo buona parte dei miei colleghi impegnati nei rilevamenti di incisioni rupestri (5), generalmente preferivo effettuare le mie esplorazioni archeologiche in solitudine, in un’area montuosa a nord di Qa Disi, talvolta accompagnato dal collega Fabio Vianello (6).

Solo in un caso ci muovemmo tutti assieme, quando dovemmo localizzare i resti di un insediamento eneolitico segnalato nella famosa Pietra di Jebel Amud (7). Mi offrii volontario per inerpicarmi su una collina rocciosa sovrastante una piccola struttura, un muretto a secco emergente dalla sabbia del deserto a causa dei venti che avevamo incontrato dopo una lunga marcia. Con mia grande sorpresa da quell’altezza mi si rivelò l’intera area dell’abitato sopravvissuta oltre cinquemila anni, con le basse mura perimetrali delle capanne e dei recinti per il bestiame villaggio. Scattai alcune foto a ricordo della scoperta e avvertii i miei compagni con alcune grida e segni.

A quel tempo non esisteva internet, né la telefonia mobile (tantomeno satellitare di uso civile) o la possibilità di comunicare via SMS. Se durante l’esplorazione accadeva qualcosa, nella migliore delle ipotesi bisognava attendere che all’appello della sera fosse constatata l’assenza e scattasse l’allarme, pur dovendosi aspettare sino all’indomani mattina affinché si avviassero le ricerche. 

Partivo all’alba, dopo una rapida colazione ad alto nutrimento. Lasciavo scritto un appunto con l’indicazione dell’area nella quale stavo dirigendomi e m’incamminavo con l’aria ancora intrisa del freddo pungente della notte.

Lo zaino in spalla, pantaloni resistenti ma leggeri, in cotone, le pedule alpine, i calzettoni di lana, gli schinieri antivipera, kit medico di pronto intervento, camicia con ampie tasche con i documenti personali, la matita con il taccuino per le osservazioni da annotare, il jacket senza maniche e dalle dodici tasche, la bussola e il binocolo allacciati al collo e riposti in due tasche pettorali, le borracce per un totale di quattro litri di acqua, la mappa del territorio su cui riportare i ritrovamenti, la crema di massima protezione solare. 

Nello zaino la macchina fotografica e i rullini in una borsa di cuoio, al riparo del caldo e della terribile sabbia di quarzo del deserto che avrebbe smerigliato le lenti, infiltrandosi dappertutto, il contenitore con quadretti di zucchero, un rotolo di ampi fogli tondi di pane beduino, un pezzo di sotto crosta di parmigiano reggiano stagionato, una mela. Fazzoletto rosso al collo. Gli occhiali polaroid con paraocchi, il cappello a larga falda, la piccozza da geologo “Eastwing” compagna di tutta una vita professionale, appesa al cinturone in cuoio toscano sul mio fianco destro e il lungo coltello multiuso nella fodera al fianco sinistro.

Ricordo ancora quell’indescrivibile senso di fiducia nella mia prestanza fisica, indispensabile in quella sconfinata libertà originata dalla visione di quegli interminabili paesaggi desertici, dalla perfetta solitudine in quel caldo secco che sembrava asciugare ogni dolore esistenziale, riducendo qualsiasi problema all’essenza, sbriciolandosi anch’esso in granelli in quell’oceano di sabbia rossastra dal quale emergevano isole di rocce nude di colore nero (basalto) o talora rossicce (stratificazioni arenarie ad alto contenuto ferroso).

Nei decenni seguenti, dopo avere condotto esplorazioni e scavi in deserti presenti in altre aree del pianeta, iniziai a comprendere che ogni deserto ha un suo ben distinto carattere, un insieme di dati non soltanto ambientali e paesaggistici, che interagisce con l’inconscio umano, con il risultato di lasciare emergere percezioni differenti quando si dimora in ognuno di essi.

Nei film, gli attori che attraversano i deserti sono sudati, distrutti dalla fatica. Nel deserto giordano, invece, non versai una sola goccia di sudore: l’evaporazione era istantanea e la sete inesistente, ma se non si beveva regolarmente per colmare la disidratazione, dopo parecchie ore ne arrivavano le conseguenze.

Gli occhiali con lenti paraloid di massima protezione e i paraocchi laterali furono provvidenziali non solo per evitare la cecità dall’esposizione ai raggi solari, ma anche l’abrasione della superficie oculare operata dai minuti granelli di quarzo.

Grazie al binocolo tascabile, ultraleggero e con risoluzione 7x21, su uno spuntone situato lungo un’erta parete rocciosa localizzai una struttura emisferica, a forno, costituita da lastre litiche. Dopo avere impiegato parecchia fatica nell’inerpicarmi per raggiungerla, al suo interno trovai un cumulo di frammenti appartenenti a un grande vaso globulare d’impasto marnoso, decorato in rilievo sulla spalla da un cordone a impressioni digitali. I caratteri del vaso suggerivano che l’insieme fosse riferibile agli inizi dell’Età del Bronzo, probabilmente una sepoltura o un’offerta votiva. Ad alcune decine di metri, inerpicandomi sulla nuda roccia trovai una serie di piccole cavità contenenti acqua stagna. Considerato il loro grado di abrasione, erano state scolpite in antico, allineate in posizione digradante dall’alto verso il basso, queste ultime di maggiori dimensioni. Mi chiesi se si trattasse di un luogo sacro sito nei pressi di una sorgente, esistente prima del totale avvento di quel deserto (8).

 

La Missione Archeologica italiana e i figli dello sceicco.

Quella di Qa Disi fu la mia prima missione archeologica nel Vicino Oriente. In quei giorni avrei compiuto  trent’anni, e con mio sommo piacere nella qualità di archeologo preistorico, ero stato invitato dal professore von Löwenstern, in quanto avevo sino al mese precedente tenuto lezioni di archeozoologia presso l’Istituto di Antropologia dell’Università di Firenze del quale era direttore. Alla missione partecipavano diversi colleghi toscani del Laboratorio di Ecologia del Quaternario dove mi ero internato sin dal 1984.

Tra i partecipanti vi era anche il direttore del Museo di Storia Naturale di Livorno, Dott. Gianfranco Barsotti, con il quale tempo addietro avevamo condiviso  l’esperienza di scuoiare e disossare una vecchia tigre in uno zoo, dopo aver prima aspettato l’effetto mortale del veleno iniettatole da un veterinario. La povera bestia era stata donata allo zoo, gravemente malata e sofferente, da un circo italiano che alla fine decise di abbatterla a causa degli improvvisi, terribili ruggiti di dolore anche in piena notte, che provocavano le urla di altri animali ospiti della struttura e le comprensibili proteste degli abitanti della zona. 

Scuoiare e disossare quell’enorme tigre dal corpo ancora caldo, constatare la consistenza e il peso delle masse muscolari, fu un’esperienza indimenticabile che mi fece intuire alla lontana le profonde paure e il notevole coraggio dei gruppi familiari della preistoria, e dei cacciatori delle tribù arcaiche del pianeta ancora esistenti in quegli ultimi decenni del ventesimo secolo.

A differenza dell’atteggiamento verso altre spedizioni scientifiche europee che avevano soggiornato nella zona, i beduini mostravano una particolare disponibilità per quelli che anche qui, in mezzo al deserto, eravamo chiamati “italiani brava gente”. Partecipavano alla nostra presenza con discrezione, ma era impossibile non notare la loro forte curiosità e il fascino che generava la nostra semplicità di proporci e la rilassata allegria, quel continuo scherzare su ogni cosa, a volte coinvolgendoli sino a ridere anche loro.

Da buon siciliano mi ero abbronzato in fretta, suscitando perplessità nel gruppo dei più anziani dei trentotto figli dello sceicco (negli anni seguenti ne nacquero parecchi altri), che con un giro di parole destinato a prevenire eventuali offese, chiesero al Pardini se avessi lontane origini Siriane (9). Risposi di essere diverso dai miei colleghi in quanto nativo della Siqiliya (Sicilia, in Arabo), suscitando sorrisi e gesti di apprezzamento. Mi aspettavo che pronunciassero anche qui la parola mafia, e invece appresi che gli insegnanti inviati dal governo giordano avevano nel corso delle loro lezioni parlato del Mediterraneo, e delle grandi conquiste dell’Islam in Europa, in particolare in parte della Spagna e l’intera grande isola di Siqiliya, possedendole per molti secoli.

Negli ultimi decenni, americani, australiani, inglesi, tedeschi… avevano evitato di intrattenere rapporti di amicizia con elementi della popolazione, di fornire notizie sul loro contesto culturale di provenienza, forse temendo pregiudizi di ambito religioso e quindi guai. A me accadde il contrario: i nostri ospiti erano solo assetati di conoscenza, di poter collocare se stessi in una visione spazio-temporale più ampia dei loro limiti nazionali, avere i mezzi per comprendere l’opera, ovvero il volere e il potere del Dio che amavano, temevano e pregavano assiduamente. Non a caso una sera, forse spinti dal padre, mi chiesero cosa si pensasse degli “uomini delle tende nere” in Europa. Risposi descrivendo l’Europa quale un’entità multiculturale, per cui la domanda aveva risposte differenti.

Fui subissato di domande sulla Sicilia, che concordavano di ritenere un grande giardino coltivato da discendenti di conquistatori arabi e per non rischiare di essere frainteso, risposi tramite un traduttore, un anziano che decenni addietro aveva lavorato con gli agronomi italiani. Una delle cose che li stupì maggiormente fu la presenza di tante lingue e dialetti in un’area così piccola come l’Europa, pur appartenendo tutti alla stessa religione cristiana. Le loro domande erano per me molto interessanti, in quanto per la prima volta vedevo il mio mondo da angolazioni a me sconosciute. Quando un giorno mi fu schematizzata, tracciandola sulla sabbia, la mappa del basso mediterraneo secondo il loro vecchio insegnante della “vera fede”, la costa africana era posta a settentrione e la Sicilia, Malta e Creta a meridione, ingigantite e irriconoscibili. Mi resi conto che quelle isole erano importanti in quanto celebravano l’antica potenza dell’Islam che i fedeli ritenevano un giorno sarebbe nuovamente esondata, conquistando il mondo. 

Dall’inizio di quegli incontri tutto cambiò nei miei rapporti con la governance beduina, a iniziare dai permessi di ricerca scientifica, potendo adesso accedere anche in aree vietate agli estranei.  

Così, Edoardo Pardini mi chiese di aiutarlo (in quanto von Löwenstern tergiversava) e in quella situazione non riusciva a perfezionare i suoi studi sui caratteri fisici della popolazione di Qa Disi, in particolare le misurazioni craniche e la determinazione del colore degli occhi. Ritenni opportuno parlarne con uno dei figli dello sceicco, che ne parlò al padre. Dagli sviluppi della vicenda ne nacque un aneddoto che in quegli ultimi anni 1980 conquistò la hit parade dei salotti fiorentini.

 

Come rischiare la pelle per studiare il colore degli occhi della popolazione Bedu.

Dopo alcuni giorni il Pardini ottenne la collaborazione richiesta. L’accordo era che avrebbe esaminato ogni clan familiare presente a Qa Disi e che gli esami sarebbero stati condotti in una comoda tenda beduina. Edo avrebbe effettuato le misurazioni, e io li avrei trascritti sotto sua dettatura in un registro già preparato per la schedatura, accompagnandoli da eventuali annotazioni. Avevamo redatto anche un prontuario contenente singoli termini anatomici, medici, gradi di parentela, e frasi di circostanza al fine di manifestare in lingua araba il nostro rispetto e gratitudine agli esaminati.

Posizionata e aperta su due lati in modo da mantenere una piacevole circolazione di aria fresca all’interno, nella grande tenda di lana nera sarebbe entrato solo un piccolo gruppo familiare alla volta. All’esterno, alcuni uomini attendevano al corretto svolgimento dello studio e della fila di individui da esaminare. Come d’uso, indossavano la kephia di cotone con motivi rossi su fondo bianco, che avvolgeva il capo, ampie vesti bianche, alla vita una larga fascia di stoffa, nella quale era fissato il fodero contenente il tradizionale pugnale a lama ricurva, un’arma che all’uso è in grado di produrre effetti tragicamente devastanti.

Venne fatto entrare il primo gruppo, due uomini e tre donne ai quali fu chiesto di scoprire il capo. Cosa che fecero con timore. A quel punto, Edoardo pose sul tavolone una borsa di pelle ed una valigetta a cassettiera, del tipo da rappresentante di gioielli. Dalla prima tirò fuori, uno dopo l’altro e con rumore di ferraglia, una serie di strumenti da misurazione che, pur conoscendoli e avendone già usato alcuni, devo ammettere che in quelle circostanze suscitarono anche in me un istintivo ribrezzo.

Come se non bastasse, con nonchalance aprì di botto la valigetta, che meccanicamente si mostrò una gradinata di cassetti ognuno contenente decine di occhi di vetro incassati nel velluto scuro, con le pupille di varie tonalità di colore e particolarità (10). L’insieme aveva l’aspetto tremendamente realistico di una collezione di occhi estratti a discapito di chissà quanti poveri disgraziati.

La combinazione degli strumenti di misurazione, alcuni dei quali a forcipe, e gli occhi giacenti nei bizzarri contenitori era piuttosto macabra e tutt’altro che rassicurante e, come prevedibile, provocò le acute urla di paura delle donne e quelle di disprezzo guerriero degli uomini. Le guardie entrarono immediatamente, e dopo avere constatato l’efferatezza di quanto gli si presentava innanzi, si posero a protezione del gruppo gridando rabbiosi una raffica di domande, forsanche avvertimenti e probabilmente qualche insulto in lingua araba.

Il Pardini peggiorò la situazione come solo uno scienziato del suo calibro, candidamente con la testa tra le nuvole, stava riuscendo a compiere. Rispose in lingua italiana con occhi spiritati, alternando sghignazzi a suo modo rassicuranti e cenni delle mani, nelle quali teneva un calibro in acciaio con asticelle curve e appuntite: “Ma no, venite qua, poveri cari… ah-ah-ah… devo solo prendere alcune misure, nulla più!... Insomma, venite...” e indicando i loro occhi, prendeva in mano un bulbo oculare di vetro dopo un altro e a suo modo mimava l’attività di misurazione e di comparazione, ma con un risultato che sembrava volesse significare un’estrazione. “Questi sono solo campioni!...ah-ah-ah…”, e li agitava davanti ai beduini ormai in preda alla paura più profonda. Così, le guardie ci spinsero fuori dalla tenda in malo modo e “i nostri esemplari”, come asetticamente li chiamava il Pardini, ne approfittarono per dileguarsi.

Alcune ore dopo giunse il figlio prediletto (11) dello sceicco, Sayed. Il padre lo aveva mandato a lavorare in una base militare americana, dove aveva prontamente imparato la lingua inglese, evitando in base alla sua buona educazione islamica, di ripetere le consuete intercalazioni di espressioni volgari. La situazione gli fu subito chiara e tutto si risolse in breve. Lo avevo già visto una sera, defilato in retrovia, ad ascoltare le mie risposte alle domande che mi rivolgevano i suoi fratelli maggiori. Era un giovane dotato di una mente di primordine e di una educazione raffinata, alla quale aveva associato una qualità ereditata dal padre e con questi accuratamente coltivata: l’arte della conversazione.

Constatai così il notevole grado raggiunto, nonostante avesse solo ventitré anni, nello studio e nella memorizzazione del Corano, e una accurata conoscenza delle discipline tradizionali amate dagli arabi di rango elevato, dalla filosofia alla matematica passando dalle scienze naturali. Sarebbe stato un erede straordinario, e lo sceicco (12) ne era pienamente cosciente. D'altronde, più alto è il numero dei figli, più alta è la possibilità di ottenere un erede di grandi qualità apprezzate dal suo popolo.

Gli presentai le mie scuse per quanto avvenuto, ma scosse una mano per indicare una situazione compresa e superata, e con mia sorpresa m’invitò a accompagnarlo a ispezionare un’oasi sita in quel vasto deserto. Una immensa piscina attorniata da un antico palmizio. Per arrivarci attraversammo una distesa deserta di fango indurito, piatta, al punto di essere un sorta di autostrada priva di confini. Fu la prima volta che mi capitò di osservare il tipico fenomeno del miraggio, nella fattispecie un insieme di palme antistanti a un vasto specchio d’acqua, che comparì e si dissolse all’orizzonte, nel tremolio dell’evaporazione. Mi lasciò un senso di smarrimento amplificato dalla notevole calura, pur avendo assistito comodamente seduto nella jeep e non dopo ore di martoriante cammino in groppa a un dromedario.

La conversazione fu molto piacevole. Chiedevo degli usi, costumi e tradizioni della sua gente e in cambio gli chiarivo quanto avevo appreso dell’archeologia preistorica, degli ultimi studi sulle raffigurazioni incise sulle rocce del Deserto Meridionale giordano (dove già a quel tempo Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern ne aveva catalogate oltre diecimila), degli studi sull’origine delle attuali faune selvatiche della Giordania. Si soffermò sulla caccia, una delle attività preferite della classe aristocratica araba, soprattutto quella con il falcone, che io conoscevo attraverso gli studi pubblicati da Federico II di Svevia con la collaborazione del figlio Manfredi.

Rientrammo a Qa Disi nel primo pomeriggio e nel separarci mi invitò a cena nella sua tenda dove conobbi la moglie, una giovane donna di rara fine bellezza, della quale era profondamente innamorato e dalla quale era sinceramente ricambiato. Attendevano un figlio, e per lei aveva rifiutato di esercitare il suo diritto alla poligamia. Mi colpì la sua sincera ammirazione per l’organizzazione sociale israeliana, in particolare la coesione presente nei kibbuz, un fatto che anni dopo mi indusse a chiedermi se queste convinzioni fossero state alla base del suo omicidio, avvenuto ad Amman dove si trovava per svolgere alcuni incarichi per conto del padre (13).

Avendo espresso il desiderio di poter osservare il comportamento delle iene e, ancor più, quello delle volpi del deserto, si offrì di organizzare una battuta di caccia alle gazzelle (gazāla, in arabo) per l’indomani notte, nel corso della quale avremmo certamente potuto osservare anche altri animali selvatici. Avrebbe curato personalmente la preparazione di quanto necessario: armi e munizioni, il kit medico di pronto intervento, un veloce fuoristrada, una guida armata di kalashnikov, alimenti e bevande e quant’altro. Da parte mia, avrei convinto l’amico e collega Fabio Vianello a unirsi all’avventura, ben sapendo che per suo carattere non si sarebbe tirato indietro.

 

Come andare a caccia di gazzelle in piena notte e finire in un affascinante rituale.

Partimmo in quattro a tarda sera. La guardia del corpo al volante, e al suo fianco Sayed con uno dei kalashnikov a portata di mano, Fabio ed io occupavamo i sedili posteriori. Alle nostre spalle il sole era già scomparso all’orizzonte, illuminandolo di un rosso infuocato. Ci muovemmo in direzione opposta, verso le tenebre che lentamente iniziavano a scendere sul confine desertico con il regno saudita.

Avevamo percorso circa due ore di pista, e ci trovavamo attorno alla mezzanotte innanzi a una stretta gola rocciosa. Alla guida adesso vi era Sayed, che rallentò sino a passo di marcia, finchè davanti ai fari si materializzarono due militari fasciati dalla kefia e armati di fucile. Mi accorsi che avevamo fatto un ampio giro a semicerchio, quando riconobbi le divise della Guardia Beduina di Wadi Rum, luogo noto al pubblico Occidentale per le famose scene del film storico “Lawrence of Arabia” (14).  

Un militare graduato, con mantellina rossa e pistola alla mano, si avvicinò al lato del guidatore con fare poco rassicurante. Senza alcun preambolo iniziò uno scambio di frasi in arabo con apparente tono minaccioso. Alla fine l’ufficiale dette uno sguardo ai sedili posteriori della jeep, fissandoci a lungo. Quindi si allontanò, e con certa apprensione chiedemmo a Sayed cosa stesse accadendo. Con altrettanto fare preoccupato il nostro amico ci rispose che dovevamo seguire i militari nella vallata, ma non sapeva spiegarsene il motivo.

Nell’oscurità si accesero i fari di due camionette che ci scortarono per circa venti minuti. Alla fine arrivammo in un’ampia vallata illuminata da un falò, ove erano posteggiati parecchi fuoristrada. Radunati presso un riparo sotto roccia, una moltitudine di uomini gridava in coro a circa duecento metri da noi. Scorgemmo musici e danzatori beduini. Sayed ci guardò ridendo: si trattava di una cerimonia iniziata la sera precedente, un matrimonio al quale avevamo avuto l’opportunità di assistere anche se stranieri. Era evidente che adesso eravamo in condizioni di parità con quello che era accaduto nella tenda grazie al Pardini. Ne fui felice e iniziai a ridere anch’io di gusto per lo scherzo ben congegnato.

Seduti in grande cerchio presso gli anziani, ci fu offerto di condividere un forte caffè alla beduina, in tazzine di pregevole fattura ottomana, oggi direi certamente Iznik, e non ci sarebbe molto da stupirsi se fossero state parte del bottino di chissà quale antico attacco predatorio. Azioni del genere erano state comuni sino a circa una cinquantina di anni addietro. D'altronde, il deserto possiede una straordinaria capacità di assorbire immense quantità di sangue e di far scomparire in pochi anni i resti di intere armate.

Dopo aver cercato con lo sguardo attorno, con molta discrezione chiesi al nostro amico arabo dove fossero le donne. Mi indicò alcune figure coperte di mantelli scuri, sedute in cerchio davanti ad un fuoco acceso presso un altro spuntone roccioso, a circa cinquanta metri dal nostro. La promessa sposa era posta al centro del gruppo, ma in posizione di alcuni metri più avanzata e affiancata dalla madre. Innanzi ad essa, a circa trenta metri, una fila di uomini che avanzavano e indietreggiavano tenendosi a braccetto, e nel contempo gridavano cantilenando all’unisono una frase araba, ripetendola monotonamente senza sosta. Ne domandai il significato a Sayed, che tradusse: “Il tuo uomo è forte, il tuo uomo è buono, il tuo uomo è bello”.

Fummo invitati con insistenza a sostituire alcuni componenti della fila, e per circa mezzora, cinque passi avanti e cinque indietro, assieme a Fabio e Sayed intonammo anche noi quella melodia che, suppongo, dovesse risultare irresistibile alla sposa. Dal tramonto all’alba la giovane e le sue parenti assistettero immobili a quella danza, con stoica dedizione che forse l’avrà condizionata o convinta per la vita.

Talvolta, alla musica ed ai cori di grida si univano gli spari di pistole, fucili e mitraglie. La cerimonia continuò sino al tramonto del giorno seguente, con un lunghissimo pranzo a base di una montagna di riso sormontato da carne di montone e di pollo condita con burro acidulo. Ci addormentammo accanto ai fuochi e rientrammo al campo all’alba di alcuni giorni dopo. Volpi e iene le incontrammo in altre occasioni.

La sera prima di lasciare il deserto giordano avevo rivisto per l’ultima volta Sayed e la moglie, e per l’occasione feci dono del mio coltello, sino a quel momento portato sempre addosso durante le mie solitarie esplorazioni naturalistiche e archeologiche in Europa e infine in Giordania. Era il modello contenente il survival kit al gran completo, divenuto popolare tramite l’attore Silvester Stallone nel primo film della serie “Rambo”.  

 

Il piacevole interrogatorio a Amman

Tempo dopo decisi che era tempo di raggiungere la capitale Amman, sita a nord, dove mi presi alcuni giorni di riposo in un delizioso albergo consigliatomi da Fabio. Giunsi nella metropoli dopo un illuminante viaggio in autostop durato circa mezza giornata svolto in camion da Aqaba, dove mi ero recato a pranzo con alcuni colleghi della missione per festeggiare la partenza. L’autista, era un egiziano mio coetaneo che, felice di non viaggiare in solitudine come gli avveniva quasi tutti i giorni lungo quella tratta, si rivelò un inaspettato cicerone che mi descrisse il suo modo di vedere la società giordana.

Arrivato ad Amman l’egiziano ebbe la gentilezza di accompagnarmi sino all’albergo dove Fabio mi aveva prenotato una camera, una struttura gradevole con ampia vista sul famoso colonnato del Forum romano di Philadelphia. Il direttore mi invitò nel suo ufficio, dove nel corso del rito del benvenuto in presenza di una eccellente tazza di tè, mi fornì il necessaire raccomandatogli da Fabio. Ricevetti così una lista di indirizzi di ristoranti, una stecca di sigarette Camel senza filtro (quella che i miei colleghi chiamavano la “Bamba del Deserto”, una deliziosa rarità di produzione riservata agli ufficiali dell’aviazione giordana, contenente il nero tabacco siriano Latakia e chissà quale sostanza vagamente rilassante, e il numero di telefono dell’accompagnatrice turistica preferita da Fabio, una giovane donna dal fare sensuale e affascinante, che parlava con scioltezza molte lingue tra le quali l’italiano. Fu una guida deliziosa, leggiadra e erudita.

Svolgeva quel lavoro da parecchi anni e fu anche una fonte di informazioni, benché già note in Italia persino ai giornali, su fatti dei quali nell’accampamento beduino nessuno parlava, quali ad esempio certe esecuzioni durante gli eventi del cosiddetto Settembre nero (15). Tuttavia, spesso interrompeva quelle “confidenze” chiedendomi dei risultati della missione archeologica, notizie personali dei partecipanti, il comportamento dei beduini, gli avvenimenti che mi avevano colpito, con quale mezzo avessi raggiunto Amman. Era un modo da manuale di sondare, in modo piacevolmente amichevole, cosa avessi fatto e saputo.

Fabio mi aveva abbondantemente avvertito del principale lavoro della donna e se da un lato mi astenni dal fare la stupidaggine di fornirle notizie false o tendenziose, mi limitai alle informazioni già note al governo giordano o a eventuali altri di quell’area. Tralasciai quindi di riferire sui rapporti di amicizia con Sayed, le confidenze ricevute, eventuale uso di alcolici da parte di componenti della missione e provenienza della bevande (non tollerate dalla legge islamica) o le mie riflessioni su quanto visto o appreso. Quando infine la giovane si spinse a pormi domande nel momento meno opportuno, mi limitai a sorriderle fissandola a lungo negli occhi, e finalmente cambiò atteggiamento.

Mi fermai ad Amman alcuni giorni, all’alba dell’ultimo ci salutammo amichevolmente e, come da programma, mi recai all’aeroporto dal quale presi un volo diretto a Roma. Ovviamente, mi recai al check in non prima di avere controllato accuratamente se nel mio bagaglio fosse stata aggiunta qualcosa di compromettente.

 

Note

1) ne ho già messo in evidenza i meccanismi nell’articolo  pubblicato il 19 giugno 2023 su questo blog: Rapa Nui (Isola di Pasqua, Cile). L’incerto futuro di una remota comunità dell’Oceania agli inizi della crisi egemonica nel mercato globale 

https://www.thereporterscorner.com/2023/06/rapa-nui-isola-di-pasqua-cile-lincerto.html

2) è da notare che l’acquedotto Qa Disi – Amman è stato completato dall’impresa turca GAMA, un fatto che corroborato da altri eventi recenti indica il grado di espansione della potenza economica e politica turca nell’area, piuttosto attiva negli ultimi decenni non solo nella fascia nord africana ma anche nel Vicino Oriente. Il fatto è eclatante, considerato che si tratta di un’area che appartenne all’Impero Ottomano sino alla fine del Primo Conflitto Mondiale, ovvero a circa un secolo addietro, perso a causa della Rivolta Araba (1917-1918) finanziata da Inghilterra e Francia.

3) alcuni anni fa, ricerche idrogeologiche effettuate dagli statunitensi a Qa Disi, hanno accertato che l’acqua estratta dai pozzi del Deserto Meridionale della Giordania contiene sostanze radioattive (in particolare radium, toro e barium). Essendo le quantità superiori a quelle tollerate dall’organismo umano, devono quindi essere trattate prima del loro uso sia potorio che per le coltivazioni, per cui il governo giordano ha già da tempo provveduto a istituire il regolare trattamento di tutte le acque estratte. Bisogna altresì specificare che le formazioni rocciose risalenti al Cambriano/Ordoviciano contengono sempre alte quantità di radium, in qualunque luogo del pianeta esse si trovino. Approfonditi accertamenti sono stati condotti dalla IAEA, l’Atomic Energy Agency e un estratto della ricerca è disponibile online all’indirizzo:

https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/orpnet/home/Shared%20Documents/T1-Dam-Treatment-of-Drinking-Water-Jordan.pdf .

4) in Ahmed Bani Mustafa, 29 gennaio 2018,  The Jordan Times (consultato in data 11-07-2023)  https://www.jordantimes.com/local/97-cent-increase-wadi-ram-visitors-13-cent-aqaba

5) oltre diecimila gruppi d’incisioni di varia grandezza eseguite su rocce, massi, lastroni litici, prodotte da varie culture databili tra la preistoria e gli inizi del ventesimo secolo.

6) allievo prediletto da Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern, Fabio Vianello ne era divenuto in seguito prezioso assistente presso il Laboratorio di Ecologia del Quaternario. Ci frequentammo molto nel corso degli anni trascorsi a Firenze, facendo entrambi parte di una folta combriccola di studiosi in varie discipline che la notte era dedita a vagare da una festa a un’altra. Fabio morì in un incidente aereo avvenuto attorno alla metà degli anni 1990, assieme ad una cara collega e due validi giovani ricercatori, mentre con un aliante sorvolavano il sito preistorico di La Pineta (Isernia) per effettuare alcune foto degli scavi in corso ai quali partecipavano. Fu una grave perdita per la ricerca paletnologica italiana.

7) una delle più antiche pietre topografiche oggi note, datata tra il 3500 e il 3000 a.C., identificata da Edoardo Borzatti nel 1979. Vi sono scolpite con grande precisione le vie di comunicazione e insediamenti inerenti a un territorio di 2500 chilometri quadrati.  

8) raccolsi i frammenti del vaso e li depositai nel magazzino del nostro accampamento a Qa Disi. Dopo la mia partenza, Fabio Vianello ottenne un permesso dalle Autorità di competenza giordane, e inviò l’insieme al Laboratorio del Centro Studi per l’Ecologia del Quaternario a Firenze, dove il vaso venne restaurato nel corso degli anni seguenti.

9) ricordai il fatto circa vent’anni dopo, quando la stessa domanda mi fu rivolta anche a Kiev, in Ucraina, da due ex ufficiali siriani stupiti dalla mia straordinaria somiglianza con il nipote prediletto del mufti di Aleppo, deceduto ancora giovane anni prima e in circostanze che non mi furono chiarite. Mi fu detto che il religioso di Aleppo sarebbe stato certamente felice di conoscermi, ma non ne ebbi la possibilità a causa dello scoppio della guerra civile in Siria.    

10) sembra che si trattasse di un’antica collezione appartenuta al celebre antropologo Paolo Mantegazza. Non saprei dire se appartenesse al Pardini o all’Istituto di Antropologia, che tra l’altro aveva sede nell’antico e magnifico palazzo rinascimentale dei Mantegazza, al quale si accedeva da Via del Proconsolo, a poche decine di metri dal Duomo.

11) che da qui in avanti chiamerò Sayed, al fine di non evocarne il vero nome, per rispetto al suo eterno sonno giunto violento e prematuro.

12) lo sceicco Juleil Soudan Abu Kayed, cugino di primo grado del re Hussein. I rapporti erano di totale fedeltà di clan feudatario consolidato da legami familiari. Legato da profonda amicizia con Edoardo von Löwenstern, morì alcuni anni prima di Fabio Vianello a causa di una lunga malattia gravemente invalidante.

13) alla fine degli anni 1990, di passaggio a Firenze mi fermai a salutare Edoardo von Löwenstern, per fargli le condoglianze per la morte di Fabio Vianello. Nel corso della visita fui messo al corrente della morte di Sayed, anch’essa prematura. Domandai se fosse stato messo al muro in modo violento e accoltellato. Sorpreso, mi chiese come lo avessi saputo, essendo una vicenda non rivelata dalla stampa. Così fui costretto a riferirgli come facesse parte di un gruppo di visioni che avevo avuto all’Isola di Pasqua, nella Polinesia Cilena, durante gli scavi di un insediamento preistorico presso i quali mi ero accampato con una cara amica olandese. Nella fattispecie si trattava di sogni premonitori, nitidi, che ebbero la peculiarità di essersi tutti avverati nell’immediato o nel corso degli anni seguenti.          

Per ulteriori notizie sulla vicenda rimando all’articolo pubblicato su questo blog il 7 aprile 2023, Isola di Pasqua, Cile, 1991. Testimonianza di fenomenologia N.O.E. (not ordinary experiences) vissuta nel corso degli scavi archeologici condotti a Puna Marengo, e in particolare al capitolo Eindpunt, Tokerau e la Vecchietta.

https://www.thereportercorner.com/2023/04/isola-di-pasqua-cile-1991-testimonianza.html

14) tratto dal racconto autobiografico del Colonnello Thomas Edward Lawrence, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” (scritto tra il 1919 e il 1922, ma edito nel 1926), il film è un adattamento romanzato del 1962 al fine di ottenere un colossal storico in stile anglosassone. Nel cast di eccellenza figurano attori quali Peter O’Tool, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn e Alec Guinnes. Quest’ultimo era stato scelto per la straordinaria somiglianza al re Feisal e in molti, incontrandolo, credettero fosse realmente l’ex regnante, inspiegabilmente non invecchiato.

Nel 2005, durante un mio breve viaggio di studi in Siria, un anziano antiquario e uno dei coetanei suoi ospiti fissi del pomeriggio, un colonnello in pensione, mi riferirono che in Siria le reazioni più eclatanti si ebbero a Damasco, e in particolare in quell’area della Cittadella, dove ci trovavamo, tra la grande moschea e il mercato. Era la città di provenienza della dinastia di Feisal e capitale del suo brevissimo regno, dove Guinnes aveva soggiornato nel corso delle riprese del film.

15) una vicenda che ancora oggi grava pesantemente sui rapporti tra la parte di origine palestinese, oggi costituente circa il 70% della popolazione, e quella araba propriamente detta, in gran parte di etnia beduina. Il primo settembre del 1970, dopo avere subito una serie di tentativi di assassinio condotti al fine di rovesciarne il regime monarchico, il re hascemita Hussein decise di affrontare militarmente le potenti organizzazioni palestinesi. Il conflitto armato fu particolarmente violento, causando decine di migliaia di morti, in gran parte civili, e coinvolgendo le forze armate di Egitto, Siria, Stati Uniti e Israele. Si concluse con un trattato di pace firmato al Cairo nel luglio del 1971.

 

Rapa Nui (Eastern Island, Chilean Polynesia). The uncertain future of an Oceanian remote community at the beginning of the global market hegemonic crisis.

by Pietro Villari, 2023. All rights reserved.

Article posted in Italian language on 19 June 2023 and in English language on 23 June 2023.  

                                                                                  

Claude Levi Strauss, Sad Tropics and the epilogue of globalist anthropocentrism

My generation of paleoethnologists from naturalistic studies, formed between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, had the fortune to be nourished not only by strong ideals, by teaching and associating with excellent scholars, by conducting archaeological explorations in most fascinating and remote sites known at the time, but also to participate constructively in the debates that generated the new methodological and doctrinal approaches of our profession. For me and some other colleagues specialized in Prehistory at the Special School for Archaeologist of the University of Pisa and later at the Laboratory of Quaternary Ecology of the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Florence, among the most intriguing fundamental texts were those of Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), father of the structural anthropology. Every time I reread them, new ideas popped up that were useful for my researches.

Among his writings we all preferred "Sad Tropics" (1), a brilliant work: diary 1935-1939 of passionate scientific research carried in the Brazilian rainforest, autobiographical novel, poignant ethnographic account, testimony of the irreversibility of the loss of archaic and traditional cultures of the planet, and last but not least a philosophical work, in some points with prophetic latencies. I was struck by the aseptic lack of truly spiritual references, as if the author's experience had precluded all hope. And yet, for anyone who wants to hear it, the “sacred” hovers in every page of his books, despite being of a rationalist orientation.

As already among the Bedouins of the Southern Jordanian desert, in the remote villages of the Peruvian Andes, and even in Rapa Nui, the most isolated of the Polynesian islands, in those years I had understood all the bitterness of Lévi-Strauss in the last two decades of his centenary life: every possibility dreamed of as a young man to be able to live and study the fascinating, exotic and remote "primitive" communities was now precluded as they were extinct. I could only see the sad consequences, having been deeply corrupted and engulfed in comparison with the massive destructive work carried out by the power of modernity, neocolonialism and globalism with the aim of inducing an all-encompassing planetary monoculture.

At the end of the 1970s, the majority of Italian scholars still could not grasp the profound meaning of that sort of mournful affliction, strongly perceptible especially among French anthropologists, for the disappearance of the last "primitive" populations and their very rich cultural heritage. A Humanity that for hundreds of thousands of years had lived in harmony with the ecosystem in which it felt part and not the master, dissolved in the face of realities harbingers of new pejorative disasters, epilogue of the anthropocentric behavioral drift.

 

Rapadisneyland

Annihilation of the fundamental values of the indigenous culture, overpopulation, insufficient livelihood activities, depletion of available food resources, disposal of solid waste, coastal and groundwater pollution, effects of the decrease in the annual amount of rain, erosion of the entire coastal perimeter, soil washout, constant annual presence of arson, ethnic conflicts, represent for Rapa Nui the problems currently identifiable to face its future. They would require immediate political and economic choices, some certainly unpopular, to the point that it will be difficult to work effectively to resolve them within the current decade.

What is happening today can instead be defined as a demanding operation of political interest, the purpose of which is to set up an imposing technocratic-led bureaucratic administrative apparatus on the island, capable of guaranteeing a system of total control by the Chilean government of the activities carried out therein. It constitutes a dangerous double-edged sword for all the players sitting at the table in this match, as the stake is the formation of the dominant local power, as part of the Chilean national one which is in turn a component of the pro-Western South American group.

Scholars today have the rare opportunity to be able to observe, in a geographically circumscribed economic and political system such as Rapa Nui, the dynamics of development of the pyramid of public administration and, as always happens in these circumstances, the local Deep State group as a reference for the national one and therefore for the transnational powers to which it is connected (2). Ultimately, today's choices will underpin responses to international events that will happen throughout much of this century.

What we can see today is that, on the one hand, there is the rapid progress of the government program, aimed at strengthening control of the island through a local technical-administrative pyramid, which goes alongside the presence of the Chilean army and police forces. In the next few years, it will be made up of a large group of young natives indoctrinated on the Continent and well paid, with the role of management class of the governing bodies of the island, and at the lower levels, employees with minor roles. The local body of "rangers", part of the Nature & Monuments department, will soon be considerably reinforced with new personnel for the control functions, to safeguard the park and in general the heritage spread throughout the island. It will constitute a kind of police force well-vehicled, and equipped also with technologies internationally used in natural parks.

On the other hand, it is obvious to predict that this pro-government pyramid will involve very high management costs for the community, starting with salaries, means and technologies, which will necessarily absorb a lot of electricity, a precious asset for a small island in the middle to an ocean. All this could become incompatible with the system, in the event of a long crisis in the island's economy, as it is currently based on the precarious sustainability of tourist activities, this depending above all on the capacity of air transport and the travel freedoms granted by the countries of origin, which thus keep the flows of huge masses of tourists recorded in the last decade constant. However, the intense exploitation for tourism purposes is the main cause of the physical and cultural wear of the island and its population, a problem of growing gravity that sooner or later will present the bill.

It is also understandable how much this bureaucratic pyramidal construction, which can be defined as a sort of robust, but weakly elastic knitted sheath which in theory should guarantee good governance, constant monitoring and maintenance of the community, can at the same time undermine the foundations of coexistence and indigenous independence aspirations. It is not at all rare that in a westernized region, the presence of a mass of administrative entities in a territory with a special statute, such as Rapa Nui for example, can lead to the emergence of a particular social caste whose roles go beyond the purposes of interest pro-government.

In fact, even if little known in the news reports, a fact in itself highly disturbing, its main "parallel" activity is destined to soon become that of a multifunctional logistic structure, more or less secretly connected to structures of the dominant transnational power, to its multinational lobbying business subsidiaries, to pro-Western service clubs such as Rotary and the Freemasons (3). A logistic apparatus whose ramified dense presence in the territory, generally characterized by self-referential authorities, corporate connivance and omertous behavior, is capable of corrupting government purposes, creating profound hostility in the population, reaching the point of favoring the atavistic aspiration for independence based on the return to ancient Polynesian way of life.

We can see a similar situation in many other places (especially islands) of the planet, which subjected to the “Western” hegemonic system have assumed the characteristics sadly known as banana republics, where the absence of social justice reigns alongside a wide range of corrupting possibilities of the public administration. From direct experience, I can refer to what represents a classic example of the results of the Westernizing manipulation operation: Sicily.

There too a population has an historically strong pro-independence vocation, a fact that made easy to manipulate politically and economically the lower classes, and to satisfy the ambitions of the new middle and upper social classes, that renounced to claim the independence rights to have a status in the Italian society thru the Autonomous Statute grant to the Island by the government. At the same time, the operation was accompanied by the establishment of a mammoth bureaucratic apparatus of control (the "knitted sheath" mentioned above), also building up several important US military bases. Nowadays is a highly strategic site of the hegemonic system of the so-called Western Bloc.

Over half of the Sicilian population has now lost a large part of its linguistic heritage, the main element of the cultural identity that characterized it until the 1960s, replaced by the Italian one. But in the last decades a consistent part of student got a PhD in USA, England and other Anglo-Saxon Countries to and soon they will constitute the management class of island. In this way, deprived of the profound existential meanings of the Sicilian cultural identity, the scientific research and enhancement of its archaeological, monumental and naturalistic heritage, and of popular traditions, have become only a container of elements useful for tourist exploitation. So, Sicilian people, are becoming an example of cultural alienation. As estranged from themselves, today only the worst characteristics remain, being by now a society that has made in its own way, an ape of the flat standardization of the American lifestyle, moreover financed with a huge quantity of funds that the Italian government has obtained in loan from the European Union. In the impossibility of returning them on the agreed date, they will make the State insolvent and therefore totally at the mercy of the transnational powers that represent the real dominant power within the European Union (4).

The Rapanui pyramidal establishment formed by the Chilean government, is a way of guaranteeing the Island to the pro-Western system in the event that in a few decades (that is, at least a new Rapanui generation) could be decided useful to make the island independent. At that time the Rapanui culture will be already deeply modified by manipulations aimed at determining the phenomenon of ethnolysis. In fact, the recent enormous number of crossings of indigenous people with allochthonous elements and the creation of a quantity of government jobs, essential for "naturalizing" and therefore making stable the future belonging of the island's population to the Western cultural sphere, can be attributed to this.

The comparison with the dissolution of the ancient Sicilian independentism (5), although different actors appear, brings us back to what is happening to Rapanui independentism, to the causes of the impossibility of a full restoration of the values of indigenous sovereignty.

The problem facing the Rapanui today is how to deal with the promises of immediate well-being, supported by the creation of an impressive dislocation of stable and well-paid jobs, and the access to modern technologies, accepting the offer in exchange of the conversion to the Western model of life. Even knowing that, in the future, they could lead to accepting participation in those ravenous operations of territorial exploitation, conducted by the various power groups that make up the dominant system in that pro-Western area of the international geopolitical chessboard.

The characteristics of the independentism present in Rapa Nui have legitimate foundations, being internationally recognized the right to self-determination of a culturally and territorially identifiable ethnic group. Consequently, so is the aspiration to re-establish the ancient subdivision of the island into areas occupied by clans; the right of the Council of clan chiefs to elect a ruler of the Isle; and last but not least the right to refuse to lead a daily lifestyle dominated by the stressful rhythms of Western culture.

In short, the indigenous Rapanui cultural model is totally incompatible with the project of exporting "democracy made in America" to the island, that unacceptable disguise of the capitalist summit, fundamentally anarchist but devoted to the system imbued with patriotism. A free-market created to control the classes subordinate to it, seriously drugged by consumerist well-being. An expansionist project, half narcissistic and the other half business, where everything must change so that nothing changes at the top of the system, professed as the New World Order and the bright future of the planet. A cynical plan, poised between the choice of a bankruptcy catastrophe of the Western system, made to take place in slow motion, and what it begins to consider its only alternative for salvation, represented by the activation of a world war of total plundering of resources in areas today outside its hegemony.

The response of the pro-Western summit to the legitimate Rapanui requests was apparently one of opening, granting regional administrative autonomy, but in reality it is of a totally opposite sign. For more than a decade, the population has already been a sort of laboratory for the cultural transformation of the younger generations. Some of these are fully aware of what is happening to frustrate a return to ancient traditions, but they no longer have the political and economic tools to oppose them. Slow and inexorable, ethnolysis is underway.

The presence of operations aimed at the cultural adaptation of indigenous communities to the needs of the Western hegemonic summit can now be found in any area of the Western Empire. We find, standardized, the effects of the partly alienating process of traditions not suited to the needs of hard liberalism, with the exception of that part of them modified by absurd Westernizing revisionisms of an ethical nature. As if culture could be detached from the most disparate educational influences, all irreproducible in the laboratory, among which certainly not least are the environmental ones. Imposing forced and sudden changes to a cultural tradition is tantamount to seriously crippling it, making it unstable in the long term.

Even in Rapa Nui we are witnessing a phenomenon that affects small areas destined for mass tourism, where to survive the population finds itself engaged in daily folkloric appearances. In this case, we are halfway between a sort of Polynesian Disneyland and an operation conceptually similar to Jurassic Park-style commercial aspirations.

Again, as in other similar places under the hegemony of the three-dimensional network of multinational capitalism, one has to ask whether a good portion of the earnings remains on the island or ends up elsewhere. Whether it is sustainable tourism or rather exploitation made even fatter by the presence of the indication "UNESCO site", which even marks the indigenous community, a cultural unicum that should have been protected in a much different way. It will never be possible to intervene effectively on the consequences of the current level reached by overtourism, and in particular on the maintenance not only of the natural and monumental heritage of Rapa Nui, but of the cultural foundations of its community (6).

Despite the media reporting declarations of the opposite sign, the New World Order cannot afford to protect all the rights to the existence of ethnic typicalities, even if it really wanted to, and in fact it works to eliminate them through the process of cultural standardization. In cases of resistance, the irresistibility of its power appears in the annihilation of anything that hinders its geopolitical and commercial purposes. This has been seen for example in Italy also in the clash with national political parties, or with criminal organizations of the mafia or Camorra type, causing profound changes both in their top management and in their doctrines, in order to make them functional to the hegemonic needs of the New Order Western world, prevailing over the local ones.

What else could one expect knowing full well that the very birth of the driving force of the current Western system, the United States, is linked to the annihilation of indigenous populations, starting with those who were present on what became its national territory. A Union of States based on the progressive conquest and a huge massacre of peoples and the disappearance of entire cultures, concluded with the confinement of the survivors in reserves where it was impossible to continue carrying out the traditional indigenous subsistence activities. They were also in that case, like the “traditional” Rapanui, incompatible with the American way of life.

 

The European discovery of the existence of Rapa Nui and the end of an archaic Polynesian civilization

1722. Admiral Jacob Roggeveen, sixty-four years old, is in command of a small naval fleet sent on an exploratory mission in the waters of the Southern Pacific Ocean (7). He is trying to fulfill the dream that has inspired him since he was a child: to discover the legendary Terra Australis Incognita. After years of studies and professional preparatory activities, he managed to convince the leaders of the powerful West-Indische Compagnie (W.I.C., West India Company) to finance the enterprise, in the hope of discovering new rich lands to exploit commercially (8).

After leaving the Chilean coast and passing the Fernandez Islands, he sails in a northwesterly direction for thousands of kilometers, surrounded by the immense unknown expanse of oceanic waters. Thus, it seems almost a miracle when, on the evening of April 5, 1722, on Easter Sunday (Paaszondag in Dutch), the ships arrive in sight of an unknown island. The admiral will then call it Paaseiland, or Easter Island.

The Dutch discover with deep surprise that although it is a small outcrop of volcanic origin isolated in the middle of the ocean, it is inhabited by a few thousand indigenous people and that its coasts are dotted with groups of huge lithic statues. The presence and quantity of these statues (over 1100 have been recorded to date), their construction and the difficulty of transporting them led to the assumption of technological knowledge not attributable to those "savages". The mystery was revealed only a few years ago, but initially the megalithic works generated hundreds of the most disparate hypotheses, such as the attribution to a civilization of giants that had been extinct since ancient times.

The landing on the island takes place only on 10 April. The exploration was conducted by the Admiral accompanied by 134 men, sailors and soldiers well equipped with firearms, unknown to the islanders until then, as were also metallurgy, weaving, uniform manufacturing, ceramics, language and racial characteristics of what, with concern, they noted to be an alien culture, of mysterious and potentially dangerous origins.

Having briefly visited the island and gathered information locally with the help of a Polynesian interpreter who was part of her crew, she probably learned of other islands present after a few weeks of navigation in a north-westerly direction, Roggeveen continued her exploratory journey reaching the northwest edge of the Tuamotu Archipelago, i.e. first the atoll of Takaroa (May 18), and later the island of Makatea (June 2) (9). Here perhaps he collects further information from the natives who definitively convince him of the non-existence of a continent in those seas and of the futility of continuing the exploratory mission in search of the "Terra Australis Incognita", of which rumors have been persistently chasing since the beginning of the sixteenth century (10).

The admiral heads for Indonesia, encountering the archipelago of Samoa, New Guinea and the Moluccas on the way. Thus, after having lost contact with the other ships of his fleet, he arrives in the city founded by the Dutch, Batavia (nowadays the capital Jakarta, which from 1619 to 1799 was the seat of the offices of the West-Indische Compagnie), where he will find officials mocking him of the failure of the mission and the economic damage caused to the WIC, involved in the "crazy" search for the legendary Continent.

The historical importance of the event, immediately understood by Jacob Roggeveen during his discovery of the remains of an ancient civilization in Easter Island, and the mystery of the presence of megalithic statues, mattered nothing to those bureaucrats, who had counted on the discovery of a new continent to resurrect the power Dutch. The explorer died a few years later, but not before leaving a book in which he recounts his adventurous life, his travels to exotic lands, his veiled deep disappointment before the lack of gratitude for his geographical discoveries by the Dutch state administration.

The account that Roggeveen wrote of his brief exploration of Easter Island, with remarkable clarity for the purposes of knowledge even though it was a document drawn up within the bureaucratic-administrative, military and economic-commercial competence of the Dutch state, attracted the attention of Europeans for almost four centuries. Even today it is the oldest and most precious testimonial source available for palethnological, paleoecological and historical studies.

This is how we learn, in contrast to what was described by subsequent travelers starting from about half a century later, the island was fertile and agricultural activities flourished (emphasizing the presence of crops of different species of bananas, tubers and various other vegetables) and to the breeding of a Polynesian subspecies of domestic rooster.

By calculating and mapping the exact position of Paaseiland (Jacob was the son of Aarend Roggeveen, one of the best Dutch cartographers and astronomers of the seventeenth century), he provided the coordinates useful to other sailors who, in the same and subsequent centuries, used it for supply of water and fresh food. Thus it was that, in the following years, the island was reached by whalers or by ships of slave hunters coming from the American coasts causing, within little more than a century, the reduction of the population from about 3,000 to only 110 inhabitants and the destruction of the precarious balance of the island ecosystem.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century the descendants of the native survivors, also as stimulated by scientific studies conducted by learned foreign personalities who have lived part of their life on the island, have developed a strong awareness of what happened to their culture and the need to protect what remained of the past. There is no doubt that the maintenance of notions of the animist faith, in particular the cult of ancestors, was in part tolerated and protected within the Catholic cult until it evolved into a syncretism which has survived until today (11).

                                                                                                                    

Rapa Nui and the terminal crisis of American-style globalism

Thirty-two years have passed since the time I lived on Easter Island (12). At that time, both the inhabitants and the few tourists, who came there out of a spirit of adventure, could not have imagined that within a few years the island would enter the vortex of the global market, experiencing its immediate advantages and sad consequences.

To focus on the problems that, within this decade, could begin to cause profound cultural, geopolitical and economic changes in Rapa Nui, we need to understand what is happening in the countries to which the island owes the prosperity of its current economy.

A phenomenon that exploded in the early 1990s, globalism was based on a project of integration of the world population, eight billion human beings, into the purely consumerist North American model of life. Inspired by neoliberal economic doctrines that professed the establishment of a universalist free market without customs barriers, it was touted as capable of generating the rapid diffusion of greater well-being and social justice on a global level. A bankruptcy ideological model, which from the beginning revealed that its inability to extend freely in different areas of the world through flows of capital, goods and work.

It was empirically ascertained that it required synchronisms that were often impossible to obtain, as they found application difficulties due to incompatibilities existing in the places where they intended to take place (such as, for example, the protectionist government bans on the importation or exportation of particular goods, the difficulty of obtaining permits to conduct international commercial activities, bureaucratic customs control times). Thus, while participating for convenience in the global market - and having profited abundantly from it by exponentially increasing their economic growth - the leaderships of tendentially hegemonic-competitive powers such as China and Russia, operated in such a way as to prevent the spread of the American cultural model.

This choice made it possible to avoid a profound and irreversible cultural contamination, which would have led their own populations to become an active part in the project of the global market as an expansionist phenomenon of American hegemony.

In the case of the Russian Federation, it is difficult to establish whether the law enforcement intervention will be effectively successful in its western portion, as demonstrated by what has been happening in Ukraine for several decades. On the other hand, it currently appears rather unlikely that the populations of eastern North Asia could make their own, in terms of free submission, the typicalities of the lifestyle pursued by the dominant power of the "Western bloc". The situation seems designed to wear down the Russian Federation to the point of disintegration and create the conditions for its replacement by a western area with a group of pro-European/NAVO states and a group of pro-Chinese states in the Eastern area.

By failing to achieve this fundamental goal of the US-led Western hegemonic design, the negative effects caused by the globalist operation on the American economy began to manifest themselves, already weighed down by a public debt of catastrophic dimensions. The first to be hit hard were employees and small businesses, belonging to the lower and middle classes. Since the free market caused the disrupt of the internal structure of the Western bloc's labor market, the wealthy classes linked to large multinational companies were favored.

Undoubtedly one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole affair – although the heads of state powers were well aware of the tragic consequences that, in the medium term, on the basis of that liberal plan would punctually derive from the economy of the Western bloc – very few public figures had the will or the strength to try to oppose the manipulations entrusted to the media machine of the dominant power. That summit of power, made up of a mass of representatives of public and transnational private entities, which conditioned all the political and economic choices of the pro "Western bloc" Countries.    

Thirty years later, the disastrous effects of the globalist attempt now weigh on the future of Europe. North America has managed to arm itself in protectionist terms in its economy, strong in its natural resources, continuing close relations with the Anglo-Saxon countries of what remains of the British Commonwealth. However, there is a dangerous identity crisis, particularly in the United States, which could create an implosion of the federal system, characterized by the centralization of wealth and powers held by the states of the two coasts, eastern and western, to the detriment of that part of the American territory which lies in the middle. That traditionalist Midwest that progressives considered home to masses of communities, characterized by low and crude culture, from which to obtain cannon fodder, low ranked soldiers and good-mouthed consumers. This is a situation which, if not resolved in the coming years, could escalate into civil war.

If in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia there are large territories of influence probably by now considered sufficiently exploited by the ravenous European colonialism - in some areas up to the impoverishment of wealth driven to cause the destruction of local ecosystems, undermining the chances of survival populations – there is also the current situation in North Africa.

Here the energy resources of the oil wells are destined to pass to the control of highly militarized local governments, which are progressively moving away from the American and Western hegemonic model. The same phenomenon, albeit in different terms, is being recorded in Western Asia, and both continents at this rate could emerge from American hegemony by the end of the middle of the current century.

In the worst case, parts of them will become, together with areas of central-western Europe, places to fight a war for hegemonic control for which several Asian countries are candidates. First India and China and the beginning of their competitive naval expansion in the Pacific Ocean. For its survival, China will have to secure its coasts and open the central-western trade routes - up to the Indian Ocean, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, and last but not least the countries of the central-southern African coast - and for this operation is essential for the occupation, annexation and enhancement of Taiwan as a military and commercial base (13).

Without prejudice to the unknown factor constituted by India, if China manages to prevail it will be a further blow towards the decline of American naval hegemony, progressively replaced in the maritime routes on which more than 90% of the planet's raw materials travel.

If it succeeds in annexing Taiwan as an integral part of its territory, China will be able to expand its area of political and economic influence also on the countries of the Pacific Ocean (with the exception of Australia and New Zealand), militarily controlling the crucial points of those rich commercial routes which, through Oceania, will make possible the second phase of the hegemonic projection, preceded by partnerships in areas of Central and South America.

This period of increasingly violent clashes in many areas of the planet is already in its initial phase, and could theoretically continue for decades, first leading to the advent of serious governmental instabilities determined by collapses of economic chains of international importance due to the interdependence of financial systems. A period of global disorder dominated by constant uncertainties, determined by the onset of a fragmentation of power into multiple coexisting hegemonic powers. At the next level of the consequential chain, the worst of the scenarios is the degeneration into a devastating chaos in large areas of the planet, characterized by the disappearance of any form of territorial control, and by the advent of wars between local militias, as has been happening for some time in several African countries.

The current beginning of the entrenchment of the economy of the North American area within its own borders, seems to endorse the hypothesis that the possibility that these scenarios could materialize is considered a real danger in the not distant future, to be placed around the middle of the century.

It is very probable that at that time new weapons of mass destruction, calibrated on racial genetic typicalities, and capable of leading to the immediate and non-polluting disintegration of bodies, leaving the environment intact. Their beneficial side effect will be to cause a drastic solution of overpopulation and the return to a sustainable human presence.

The start of this phase was announced in the now distant 2001, with the brutal violence of the case, by an action charged with symbolism as a contrast to American hegemony: by striking the United States in the financial heart of New York, the intention was to put end to the binary system on which until then the division of world power had been based, West-East, symbolically represented by the Twin Towers.

An attack that can hardly still be considered as a work designed and carried out with the sole participation of one or more terrorist groups, being destined to represent the beginning of a new level of confrontation between military powers in the context of the establishment of a different hegemonic order to control the world's energy resources.

This long introduction, to contextualize the disturbing uncertainties of the future of the Rapanui community, as the long period of the Pax Americana ends, already within the second half of the current decade no population, even the most remote on the planet, will be immune from the consequences of the games of power that will come true on the international geopolitical stage, in a progressive aggravation that could be accompanied by the appearance of catastrophic war events (14).

It seems evident that in the long term, the fate of the Rapanui is linked to its resilience to chaos and sudden vacuums of hegemonic power in southeast Oceania, to the decisions of new powers that will occupy fragmented areas of the collapsed world order and will decide how , when and for what purposes to use the island: large open-air mining quarry, forced emigration of a large part of the population, important logistic upgrade of the military aeronautical base as it is located at a medium distance between South America and New Zealand. Prolonged periods of lack of clean water, food and medicines could lead to serious social unrest. The collapse of economic and cultural relations with the American continent could be followed by a period of cooperation with other powers.

If the competition between the great world powers were to soon degenerate into an all-out war, the survival of the current bureaucratic pyramid and the overpopulation of Rapa Nui could in a short time be seriously compromised by the collapse of the subsistence economy, having been based on tourism and activities connected to it, ignoring the fundamental need to enhance the productive activities of the food chain and to remedy the current overpopulation.

 

Globalism and mass tourism in Rapa Nui

In the last decades, the mysteries concerning the construction and transport of moai have been largely revealed, but the island remains a center of global attraction not only for the cultural peculiarities of its native population, the abundant megalithic archaeological remains and the large Parque Nacional Rapa Nui which makes up about a third of its territory.

Today there are also dozens of restaurants specializing in recipes based on fish and shellfish (15), a dozen excellent hotels and a number of bed & breakfasts and residential homes offered for rent, which make a stay pleasant for those who frequented it for a decade, also as one of the most exclusive places for international surfing and diving.

Its coasts are dotted with specialized centers that offer guides and instructors of a valid level, such as Papa Tangaroa, Mata Veri, Viri Iuga O Tuki, Tahai, Huareva, Vaihu, Koe Koe, Akahanga, Motu Hava, all mentioned in surf forecasts. com, the largest online specialist site on the planet (16). Consulted by the international elite of surfing, the site offers free real-time support as a "global big wave finder, with powerfull swell with light or offshore wind".

A datum that provides a clear idea of the level now reached by satellite monitoring in real time of the planet's surface, even of the ocean, is that this online site provides forecasts of wave height, wind power and direction, and temperature of the water. They have highly reliable weekly value even for this remote place.

In 1991, at the time of my stay on the island, the total number of residents, including the few tourists, amounted to a maximum of about 3,000 individuals. Today the island has a stable human presence of over 8,000 inhabitants to which over 90,000 tourists are added annually. There is a paved road that leads from the Mataveri airport to Hanga Roa, the small Polynesian village over the course of a few decades has become a modern town, with the citizens who also suffer from periodic traffic jams of tourists and vehicles, well equipped for tourism also with accommodation facilities of a high international standard.

 

Rights and aspirations of the native population in a community that has become multi-ethnic

In remote Rapa Nui, about half of the residents have Polynesian ancestry. It is a very active part of the population, which claims the rights to the expropriated or extorted lands (in the total absence of legal rights) from their ancestors over the last two centuries. With tenacious pride they defend, and pass on to the new generations, what was preserved in the last century of the oral tradition of the ancient Rapanui culture. A community that, among other things, places as a primary necessity a truly functional application of the recent sustainable tourism plan, as the pitfalls deriving from globalism have become pressing, in particular the serious negative consequences of invasive tourism.

It is not easy to reconcile the sovereign political and socio-economic expectations of the Chilean government – which, let us remember, together with other South American countries seeks to confront the rapacity of certain multinational powers – with the right-necessity to safeguard the traditional lifestyle not only of natives, typically Polynesian, having now extended to a large part of the entire island community. It is very different from the American Way of Life by now ideologically identifiable as "Western", characterized by values on which even a good half of Americans themselves today find themselves reflecting in a profoundly critical way. Furthermore, it cannot be kept silent that on the island there is a minority convinced that it is possible to restore the conditions prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the traditional economic activities consisting of fishing, agriculture and small cattle, sheep and poultry farms, in order to live harmoniously the days, marked out in respect of the rhythms of Nature and in the animistic faith.

To make this lifestyle effective, the indigenous community has long been asking for the reintegration of the original system of division of lands, returning them to the care of family clans, the appointment of a ruler supported by the council of clan chiefs, and to reintroduce the ancient practice collective to devote himself to public works. The basis of this society would therefore be constituted by the relationships of strong emotional ties and mutual assistance, typical of family clans and of the unity represented by the syncretic Christian-animistic religion, in which respect for the bond with the ancestors exerts a strong social aggregation.

Despite these excellent intentions, it is undeniable that the impressive presence of tourists during the year, mostly belonging to European or American cultures standardized in the current form dictated by the group of powers at the top of the "Western bloc", constituting its "dominant system”, has become a powerful source of a destabilizing paradigm due to the attraction that those consumerist lifestyles exert on native youth. These are influences with corrupting consequences on the estate of family clans and of the daily practices expression of profound spirituality, on which Polynesian cultures base their survival.

See, for example, the effects of the diffusion of addiction to drugs and alcohol on individual psychophysical integrity and community activities, while the wealth deriving from tourist commercial activities has led to the emergence of powerful social classes no longer necessarily linked to the most appreciated by traditional Polynesian culture, or even at odds with its values.

It is one of the methods developed to try to reach the New World Order dominated by the Anglo-Saxon cultural model in an American sauce. It therefore seems to be a manipulation constituting the primary purpose of the globalist intent, carried out so that mass tourism could become the main Western means of exporting its liberal ideology, that consumerist lifestyle source of devastation in areas where traditional culture still reigned, sabotaging their harmony with the ecosystem that hosted them.

 

Overtourism: how to create the unsustainable ecosystem

The current human overpopulation of the island constitutes a clearly definable danger with devastating, unsustainable effects, in the event of total isolation, starting with food needs. The serious reality of the effects of the depletion of marine resources follows; problems related to the disposal of waste produced daily; ocean pollution from plastic materials with large quantities of microplastic particles, in continuous deposition not only in the coastal strip of the island, but also on the hills due to the effect of winds and rains; sea level rise over the next few decades and related coastal erosion; the worsening of extreme atmospheric phenomena; the danger and duration of future pandemics and the evolution of current ones, such as hemorrhagic dengue in its Polynesian variant.

Each of these problems represents a constantly pending danger to the capacity of the sustainable economy project, recently launched by the Chilean government and strongly desired by the local community and the international scientific one, to curb the damage caused by the mass exploitation of the natural and cultural attractions of the Island. However, as can be deduced from the above, most of the problems have causes that are not attributable to local factors and therefore uncontrollable if drastic changes are not made, which are possible only if brought about by decisions implemented at an international political level. A mere hope, distant and not very credible, today considered difficult to implement for political and economic reasons.

In the distant future, all these problems could be accompanied by further emergencies such as uncontrolled demographic growth, serious energy crises, destabilization and replacement of the island's government system, racial unrest, forced transfer of part of the population, transformation of the island into a open cast mining area, desertification.

Today tourism constitutes the pivot of the driving activities of the local economy, to the point of creating serious environmental problems to support it, such as the increase in deep-sea and coastal fishing activities, and the impossibility of locally disposing of the enormous mass of waste, generated annually by the use of materials imported into the island for the needs of tourists and consumed for their needs.

About twenty years ago, the exploitation of the fish fauna by deep-sea fishing by fleets of large specialized ships belonging to large multinational companies caused a dramatic decrease in tuna fishing, which traditionally constituted one of the main food resources of the island population. The local fishermen were forced to resort to the intensification of fishing along the coastal strip, with the consequent impoverishment of its marine fauna.

An attempt has been made to stem this destruction of the ecosystem with the issue of new protective laws and the establishment of marine parks. The interventions are late considering the conditions of impoverishment of the Pacific Ocean, which until the 1970s had been preserved very rich in life, which had long since reached alarming levels. The situation was also made worse by the massive pollution of the entire coastal strip of the island due, among other things, to the growing problems associated with the enormous presence of waste derived from plastics in the Pacific Ocean. The latter constitutes an onset with highly alarming pejorative forecasts, as the world production of non-disposable waste and highly harmful to living conditions on the planet is on the rise. The quantities of this waste dispersed throughout the seas also have devastating consequences for the entire food chain of the planet, even in remote locations such as Rapa Nui (17).

Hand in hand with the explosion of the tourist phenomenon, there has been the emergence of phenomenologies that should have been addressed before allowing the arrival of the hordes of visitors generated by globalizing consumerism: 1) the population's awareness of their rights of distant autochthonous origins, also in a sovereign sense and therefore strongly protective of their own culture and religion. In particular, it was necessary to understand the magnitude of how much the latter is inseparable from respect for monuments, settlements, and as a whole all the sacred places that animistically bind the population with their ancestors, considered protectors of the harmonious development of life in the natural island environment; 2) the disproportionate presence of visitors on the island has led to the production of huge quantities of waste, for the disposal of which there are very high costs in terms of transport to Chile or Peru for their disposal; 3) the enormous pollution of the coasts and the diffusion of microplastic powders due to problems not dependent on local activities; 4) the need to strengthen the hospital service, adapting it to the needs due to the coexistence in limited areas of the island of thousands of allochthonous individuals, coming from various areas of the world and constantly being replaced by new arrivals.

Currently, the resident population is constantly and massively exposed to pathologies imported by travelers from their countries of origin, some of which are presumed to be serious and transmissible, potentially capable of determining the emergence of cases of treatment-resistant bacteria or pandemic viral forms with high lethal impact.

The local economy is based on mass tourism, while little practical importance is given to traditional forms of subsistence, typically Polynesian. What would happen to the islanders in the rather probable case that in the next few years the planet was shaken by a new pandemic, far more aggressive than the one experienced at the time of COVID? How could they try to survive in the absence of food self-sufficiency and strong social cohesion, among other things capable of bringing out old grievances and transforming themselves into a clockwork device, made up of different racial and cultural components?

With this in mind, a government intervention took place in 2018, in order to limit the duration of the residence permit to thirty days (which previously granted a maximum of 90 days) citing social and environmental reasons, and to better preserve the monumental heritage. However, this solution seems not only merely specious, but counterproductive with respect to the intentions, as the space created for new arrivals multiplies the possibilities of importing diseases, especially those inherent in the spread of epidemic infections generated by microorganisms resistant or totally refractory to antibiotic treatments.

Yet, this seems very clear to the Chilean government institutions, which in fact in the case of the COVID pandemic, imposed the closure of the island to tourists in advance and severely limited civilian air traffic from 17 March 2020 to 4 August 2022, thus trying to prevent catastrophic consequences for the island population.

According to data from 2014, an average of 20 tons of waste is produced on the island a day, or 7,300 tons a year, including 440,000 plastic bottles. The creation of an adequate thermal waste disposal plant on the island must come to terms with the reality of the facts. Only a small part can be disposed of or recycled, the rest is to be allocated to an indefinite storage area. And this represents a significant problem in terms of environmental pollution and the occupation of large storage areas on the island, which are also destined for constant expansion. In fact, think of the consequences if suddenly there were no possibility of continuing to periodically send this particular toxic waste to Chilean blast furnaces and Peruvian industrial plants specialized in their treatment in complete safety. For health and environmental reasons, the treatment cannot be carried out on a small island overpopulated for tourism and home to a natural park.

The problem of waste could also compromise the conditions for the development of reforestation, since there is a relationship between waste disposal by combustion, which leads to environmental pollution. In particular atmospheric conditions, also concerns the formation of clouds with toxic potential and, last but not least, the compromise of the aquifers which mostly end up in the sea, thus interacting with the coastal ecosystem. Even if they were small quantities, it is the continuity of their production, diffusion and deposition that would constitute a danger for the ecosystem and, last but not least, the subsistence activities linked to it and the consequent damage to the health of the population.

 

Mass media and globalist manipulation: the "Burning of Rapa Nui" of October 2022

By curious coincidence, once the 2020-2022 epidemic period ended, about two months after the reopening of the island to tourists, the drumbeat of the international press attracted the attention of the world masses, reporting with an escalation of alarming news. A gigantic fire has developed threatening the village of Hanga Roa, the national park and hundreds of moai, the famous ancient megalithic statues (18). The ways in which these narratives were created and disseminated, and then dissolved in a predictable happy ending, shows some aspects that, at least from a journalistic point of view, should have been appropriately focused by adding a good dose of self-criticism.

I summarize this story as it seems to be a typical Deep Event (19), in this case an event that I don't think would surprise anyone if it were planned in some office. What we can see from the work of the media, it is certainly manipulated with inflating, choosing and concealing the truth, in order to attract public attention to a topic. We can see how it is possible to package news in such a way that the narrative is able to excite world public opinion, and can also be useful for accompanying or diverting attention from other news. But the primary purpose is to favor cascading effects of an economic nature in a given area of geopolitical interest.

Firstly, even if it was not proven, the dynamics of the fire led the mayor of Hanga Roa to declare, two months later, i.e. at the beginning of December 2022, not only that it had been arson, but that as such it is a usual phenomenon, literally specifying "like all those that have previously developed on the island". It is interesting to note that the declaration was immediately only partially taken up by the international media, omitting the truly alarming fact that fires and arson events in general are common on the island (20).

After that, in a few days we witness the fattening of the news in other newspapers, transformed to the point of heading it by inserting the disturbing term "attack", or fearing a real attack on the island's environmental and cultural heritage. It is also declared that "about four hundred moai", or monumental stone statues, i.e. just over a third of those present on the entire island would have been affected by the fire. Without specifying what is meant by this term, given that those to be cleaned of blackening are about eighty and only one has suffered irreparable damage to its surface. Again the true extent of the problem is left vague. What was really the damage to the environment and monumental assets? What are the chances of a complete cleaning of the area and restoration? Repairing and restoring are two distinct types of intervention with considerably different costs and times.

The manipulative interest of the Western media, orchestrated on an international scale, appears to highlight the importance of the island's natural and cultural heritage, reminding the masses of it, stripped of any problems deriving from rampant globalism, and above all arousing in public opinion a strong desire to reach and enjoy Rapa Nui, paradise island, before it disappears. And to legitimize government measures for the strengthening of the bureaucratic pyramid of control of the island.

Despite the great national and international media intervention that fears a fire of impressive dimensions, it is good to bring the alarm back in its real terms, not having affected a large part of the island, but an area of about 100 hectares of the 7,150 that make up the Park Rapa Nui National Park, which occupies about 44% of the entire island territory.

Initially the media reported a fire that broke out, for unknown reasons, in a cattle farm located near the border with the national park, northwest of Rano Raraku. From here, due to the wind, it would have extended in a south-easterly direction, surrounding the northern area of the ancient volcano. According to local news, the spread of fire inside the crater would have been prevented thanks to the work of firefighters and local volunteers, the latter equipped only with spades, sticks and stones. Of the hundreds lapped by the flames, only one statue would have suffered irreparable damage.

However, six months later, on March 20, 2023, an article that appeared on the official UNESCO website reveals (without mentioning the Chilean government source) that it is not one, but a "series of fires", all of which occurred in month of October 2022 (21). This circumstance, if confirmed, would seem to eliminate the randomness of the event.

Whether it is really an arson, or deliberately set in several places to aggravate the balance, to date still remains an unsolved question. There is no news of the existence of any suspects, nor of the reasons behind the gesture, in this case if the causes are to be found in local disputes or in the context of activity connected to an intervention of a higher criminal level, with mandates and interests external to the Rapanui community. It is therefore presumable that the investigations are still ongoing, and that due to their complexity they could at best take a few years (22).

Instead, we need to ask ourselves how it was possible that a fire originating in a farm could have spread to a natural park of international importance and placed under the protection of UNESCO. From a report published by the United Nations Organization, we learn of the existence of a problem of illegal occupation of land and that the encroachment of livestock into the natural park is a recurring fact (23).

It would have been useful for reporters to personally visit the area affected by the fire, to ascertain whether the so-called firebreaks had been built at the edge of the park, such as, for example, cleared pasture land, such as to constitute an impediment to the spread of the fire. Furthermore, a visit to the competent public offices of Hanga Roa, to possibly view the fire prevention plan of which I assume the island was already equipped in that year, to know the level of training of the population in anticipation of natural disasters, teams of volunteers to be employed in these cases to assist the tourists and to support the work of the firefighters. But let's leave the data provided in early May 2021, before the fires occurred, by the fire brigade itself to speak.

We thus discover that in the last decade on the island there have been an average of about 90 forest fires, 10 structural fires, 20 interventions associated with motorized vehicles, 40 associated with people, 20 with animals, 10 vertical interventions or with ropes, 10 escapes of gas. Other than an idyllic, peaceful Polynesian island largely uninhabited: on average about one fire to put out a week, in addition to the more or less definable routine daily interventions.

The bomberos barracks is equipped with 6 professional firefighters and 40 trained volunteers, and an availability of four intervention wagons, one of which with latest generation 4x4 traction to reach areas that are difficult to access and equipped with a pump with a 3000 liters of water per minute. A marvel of technology, costing over 270,000 US dollars, arrived on the island in May 2021 (24).

If the emergency response system, according to what was declared to the media by the Authorities, is therefore validly operational, and since it is impossible that more than 5 of the 100 fires a year (5%) could have originated by self-combustion, what is it that determines them? Careless tourists, illegal food cooking activities, arson (and here we get lost in a vast range of very different motivations, from private interests to political ends). The problem is therefore socio-cultural and must be solved at the family clan level, with greater control of the masses of tourists, without prejudice to the need for a sharp reduction in their daily quantity and to equip the whole island with an adequate number of well-trained vigilantes.

Tourism has not returned to the figures of the economic boom of 2018, when the island was stormed by over 100,000 visitors who resided there for a minimum of a week each, resulting in a turnover of over 70 million dollars. However, the beacon of the media circus aimed for about two months on this island following the fire, has allowed a good recovery of its economy based on the multiple work activities linked to mass tourism. A coincidence that has helped keep a vital annual income going, amounting to about $1 billion over twenty years. Not bad for a remote islet in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The Western-like socio-economic standard of living of the natives of Rapa Nui has grown considerably in recent decades, thanks to the possibilities offered by tourism and the constant work carried out - also with the important support of international environmental organizations - by local authorities such as the Ma'u Henua indigenous communities. Among other things, this is assigned the administrative management of the Parque Nacional de Rapa Nui, which occupies about a third of the island.

 

The rescue of the monumental heritage as a breaking of the ancient magical-religious balances

The Rapa Nui that I had the pleasure of contributing to its scientific exploration over thirty years ago has been slowly disappearing for more than a quarter of a century now. It is painful to take note of this, and this is true for all the other places on the planet that were still intact at the time and which today are in an alarming condition, amid senseless exploitation of economic resources, overpopulation and pollution. These are the consequences of the latest ideological madness of liberalism, globalist consumerism, which, passed off as a source of global well-being and cultural progress, is now proceeding in an exponential and unsustainable expansion, probably already beyond the point of no return.

As if that weren't enough, the problems generated by the rise in sea level, attributed to global warming and the consequent melting of polar ice, are also hanging on Rapa Nui. Within the current century part of the sea coast will be subject to erosion causing, if time is not taken, the ruinous fall and submersion of the statues (moai) and their sacred megalithic bases, of which the island is scattered throughout its coastal perimeter (25). There is a real possibility that within the next century, the expected worsening of the current climatic conditions will drastically reduce the surface of Rapa Nui until it becomes an uninhabitable rocky islet.

This process of destruction is already present in the case of some monumental areas, aggravated by the effect of storm surges, and others will probably be within the next few decades. Starting today, it is necessary to decide whether to move them to higher altitudes, transport a part of them to museums located on other continents, or leave them to their fate to be swallowed up by the ocean abysses. In any case, these are operations that require considerable funding, particular mechanical means, specialized manpower, and a few decades of work.

It is perhaps the most dramatic of the short-term interventions to be made on the island, as the problem affects the population in its strong animist magical-religious bond with the ancestors.

It is a form of animism widespread throughout Oceania, characterized by a close relationship with nature and its forces, the cult of spirits and the pantheon of deities. Failing to impose the Christian religion on the natives, the missionaries managed to convince them both with protection against the violence of foreigners, agreeing to replace animistic places of worship with churches, the typicality of spirits with those of saints even in religious ceremonies. However, throughout Polynesia, the work of the missionaries has not managed to erase the presence of animism, resulting in a very evident religious hybrid (syncretism), for example, in the course of festive celebrations with dances and music, and in the strong spiritual with nature (26).

If the authorities will decide to move the monuments to another location, they should keep in mind the respect of the rights, exercisable by the Rapanui population who has recovered the ancestral animist faith, to request the government authorities to activate the magical-religious ceremonial procedures. The monuments were erected with particular ceremonial rituals, and the breaking and new affixing of their magical "seals" in another location must be carried out by animistic priests, so as not to seriously alter the will and the harmony evoked and induced in those places.

It is not a problem to be underestimated, as it involves religious beliefs and the strong spiritual bond of the population with the island.

 

Footnotes

1) Lévi-Strauss C., 1975, Tristi Tropici, Il Saggiatore ed. (translation by Bianca Garufi), Milan, pp. 441. The first edition was published in 1955.

2) I have written extensively about it in articles published on various online sites, and since 2020 all of them can be consulted in this blog. In particular, I refer to the article of 27 July 2018 “Operative transnational structures and the Supranational Deep States network. A criminologist on Noah's Ark", first edited on The Reporter’s Blog, and since 19 June 2020 available at The Reporter’s Corner:

https://www.thereporterscorner.com/2020/06/operative-transnational-structures-and.html   and in the seven articles of the series "La Tecnocrazia e il Sistema di Potere in Sicilia", Parts I-VII, published from 2018 to 2023.

3) reference to the indications in note 2. As regards the phenomenon of self-referential state authorities, read what is expressed in the article published on this blog on 12 August 2022 “La Tecnocrazia e il Sistema di Potere in Sicilia. Parte V: il Feestschrift, il cerchio magico, e la costruzione del mito dell’Intellighenzia tecnocratica ") https://www.thereporterscorner.com/2022/08/la-tecnocrazia-e-il-sistema-di-potere.html

4) 27 July 2018 “Transnational operational structures…” op. cit. in footnote 2, also for the relevant bibliographical notes regarding the description of the European Commission provided in 2017 by Basil Coronakis in his monograph The Deep State of Europe: Requiem for a Dream: “the most sophisticated and corrupt administrative machine in the world… devoted of any political legitimacy”.

5) it disappeared during the nineteenth century due to the advent of the purely Masonic national unitary ideology, and the geopolitical interests of the great powers of Western Europe of that time, which finally in the twentieth century led to the establishment of the Italian Republic and the construction of US military bases on the island.

6) Many interesting works have been dedicated in recent years to the unsustainability of the presence of large tourist flows, known with the technical term overtourism, to the overpopulation of small islands, and to the socio-cultural problems associated with these. I point out in particular:

Ahmad F., Draz M.U., Su L., 2018, Taking the bad with the Good: The Nexus between Tourism and Environmental Degradation in the Lower-Middle Income Southeast Asian Economies, Journal of Cleaner Production, doi: 10.1016/J.Jclepro. 2019.06.138

Angel P., Bergamini K., 2020, Sociocultural-Carrying Capacity: Impact of Population Growth in Rapa Nui, in G. Cirella (ed.) Sustainable Human - Nature Relations. Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements, Springer ed., Singapore, pp. 23-47

Cinnaghi E., Mondini G., Valle M. (edited by), 2017, The tourist carrying capacity. A tool for the management of cultural heritage, Quaderni della valorizzazione. New series 5, Direzione Generale dei Musei, Rome, pp. 130

Cristino C., Recasens A., Vargas P., 1984, Isla de Pascua: Procesos, Alcances y Efectos de la Aculturación, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universitad de Chile: https://www.academia.edu/19391005/Isla_de_pascua_proceso_alcances_y_efectos_de_la_aculturacion_pdf_ 2159_kb_1

Lima M., Gayo E.M., 2020, Ecology of the Collapse of Rapa Nui society, Royal Society Publishing, 287, pp. 1-10

Palombi M., 2020, Il fenomeno dell’overtourism nelle realtà insulari: il caso studio dell’Isola di Pasqua, Ca' Foscari University, Venice, Degree thesis, pp. 136

Telfer D.J., Sharpley R., 2016, Tourism and Development in the Developing World, Routledge, 2nd ed., London and New York, pp. 462

7) at that time called simply Great Sea. The term Polynesia was instead coined about a quarter of a century later, in 1756, by the Frenchman Charles de Brosses to indicate all the islands of the Great Sea, including those of Malaysia. In 1832 the term was restricted to the islands present in the current geographical circumscription of the Polynesian Triangle, with Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island at the top.

8) Gelder v. R., 2012, Naar het paradijs, het rusteloze leven van Jacob Roggeveen, ontdekker van Paaseiland (1659-1729), Uitgeverij Balans, pp. 336

9) Gelder v. R., 2012, Naar het paradijs, op. cit.; Heyerdhal T., 1958, Aku-Aku: The Secret of Eastern Island, Rand McNally & Co., Chicago, pp. 384

10) of this land refers to a map compiled in 1513 by the Turkish Admiral Piri Reis, discovered in 1929 in the library of Topkapi, the Sultan's Palace in Istanbul.

11) Of great importance were the efforts of European and American scholars, including the Bavarian Anton Franz Englert, born Sebastian, a polyglot Catholic missionary who from 1935 to 1968 dedicated part of his life spent on the Island to recovering the memory of the past, sensing how much the ethnic resilience and cultural flourishing of that tormented population depended on it.

Mulloy W.T., 1969, Sebastian Englert 1888-1969, in American Anthropologist 71: 1109-1111

Englert S., 2004, La tierra de Hotu Matu'a. Historia y etnologia de la Isla de Pascua: gramática y dicionario del antiguo idioma de Isla de Pascua, 9th ed., Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, pp. 361

12) Villari P., 8 April 1993, I giganti dell’Isola di Pasqua, in La Sicilia, p. 32 (full page with several of my articles dedicated to the topic);

Villari P., 1997, Saggio di scavo nell’area di un "hare moa" sito in localita Puna Marengo (Isla de Pasqua, Chile), Ultramarina Occasional Papers, Ortiz Troncoso R. ed., Number 3 (November 1997), pag . 1-12, Amsterdam;

Villari P., 20 December 2000, Eindpunt, Tokerau e la vecchietta, in Grifone, bimonthly issue of the Ente Fauna Siciliana, year IX, n. 6 (file 48), pp.6-7.

Villari P., 10 April 2023, Easter Island (Chile), 1991. Not ordinary experiences (N.O.E.) phenomenology during the archaeological excavations at Puna Marengo. The Reporter's Corner   https://www.thereporterscorner.com/2023/04/easter-island-chile-1991-not-ordinary.html

Villari P., May 4, 2023, Toroko, 1991. A memory of the first Easter Island disco (Rapa Nui, Chilean Polynesia). The Reporter's Corner. https://www.thereporterscorner.com/2023/05/toroko-1991-memory-of-first-easter.html

13) the ancient Ceylon seat of important sacred places and monasterial centers of Buddhist worship.

14) conducted with weapons of mass destruction with a selective biological target, which do not involve infrastructure and cause very limited damage to the ecosystem.

15) at the time of my stay, in 1991, the only two activities of this kind used exclusively local fish, not compromised by pollution and taken in negligible quantities compared to what has happened in the last twenty years. In this way the sustainability of the island's coastal ecosystem was still active.

16) at https://www.surf-forecast.com

17) research conducted by the Institute of Ecology of the Católica del Norte University, UCN, Chile. The researchers ascertained that the mass of plastic waste beached on the coasts of Rapa Nui comes mainly from Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, but which also include origins from other areas of the planet. For example, read the article published online on December 19, 1919: https://www.noticias.ucn.cl/especies-invasoras-utilizan-basura-plastica-para-llegar-a-las-costas-de-rapa- nui/

A UN report refers to a floating mass of rubbish off the Chilean coast, largely made up of plastic debris that had reached an area three times that of Chile and is expected to increase annually. Research suggests that at the current rate, by 2050 there will be more plastic waste than fish in all of the planet's oceans. Regarding the Chilean situation and that of Rapa Nui:

https://www.mondonuevo.cl/isla-de-basura-frente-a-chile-ya-es-tre-veces-el-tamano-del-pais/

https://moevarna.com/en/plastic-contaminates-the-coast-of-rapa-nui

Also read the striking results of the research of scientific missions carried out since 2015 in the remote Henderson Island, an atoll belonging to the Pitcairn Islands Group whose ecosystem remained untouched until 1985. Its coral beaches were literally covered by a quantity of plastic fragments of concentration among the highest on the entire planet. Even more disturbing, the amount found doubled in the seven years between the measurements carried out by the two scientific missions. The consequences on the health of marine fauna and birds related to it for food use are still being studied in the laboratory, but since the preliminary observations have already been published, it is clear what tragic consequences the world ecosystem will face in the coming decades, being most of the plastics non-disposable.

Last summer the entire beach of that atoll, now considered the former last paradise of the South Seas, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, was covered by a mass estimated at around 70 billion plastic fragments, associated to a quantity of faunal specimens that died due to their presence, and themselves a source of death for the species that feed on them. That vision is a preview of what will happen, in a few decades, to the beaches and seas of the entire planet if solutions are not found at an international level.

Lavers J.L., Bond A., 2017, Exceptional and rapid accumulation of anthropogenic debris on one of the world's most remote and pristine islands, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Edited by Karl D.M., University of Hawaii, Honolulu.  https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1619818114

18) read for example https://apnews.com/article/rapa-nui-easter-island-fire-e27ed4f03fa67e2ftdae10341efdc151

19) for the notion of Deep Event reference to: 27 July 2018 "Transnational operational structures..." op. cit. in note 2

20) from The Guardian newspaper, 7 October 2022, Easter Island fire causes “irreparable” damage to famous moai statues; and from the online US site https://apnews.com/article/rapa-nui-easter-island-fire-e27ed4f03fa67e2f7dae10341efdc151

21) https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/after-fires-rapa-nui-chile-unesco-launches-evaluation-and-management-plan-islands-world-heritage

22) from a criminological point of view the story could reveal an interesting sequel. In fact, if the arson is the result of an operation conceived and carried out by specialists, such as a blitz accompanied by a series of diversions, the chances of tracing the investigators will be practically nil. We could therefore reach the classic situation in which, due to political necessity, it becomes necessary to circumscribe the problem locally by covering it up, and if this is not possible, trivializing it. Here we enter the field of mass manipulation techniques, creating what is needed to incriminate an individual or a small group of the racial minority, of characters with a borderline character, or in any case unpopular with the local and national dominant power. The meal served to the beasts of the media circus, which amuses and reassures the public, and eliminates the annoying presence of opponents.

23) https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/715   I quote the following passages: "An increase has been observed in cattle that wander illegally inside the Park limits”… “Additional staff and resources are needed for the administration and care of the site, to reinforce the number and training of the park rangers team, and to increase the operating budget. There is   constant pressure on park lands; the State must prevent its illegal occupation").

24) Paula Rossetti, May 4, 2021, New forest wagon for the bombers of Rapa Nui.  https://www.elcorreodelmoai.com/?p=2697  The author, of Italian origins, is the editor of El Correo del Moai, an independent periodical founded on the island in 2009.

25) Casey N, Haner J., in https://nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/14/climate/easter-island-erosion.html

26) Even the concept of family nucleus has remained broader than that of the European and North American Christian populations. In addition to the married couple and their children, there are also grandparents, uncles, cousins and "adopted relatives".

  Chile, Claude Levi Strauss, Easter Island, global market hegemonic crisis, Rapa Nui, Rapanui language, Sad Tropics