Next Stop, Easter Island

Chileans faced a poser. As possessors of Latin America's only South Seas colony, ought they not ask for membership in the new U.N. Trusteeship Council?

In Santiago, ambitious Leftist Lautaro Ojeda, editor of the small bi-weekly Economista, noisily called attention to Easter Island, Chile's Polynesian possession. This year, when the Angamos made the annual voyage 1,900 miles west from Valparaiso bearing supplies and several officials, some Santiago newsmen went along. What they later told of the island's wonders, and its potentialities for growing sugar, pineapples and other tropical produce, roused Editor Ojeda to some of his hottest editorials.

In the middle of the 19th Century, Peruvian pirates swept down on Easter and carried off many of its inhabitants to slavery. Smallpox killed hundreds of others. When the Chilean Navy moved in (in 1888), its sailormen found no more than 200 or 300 Polynesians, living among Easter's great stone images. For years, Easter Island's only visitors were chance whalers, occasional foreign warships, and archeologists trying to solve the mystery of the giant statues. One & all, the visitors liked the island's moderate climate and superb trade winds, but for vacations or all year preferred the lusher surroundings of Tahiti (2,800 miles away).

In 1935, the Chilean Government decided that Easter Island would never be commercially valuable, and rented 53 of its 60 square miles (for $150 a month) to a subsidiary of the British trading firm of Williamson & Balfour Co.

Sheep in the Cemetery. This year, newsmen found the 656 tattered Polynesian survivors (there were also nine Chilean officials, two Englishmen, one Frenchman) living in one coastal village. The British company's 60,000 sheep grazed in the shadow of the ancient monoliths. The annual wool-clip alone was worth around $150,000. Ojeda demanded that Chile develop the island itself. Other Santiago papers took up the cry.

Already Chile's Foreign Office was discussing with the Australians a South Pacific airline that would be sure to end Easter's pastoral isolation. The island's grassy downs, ten hours from Chile, would make a perfect way station.

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