Unsettling the boundaries of Latin America: Rapa Nui and the refusal of Chilean settler colonialism

ABSTRACT Latin America is popularly imagined territorialized by continental Central and South America, extending to the Caribbean Islands; however, from the vantage of the Chilean government, Latin America expands thousands of miles into the Pacific Ocean within an area it legalizes as ‘the Chilean Sea’ (El Mar Chileno) given its control of ‘Easter Island’ (Isla de Pascua). Since 1888, despite persistent resistance by the Indigenous Polynesian Rapa Nui people, Chile has imposed colonial rule on the island through a variety of administrative strategies. This paper illuminates how state construction of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) around Rapa Nui can be understood as a biopolitical strategy of environmentality that strengthens Chilean settler colonialism in Rapa Nui. While settler colonialism has been rightly analyzed in terms of control of land, herein the ‘transit of Empire’ from Indigenous loci of enunciation appears to also articulate through the ocean. Despite the MPA, forces of Rapa Nui biopower mobilizing new Indigenous institutions and practices of self-determination are shown resilient in El Mar Chileno; the boundaries of settler colonial Latin America are unsettled.