Carmen Cardinali Paoa Carmen Cardinali Paoa Carmen Cardinali Paoa (born 21 June 1944) is a Chilean professor. She served as the Governor of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the government of president Sebastián Piñera, between 2010 and 2014. A native of the island, Cardinali hasworked as a professor in Santiago and also in Easter Island's tourism industry. Cardinali's predecessor, former Governor Pedro Edmunds Paoa, resigned in early August 2010 following the occupation of six buildings by protesters who demanded the return of land to the descendents of the island's indigenous Polynesian inhabitants. Lawyer Jorge Miranda was appointed as interim Governor until a replacement
Rapa Nui language to return them. A shipload headed to Easter Island, but smallpox broke out en route and only 15 arrived at the island. They were put ashore. The resulting smallpox epidemic nearly wiped out the remaining population. In the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1860s, Rapa Nui came under extensive outside influence from neighbouring Polynesian languages such as Tahitian. While the majority of the population that was taken to work as slaves in the Peruvian mines died of diseases and bad treatment in the 1860s, hundreds of other Easter Islanders who left for Mangareva in the 1870s and