Trouble in Paradise

...All are a sort of albatross to their governing powers...

...Noumea, the capital, is much farther from Paris than Honolulu from Washington...

...Whatever develops, this whole archipelago's main economic asset FIJI ISLAND NATIVE: NOT WITHOUT VANITY rival of Gauguin, the native population has enjoyed a great reputation for friendliness and sexual freedom...

...In Suva, Fiji's capital, genocide haunts all political discussion, whether among Fijians or Indians...

...The island, under Chilean rule, has no natural resources and no source of income other than its mysterious monumental sculptures, useful for attracting a few curious-minded though not necessarily wealthy tourists...

...The Tonga Islands are a British Protectorate, not a colony, and their rulers wisely seem to feel that full sovereignty is a luxury they can ill afford...

...Making the situation worse, Chile, unlike Mexico or Peru, is an aggressively "white" Latin American republic, with a tradition of de facto racial segregation...

...The recent example of Trinidad and Tobago has had a salutory effect here in the Pacific, as well as in the distant and much wealthier Bahrein on the Persian Gulf...

...There, since the whaling days and long before the artourists...

...As late as the 1880s, Chile experienced disastrous Indian wars, in the course of which its very warlike and independent native Araucanian population was barely defeated, then ruthlessly massacred and almost exterminated...

...these flower-children of the South Seas are becoming more and more politically restive and...

...Samoa, for example, is subject to violently destructive storms...

...Responsible leaders, administrators and natives alike, are afraid of the political chaos and economic vacuum that the sudden withdrawal of the governing powers might leave...

...THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS Trouble in Paradise By Edouard Roditi Port Moresby To most people, the islands of the South Pacific still represent a distant and hazy ideal of Paradise on Earth, with palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze off the blue lagoon...

...What is more, the tenuous solvency of these two groups rests almost solely on their profitable phosphate deposits, which will likely be exhausted in 10 more years...

...Together, Western New Guinea (now the Indonesian colony of Irian), Eastern New Guinea and Papua (Australian) and the scattered islands from New Guinea to the southernmost island in the Solomons, speak close to 700 languages and dialects—that is, one quarter of the total known to be spoken throughout the world...

...But the Hawaiian melting-pot somehow functioned fairly efficiently, and the resulting population finally chose, with the Americans' approval, the privileges of statehood and full American citizenship over those of independence and sovereignty...

...Finally, Indonesia's new government has of late been much less vocal in its demands for the liberation of "Eastern Irian" (Eastern New Guinea), but it has nonetheless not yet dropped its claims...

...Nauru and New Guinea, in particular—have rich natural resources...

...Though endowed with great natural resources and a thriving tourist trade, Trinidad and Tobago almost bankrupted themselves with the expenses of world-wide diplomatic representation...

...To complicate matters further, New Guinea as a whole is the second largest island in the world, smaller only than Greenland, and it is thus subject to economic, geographic and demographic factors that are not always relevant to the off-shore islands...

...I was able to converse in Dutch with several native refugees from Irian...

...in idle moments between seasons of the tourist trade, hare begun to formulate demands for independence...

...Even if the state could survive awhile by taxing phosphate exports, the minerals would soon become too exTAHITIAN NATIVES: ENJOYING THE IDYLLIC LIFE pensive for foreigners to bother exploiting...

...what are mild infirmities to visiting tourists are frequently fatal diseases to them...

...The population is afflicted with an endemic and apparently hereditary leprosy, and in addition is subject to disastrous epidemics...

...The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, for instance, are so small and so widely scattered that their government, should they join together as a country, would never be able to afford the expensive communications and transport network necessary to administer them...

...as in Hawaii, from the mother country but from Australia...

...and as such, it will continue to depend economically on American and Australian tourists, seeded with a few Japanese, very wealthy Europeans, and the international beachcombers...

...Nevertheless, the assimilation of the native population as Chilean citizens, with rights equal to those of the Chilean mainlanders, also seems impossible...

...Granted independence and limited sovereignty in 1962, with its foreign affairs and defense administered by New Zealand, Western Samoa is currently grappling with serious economic problems that are further aggravated by New Zealand's own balance-of-payments and currency crises...

...Nauru, on the other hand, is apparently taking the example less to heart...

...Or should they be lumped together with New England, New Ireland and the other islands off the eastern tip of Papua and New Guinea, also presently governed by Australia, to form a multi-lingual and multi-cultural archipelago state of their own...

...The islands at the very heart of the South Seas are plagued by being small and scattered and...

...Their situation is vastly different from Hawaii's, and any decision will obviously depend on American fear of aggression in the Far East—that is, on considerations of strategy instead of what might be good for the native populations...

...Laws now prevent them from acquiring any further land from the somewhat less industrious Fijian natives, but if the islands were to become independent, the Indians would shortly be in a majority and would inevitably vote a repeal of the restrictive laws...

...Such a small and isolated nation could not possibly bear the cost...

...in general, only sparingly blessed with economic assets...

...In Tahiti and Bora-Bora this sexual freedom has become one of the secret assets of a thriving tourist industry, advertised by word of mouth rather than in print...

...Ironically, Indonesia, the ex-colony, exercises a sinister colonial imperialism of its own over the "liberated" former Dutch colonies...

...Balkanized to the extreme by geography and history, the islands are being swept up in the anti-colonialist nationalism of the day without being educated or economically prepared to run their own affairs...

...Had its native population been more numerous at the start, or had it been allowed to expand demographically, Hawaii might have become a kind of American Algeria, with a sociological "color line" dividing the mass of native laborers from a powerful upper class of American settlers and their "poor white" satellites...

...The span of their difficulties defies the kind of pragmatic measures that the United Nations, the responsible trustees, or the former colonial powers are likely to devise for their economic, cultural and political development to prepare them ultimately to become sovereign nations...

...Few of the Afro-Asian "anti-colonialists" who demand sovereignty for this area have ever visited it, and fewer still have any complete idea of its complex tribal and linguistic problems...

...Should these reunited Solomons then be granted independence at a later date...

...Almost none of them alone would be a viable independent nation, yet most are also too far away or too different in culture and population to be grouped together in any kind of logical pattern...

...They were Christians and complained bitterly not only of being persecuted as "Dutch collaborators" by the Moslem Javanese officials of Indonesia, but also of being looked down upon because they were Melanesians (Christian or not) by Javanese officials and soldiers—whom the refugees, in turn, considered inferior to both themselves and their Dutch ex-rulers...

...How peaceful can the Pacific remain under the circumstances...

...A few of them—New Caledonia...

...Whether the French will grant independence without a struggle, whether those who demand it are prepared to struggle for it, whether those who obtain it are capable of assuming the responsibilities of self-government—all this remains to be seen...

...Increasingly Americanized by their contacts with the will continue to be its reputation as a tourist's paradise...

...The people have little resistance to influenza, the common cold or other respiratory ailments...

...Many Australian businessmen already swing further south to include New Caledonia in their regular business tours to New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland and the other neighboring islands under Australian control...

...The populations, with their varied physical types, languages and cultures, do not themselves know what they want...

...and the island is endowed with its own natural wealth in its rich nickel mines...

...And nearby Noumea exerts a certain cultural pull as the glamorous mini-Paris of the South Pacific...

...And the entire Afro-Asian bloc, which said nothing in response to India's annexation of Portuguese Goa or Indonesia's annexation of Dutch-administered Western New Guinea, is watching jealously to be sure the Australians do not defy this order...

...the tourists who contribute so importantly to the local economy are not...

...What the United States will eventually advocate for its other Pacific territories—most importantly Eastern Samoa (Pago-Pago), the Mar-shalls...

...The Samoan economy already depends to a heavy extent on savings sent home by citizens who live and work abroad, primarily in New Zealand or American Eastern Samoa...

...others, like Easter Island, have none...

...With the decolonization of Asia and Africa, Oceania is the world's last major area of colonial administration—in the main because the powers responsible for these island territories can find no practical way of relinquishing their responsibilities...

...Or should all these islands in the end be attached to Papua and Eastern New Guinea when the latter obtains independence from Australia...

...The Fijis, the southern Solomons, the Tonga group, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and many others including Pitcairn Island are British territory...

...Thus the most logical solution for the New Hebrides would be to give a constitutional structure to their cultural dependence on New Caledonia...

...Only irresponsible outsiders are clamoring for "freedom now...

...Exacerbating this racial hatred, the Indonesians are ruthlessly exploiting Western New Guinea's few natural resources without putting any investments back...

...The United States, for one, began by allowing the natives of the Hawaiian Islands to be ruthlessly exploited and then vastly outnumbered by American settlers and cheaper imported labor...

...Only in Australian New Guinea, in fact, can one detect a nascent bona fide movement for independence...

...It is a former German territory that Australia was given as a mandate but forbidden to annex...

...Great Britain has long been anxious to grant Fiji its independence, but the native Fijians have staunchly refused...

...As a separate nation...

...While it enjoys exceptionally rich phosphate deposits, it is small and extremely isolated, inhabited by only 400 natives and some 2,000 expatriate Australians (administrators and employes of the phosphate interests or of Australian banks and airlines), plus a few Chinese and Indian traders...

...But if Nauru suggests a farce, Easter Island is a tragedy...

...Here it is France, partly because these islands have attracted more French settlers—in recent years French refugees from Algeria—and partly because the French mix more readily with the islanders, treating them as equals and intermarrying with greater frequency than the British...

...Even putting economic difficulties aside, the historical and political connections of each island—as in other areas of the Pacific—have persistently forestalled federation of any sort...

...Moreover, each of these responsible nations, however chastened and liberal its present policies, must pay now for its past errors of commission and omission...

...the Carolines, Guam and Wake—is anybody's guess...

...On a far greater scale and with more complex cultural and racial factors, the area resembles the West Indies...

...Since Chilean administrative theory and practice allow little provision for the advancement and integration of its mainland non-white population, the problems of the natives of Easter Island have received, at least until recently, no serious attention...

...In Port Moresby, Eastern New Guinea, Australian administrators and educated native leaders agree that the kind of independence the Afro-Asian nations demand for them in the UN General Assembly would be a castastrophe, leading to an internal struggle for power and eventually a blood bath similar to what happened in the Congo...

...The few native islanders would all be doomed to permanent exile as ambassadors and consuls if the country ever attempted to maintain the usual permanent diplomatic representation of a sovereign nation...

...In truth, few areas of the world face so inextricable a tangle of economic and political problems as these territories...

...Yet the natives mix more and more freely with French settlers as their education in French schools improves, and their assimilation into French culture is so great that only a major aberration of metropolitan French policy would be likely to provoke a separatist movement...

...Even an ideally organized plebiscite, supervised by the most scrupulous and independent observers, might give startling and dismaying results...

...Western Edouard Roditi has just completed a tour o] the South Pacific islands...

...Suggestions that American Samoa should be united with the new island state ignore the fact that the Western Samoan government can at present honor only the most urgent financial commitments for economic development and can expect only limited aid from New Zealand...

...Scheduled to become independent soon, it is a freak among the Pacific Isles...

...In contrast to the drifting American policy in Samoa, the French approach is assimilationist, tending to make New Caledonia, its largest holding, into a kind of French Hawaii...

...Nor are all the very different native populations of this vast area equally anxious to obtain their independence...

...Tahiti is consequently afflicted with a considerable population of hotel employes, night-club entertainers and hostesses, pimps, touts, male and female prostitutes, in fact with a vast and politically volatile demi-monde...

...Eastern Samoa has a long history of traffic with American whalers and traders and with the American Navy, while neighboring Western Samoa (Apia) was first a German colony and, after 1920, a British and then a New Zealand mandated territory...

...Climatic conditions vary, even though most enjoy a tropical or subtropical climate...

...The New Hebrides archipelago, just north of New Caledonia, is unique in being the only area in the world still governed by a condominium of two nations—England and France...

...Long ago English sugar planters imported Indian laborers, who have since prospered and multiplied till they represent about half the population in the archipelago...

...and those whose land is worthless anyway...

...For health reasons alone they must be protected against contacts with the mainlanders at least until their leprosy and fatal non-resistance to usually benign illness can be controlled...

...New Caledonia would still find itself dependent, and increasingly so, upon Australia's expanding industrial economy for supplies and markets...

...The governing powers, too, are more numerous than one might suppose, and each has its own administrative philosophy and traditions that inevitably inject an element of subjectivism into its "colonial" policies...

...Within a generation they would probably dispossess all but the wealthiest native Fijians...

...The Solomon Islands, a British Protectorate, pose a special problem and perhaps enjoy wider options than almost any of the other Pacific groups: Should they be reunited with the larger Northern Solomons, a former German holding now administered by Australia...

...In the Australian-administered eastern half of New Guinea...

...Yet independence is obviously an irrational solution to Nauru's future...

...the Marshalls and the Carolines to the north arc a U.S...

...The fate of the Marquesas and Society Islands, which the French administer from Tahiti, is more problematic...

...trust...

...As is usually the case under this system, one of the two governing nations clearly predominates...

...Even with the best of will and the most liberal of policies, it would not be realistic to encourage the Easter Islanders to become self-governing...