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Easter Island Casino Plan Raises Fear of Cultural Erosion
By LARRY ROHTER

HANGA ROA, Easter Island — This is, as the saying here goes, "the most insular of islands," the place on earth farthest from any other place on earth. Most people here seem to like it that way, which is why a new plan to build a casino on this speck in the South Pacific has created an uproar among the island's 3,800 residents.

The furor may seem a small matter in a very small place. But to those who live here, the plan is the latest manifestation of a centuries-old onslaught of intrusions — from colonization and disease to intermarriage and the steady erosion of the local Polynesian culture and language — which threatens finally to undo one of the globe's singular outposts. More