Geography

The northern Chilean desert contains great mineral wealth, primarily copper and nitrates. The relatively small central are a dominates the country in terms of population and agricultural resources. This are a also is the historical center from which Chile expanded until the late 19th century, when it incorporated its northern and southern regions. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands and features a string of volcanoes and lakes. The southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands. The Andes Mountains are located on the eastern border.

Area: 756,945 sq. km. (302,778 sq. mL); nearly twice the size of California.

Cities: Capital--Santiago (metropolitan area esto 6 million). Other cities--Concepcion- Talcahuano (840,000), Vina del Mar-Valparaiso (800,000), Antofagasta (245,000), Temuco (230,000). Terrain: Desert in north; fertile central valley; volcanoes and lakes toward the south, giving way to rugged and complex coastline; Andes Mountains on the eastern border. Climate: Arid in north, Mediterranean in the central portion, cool and damp in south.

People

Nationality: Noun and adjective--Chilean(s). Population (2003): 15.1 million. Annual population growth rate: 1.2%.

Ethnic groups: Spanish-Native-American (mestizo), European, Native-American. Religions: Roman Catholic 69.9%; Protestant 15%. Language: Spanish. Education: Years compulsory--12. Attendance--3 million. Adult literacy rate--95.8%. Health: Infant mortality rate--8.9/1,000. Lije expectancy--79 yrs.

Work force (6.0 million); employed 5.5 million: Community, social and individual services--26%; industry-14.4%; commerce--17.6%; agriculture, forestry, and fishing--13.9%; construction--7.1 %; financial services--7.5%; transportation and communication--8.0%; electricity, gas and water--O.5%; mining--1.2%.

Government

Type: Republic. Independence: September 18,1810. Constitution: Promulgated September 11,1980; effective March 11, 1981; amended in 1989, 1993, and 1997. Branches: Executive--president. Legislative--bicameral legislature. ]udicial--Constitutional Tribunal, Supreme Court, court of appeals, military courts. Administrative subdivisions: 12 numbered regions, plus Santiago metropolitan region, administered by appointed “intendentes,” regions are divided into provinces, administered by appointed governors; provinces are divided into municipalities administered by elected mayors.

Political parties: Major parties are the Christian Democrat Party, the National Renewal Party, the Party for Democracy, the Socialist Party, the Independent Democratic Union, and the Radical Social Democratic Party. The Communist Party has not won a congressional seat in the last four elections.

Suffrage: Universal at 18, induding foreigners legally resident for more than 5 years.

Economy

GDP: $72.1 billion. Annual real growth rate: 3.3%. Per capita GDP: $4,557.

Forestry, agriculture, and fisheries (5.7% of GDP): Products--wheat, potatoes, com, sugar beets, onions, beans, fruits, livestock, fish.

Commerce (10.7% of GDP): Sales, restaurants, hotels.

Manufacturing (15.9% of GDP): Types--mineral refining, metal manufacturing, food processing, fish processing, paper and wood products, finished textiles.

Electricity, gas, and water: 2.9% of GDP.

Transportation and communication: 7.8% of GDP.

Construction: 7.8% of GDP.

Financial services (12.6% of GDP): Insurance, leasing, consulting.

Mining (8.0% of GDP): Copper, iron ore, nitrates, precious metals, and molybdenum.

Trade: Exports--$20.44 billion: copper, fishmeal, fruits, wood products, paper products, fish, wine. Majar markets--U.S. 22.6%, EU 23.3%, Japan 11.8%, China 7.7%, Korea 4.9%, Mexico 4%, Brazil3.7%. Imports--$17.4 consumer goods, chemicals, motor vehic1es, fuels, electrical machinery, heavy industrial machinery, food. Majar suppliers--EU 17%, Argentina 20.3%, U.S. 13.6%, BrazillO.1 %, China 6.9%, Korea 2.7%, Japan 2.9 %.

The Andes

The Andes Cordillera is the backbone of the country and runs along its entire length. The watershed between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the middle, highest ridges of the cordillera form Chile’s eastern boundary. In the north the Andes consists of two almost parallel ranges. Here the mountains are the highest and most rugged with peaks aboye 20,000 feet. The highest peak in South America, Aconcagua at 22,834 feet, towers to the east of Chile’s border. Mountain passes in this region are infrequent and treacherously difficult, rising aboye 10,000 feet.

To the south the mountains become gradually lower with peaks of only 12,000 feet or less. The passes are lower and easier to negotiate. In the far south, they are split frequently into deep glacially carved fjords and deep ocean channels. The mountains extend across the island of Tierra del Fuego to the extreme southem tip of the continent.

The area of the western Chilean Andes has one of Earth’ s densest concentrations of volcanoes. Over 2,000, both active and extinct include almost 50 that have erupted at least once within the last century. Frequent seismic events remind us that this is still a very tectonically active region.

The Costal Range

The coastal range or Cordillera de la Costa fol1ows the coastline through northern and central Chile rising steeply from the shoreline in high unbroken c1iffs that continue for hundred of miles. Thus the coastline here has no natural harbors and a formidable lack of access inland. The greater part of the coastal range is an eroded plateau that slopes west to the sea in c1iff terraces. The range rises to an altitude of 8,800 feet. The southerly extension of the range forms a chain of sorne 3,000 hilly islands, extending along the fjord-lined coast to Cape Horn.

The Central Valley

The most vital are a to the progress of human settlement in Chile is the relatively low are a between the Andes and the coastal range known as the Central Val1ey. This long narrow basin of varies in width to approximately 50 miles at its widest. The Val1ey is interrupted by spurs from the Andes and is divided into two main basins, each of which inc1udes a number of smal1er basins.

The northern basin, the Atacama desert, is one of the driest areas on the earth. The second, in central Chile extends from, Santiago southward to Puerto Montt and is the country’s prime agricultural area; it is also the most densely inhabited region with a very welcoming c1imate.

History

When Spanish Conquistadors first arrived on the shores of Chile it was inhabited by Quechua tribes in the north and in the central and south by the Araucanian people. The Incas were in control of northern and part of central Chile but the fierce resistance of the Araucanian tribes held them back in much of the rest of the country. The first Spanish settlements were established in the mid-sixteenth century: Santiago in 1541 and Concepción in 1550. Spanish settlers, mainly from Andalucia, were attracted to central Chile because of the pleasant c1imate and fertile soil. The settlers had to face repeated assaults from the indigenous Araucania and intermittent war with them continued into the second half of the nineteenth century.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the population of the Spanish settlements and their surroundings numbered approximately 100,000. lbis population grew to about 500,000 by mid-eighteenth century and to one million by 1830. People of European extraction were concentrated in central Chile, between Santiago and Concepción; few settled in the northern and southern regions. lbis pattern of dispersion began to change only in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the rapid growth of mining activities and the immigration of non-Iberian Europeans.

Under Spanish colonial rule, northern and central Chile were part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The south remained under the control of the Araucanians almost until the nineteenth century. Independence was first declared in 1810. At that time, central Chile was to a large extent controlled by a small, upper class of Creoles (locally born Europeans), most of them owned large estates. A period of internal instability and strife followed, which resulted in the restoration of Spanish rule in 1814. Combined Argentinean and Chilean forces under José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins, who crossed the Andes from Argentina, managed to defeat and drive out the Spanish army and restore Chile’ s independence (1818). O’Higgins becarne Chile’ s first president.

Chile defeated Bolivia and Peru in a war (1879-1883) for the control of the Atacama Desert and its rich mineral deposits. During this war,.Chilean troops occupied Lima; Chile won the disputed territory; Bolivia lost its outlet to the open sea and Peru lost the Tarapaca district. A multi-party, parliamentary regime carne into being in 1891; however, the interests of the upper class, comprised mainly of owners of large states and wealthy business people, continued to predominate. After a short period of military rule (1924-1925), followed by the reinstatement of the democratically elected president Arturo Alessandri, a new, more progressive, constitution carne in force (1925). Left-wing parties, including communist, gained influence from the 1930s and played an important role in elections of several presidents. Right-wing parties, however, remained in actual control. Presidential candidate of the left-wing parties, Salvador Allende, won the elections in 1970 and nationalized mines, industries, and public services. Allende was deposed and died in a military coup in September 1973, which was followed by 16 years of military dictatorship by General Augusto Pinochet. Elections were held in 1989. Democraey was restored in 1990 with the assumption of the presideney by Patricio Alwin Azocar.

People

Pre-Columbian Chile was peopled by a variety of ancient cultures, many of them politically subject to the Incas who they predated by many centuries. The country’ s varied topography governed the character of its population groups and the extent to which they were subject to Inca rule. Native groupings included A ymara farmers in the desert north, who cultivated maize and tended flocks of llamas and alpacas; fisherfolk in the coastal are as; Diaguita Indians in the mountainous interior; Araucanian Indians in the center and south, whose fishing and agricultural settlements were barely touched by Inca incursions; and numerous groups of archipelagic hunters and fishers in the remote south.

All territory west of Brazil was granted to Spain by the 1494 Spanish-Portuguese treaty. The Spanish assigned the task of conquering Chile to Pedro de Valdivia, whose expedition reached Chile’ s fertile Mapocho Valley in 1541. Santiago was founded in the same year, with the cities of La Serena, Valparaíso, Concepción, Valdivia and Villarrica following soon after. The Río Biobío marked the southern extent of Spanish incursions, where they were barred by the resistance of the fierce Mapuche tribes. Valdivia rewarded his followers with enormous land grants, which resembled the great feudal estates of his Spanish homeland. Although mining and business outstripped agriculture as Chile’ s merchant megaliths, it was the social structure of the estates that shaped colonial Chile. The native population was devastated by the unwitting introduction of infectious diseases, and the Mestizo population, the offspring of Spanish and Indian unions, were used as tenant laborers on these huge estates, many of which were still intact in the 1960s.

By the 1820s, the cumbersome methods by which taxation was extracted by Spain allowed a flowering Pan-American identity to blossom into a push for full independence. Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín led armies of freedom fighters from Venezuela to Peru, and from Argentina into Chile. Bernardo Q’Higgins, son of an Irish immigrant and erstwhile viceroy of Peru, became supreme director of the new Chilean republic. The newly independent Chile was a fraction of its eventual size, consisting of Santiago and Concepción, and with fuzzy borders with Bolivia and Argentina. The coming of the railways and military triumphs over Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific (1879-83) incorporated the mineral-rich Atacama Desert to the north and the southern temperate territories. Chile quickly achieved a degree of political stability and relative democracy, enabling rapid agricultural development and the advancement of mining, industry and commerce. The now empowered working class and the nouveau riche both challenged the political power of the land-owning oligarchy in a brief but bloody civil war in the 1890s.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the political c1imate swing between right and left with no governrnent having sufficient support to cement large-scale reformo Infrastructure development was generally sluggish, leading to rural poverty and urbanization through desperation. It was not until the 1960s that social reforms were successfully instituted by the Christian Democrats, who targeted housing, education, health and social services. These policies threatened the conservative elite’ s privileges and also offended the radical left. Chile’ s politics were becoming increasingly militant, polarized and ideology based when the Marxist Allende’ s leftist coalition of Socialists, Communists and extremists carne to power in 1970. Allende introduced sweeping economic reforms, inc1uding the state takeover of many private enterprises and the wholesale redistribution of income. The country was plunged into economic chaos.

General Pinochet seized power in a bloody coup on September 11, 1973 using air force jets to bomb the presidential palace. Allende died, apparently by his own hand, and thousands of his supporters were murdered. Dark days followed, with assassinations, purges and enforced exiles commonplace. It is estimated that as many as 80,000 people were tortured or murdered. Rumors of CIA involvement in the coup were given credence by the US-instigated suspension of credit from international finance organizations, and the contemporaneous financial and moral support given to Allende’ s opponents.

At the head of a four-man junta, Pinochet dissolved Congress, banned leftist parties and suspended all opposition. Pinochet’ s monetarist economic policies brought stability and relative prosperity, but in a 1988 referendum to approve his presidency, voters rejected him by a majority of 7 percent. In the 1989 multi-party elections, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin beat Pinochet’ s candidate, Heman Buchi, and power was peacefully transferred. Democracy retumed to Chile although many of the previous regime’ s power brokers wield a lingering influence.

Current President Eduardo Frei has undertaken the challenge of reconciling Chileans with their difficult past by accelerating human rights tribunals and inquiries into the fate of Chile’ s 2,000 “disappeared.” Unfortunately, resistance from the political arm of the military machine has hampered his efforts. President Frei has also struggled in matters of constitutional reform, failing to eliminate eight “Institutional senators” appointed by Pinochet who are not subject to a popular vote. Frei’ s economic reforms have, however, alleviated crushing poverty to sorne degree, and currently, Chile is becoming the leading economic and democratic country in South America. It is now considered a stable and forward-Iooking democracy.