Geography
Situated South of Peru and west of Bolivia and Argentina, Chile fills a narrow 2,880-mi ( 4,506 kilometer ) strip between the Andes and the Pacific. One-third of Chile is covered by the looming scopes of the Andes. In the North is the driest topographic point on Earth, the Atacama Desert, and in the centre is a 700-mile-long ( 1,127 kilometer ) thickly populated vale with most of Chile ‘s cultivable land. At the southern tip of Chile ‘s mainland is Punta Arenas, the southernmost metropolis in the universe, and beyond that lies the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, an island divided between Chile and Argentina. The southmost point of South America is Cape Horn, a 1,390-foot ( 424 m ) stone on Horn Island in the Wollaston group, which belongs to Chile. Chile besides claims sovereignty over 482,628 sq myocardial infarction ( 1,250,000 sq kilometer ) of Antarctic district ; the Juan Fern & A ; aacute ; ndez Islands, approximately 400 myocardial infarctions ( 644 kilometer ) West of the mainland ; and Easter Island, approximately 2,000 myocardial infarctions ( 3,219 kilometer ) West.
Government
Republic
History
Chile was originally under the control of the Incas in the North and the mobile Araucanos in the South. In 1541, a Spaniard, Pedro de Valdivia, founded Santiago. Chile won its independency from Spain in 1818 under Bernardo O’Higgins and an Argentinean, Jos & A ; eacute ; de San Martin. O’Higgins, dictator until 1823, laid the foundations of the modern province with a bipartisan system and a centralised authorities.
The dictator from 1830 to 1837, Diego Portales, fought a war with Peru from 1836-1839 that expanded Chilean district. Chile fought the War of the Pacific with Peru and Bolivia from 1879 to 1883, winning Antofagasta, Bolivia ‘s lone mercantile establishment to the sea, and extended countries from Peru. Pedro Montt led a rebellion that overthrew Jos & A ; eacute ; Balmaceda in 1891 and established a parliamentary absolutism enduring until a new fundamental law was adopted in 1925. Industrialization began before World War I and led to the formation of Marxist groups. Juan Antonio R & A ; iacute ; os, president during World War II, was originally pro-Nazi but in 1944 led his state into the war on the side of the Allies.
In 1970, Salvador Allende became the first president in a non-Communist state freely elected on a Marxist plan. Allende rapidly established dealingss with Cuba and the People ‘s Republic of China, introduced Marxist economic and societal reforms, and nationalized many private companies, including U.S.-owned 1s. In Sept. 1973, Allende was overthrown and killed in a military putsch covertly sponsored by the CIA, stoping a 46-year epoch of constitutional authorities in Chile.
President Pinochet Presides Over a Barbarous Command
The putsch was led by a four-man junta headed by Army Chief of Staff Augusto Pinochet, who finally assumed the office of president. Committed to extinguishing Marxism the junta suspended parliament, banned political activity, and badly curbed civil autonomies. Pinochet ‘s barbarous absolutism led to the imprisonment, anguish, disappearings, executing, and ejection of 1000s of Chileans. A authorities study in 2004 indicated that about 28,000 people had been tortured during his regulation, and at least 3,200 slayings and disappearings had taken topographic point.
The economic system, in rags under Allende ‘s Socialist revolution, bit by bit improved after Chile ‘s return to denationalization under Pinochet. In 1989, Pinochet lost a plebiscite on whether he should stay in power. He stepped down in Jan. 1990 in favour of Patricio Aylwin. In Dec. 1993, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, the campaigner of a center-left alliance and boy of a old president, was elected president.
Pinochet, who had retained his station as ground forces commanding officer in head after the 1989 plebiscite, retired in March 1998. In Oct. 1998, he was arrested and detained in England on an extradition petition issued by a Spanish justice who sought Pinochet in connexion with the disappearings of Spanish citizens during his regulation. British tribunals finally denied his extradition, and Pinochet returned to Chile in March 2000. He died in Dec. 2006 at age 91, before confronting test for the maltreatments of his 17-year absolutism.
Socialists Return to Supremacy
Ricardo Lagos became president in March 2000, the first Socialist to run the state since Allende. Chile ‘s economic growing slowed to 3 % for 2001, partially the consequence of a bead in international Cu monetary values and the economic convulsion in neighbouring Argentina. In 2003, there were several minor fiscal dirts affecting insider information and graft. In response, Lagos introduced new reforms assuring greater transparence. In 2004, Chile passed a jurisprudence allowing divorce for the first clip.
In 2006 presidential elections, Socialist Michelle Bachelet won 53 % of the ballot. The former baby doctor is a subsister of the Pinochet absolutism, which was responsible for her male parent ‘s decease and subjected her to prison, anguish, and expatriate. Bachelet took office on March 11, going Chile ‘s first female head of province. She promised to go on Chile ‘s successful economic policies while increasing societal disbursement. The president ‘s first major challenge came when 700,000 of the state ‘s pupils organized a national boycott in May demanding educational reform. The pupils called off the work stoppage in June after the authorities agreed to turn to their concerns.
In January 2008, president Bachelet swore in six new curates to her 22-member cabinet. The major alteration was the assignment of Christian Democrat leader Edmundo Perez Yoma for Interior Minister, the top political station of the cabinet. Bachelet besides replaced curates of economic system, public plants, excavation, agribusiness, and planning. The cabinet alterations are non expected to impact authorities policy.
On April 17, 2008, instruction curate, Yasna Provoste, was impeached by parliament after neglecting to explicate the disappearing of about $ 580 million in school financess.
President:Michelle Bachelet ( 2006 )
Land country:289,112 sq myocardial infarction ( 748,800 sq kilometer ) ; entire country: 292,260 sq myocardial infarction ( 756,950 sq kilometer )
Population ( 2008 est. ): 16,432,536 ( growing rate: 0.8 % ) ; birth rate: 14.8/1000 ; infant mortality rate: 8.1/1000 ; life anticipation: 77.1 ; denseness per sq kilometer: 21
Capital and largest metropolis ( 2003 est. ) :Santiago, 5,333,100 ( tube. country ) , 4,372,800 ( metropolis proper )
Other big metropoliss:Vi & A ; ntilde ; a del Mar, 303,100 ; Valpara & A ; iacute ; so, 274,100 ; Talcahuano, 252,800 ; Temuco, 247,200 ; Concepci & A ; oacute ; n, 217,600
Monetary unit:Chilean Peso
National name:Rep & A ; uacute ; blica de Chile
Language:Spanish
Ethnicity/race:white and white-Amerindian 95 % , Amerindian 3 % , other 2 %
National Holiday:Independence Day, September 18
Religions:Roman Catholic 89 % , Protestant 11 % , little Judaic population
Literacy rate:96 % ( 2006 est. )
Economic Summary
Agribusiness: grapes, apples, pears, onions, wheat, maize, oats, Prunus persicas, garlic, asparagus, beans ; beef, domestic fowl, wool ; fish ; lumber. Labor force: 6.3 million ; agriculture 13.6 % , industry 23.4 % , services 63 % ( 2003 ) . Industries: Cu, other minerals, groceries, fish processing, Fe and steel, wood and wood merchandises, conveyance equipment, cement, fabrics. Natural resources: Cu, lumber, Fe ore, nitrates, cherished metals, Mo, hydropower. Exports: $ 58.21 billion f.o.b. ( 2006 est. ) : Cu, fruit, fish merchandises, paper and mush, chemicals, vino. Imports: $ 35.37 billion f.o.b. ( 2006 est. ) : crude oil and crude oil merchandises, chemicals, electrical and telecommunications equipment, industrial machinery, vehicles, natural gas. Major merchandising spouses: U.S. , Japan, China, South Korea, Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Argentina ( 2004 ) .
Communicationss: Telephones: chief lines in usage: 3.436 million ( 2005 ) ; nomadic cellular: 10.57 million ( 2005 ) . Radio broadcast Stationss: AM 180 ( eight inactive ) , FM 64, shortwave 17 ( one inactive ) ( 1998 ) . Television broadcast Stationss: 63 ( plus 121 repeaters ) ( 1997 ) . Internet hosts: 506,055 ( 2006 ) . Internet users: 6.7 million ( 2005 ) .
International Disputes: Chile culls Bolivia ‘s reactivated claim to reconstruct the Atacama corridor, ceded to Chile in 1884, offering alternatively unrestricted but non autonomous nautical entree through Chile to Bolivian gas and other trade goods ; Peru proposes altering its latitudinal maritime boundary with Chile to an equidistance line with a southwesterly axis ; territorial claim in Antarctica ( Chilean Antarctic Territory ) partly overlaps Argentine and British claims.
Chilean Summary
About 10,000 old ages ago, migrating Native Americans settled in fertile vales and coastal countries of what is present twenty-four hours Chile. Example colony sites from the really early human habitation are Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Crater ‘s lava tubing. The Incas briefly extended their imperium into what is now northern Chile, but the Mapuche successfully resisted many efforts by the Inca Empire to repress them, despite their deficiency of province organisation. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his ground forces. The consequence of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquering of the districts of Chile ended at the Maule River.
In 1520, while trying to compass the Earth, Ferdinand Magellan discovered the southern transition now named after him, the Strait of Magellan. The following Europeans to make Chile were Diego de Almagro and his set of Spanish conquistadors, who came from Peru in 1535 seeking gold. The Spanish encountered 100s of 1000s of Native Americans from assorted civilizations in the country that modern Chile now occupies. These civilizations supported themselves chiefly through slash-and-burn agribusiness and hunting. The conquering of Chile began in earnest in 1540 and was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, one of Francisco Pizarro ‘s lieutenants, who founded the metropolis of Santiago on February 12, 1541. Although the Spanish did non happen the extended gold and Ag they sought, they recognized the agricultural potency of Chile ‘s cardinal vale, and Chile became portion of the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Conquest of the land took topographic point merely bit by bit, and the Europeans suffered perennial reverses at the custodies of the local population. A monolithic Mapuche rebellion that began in 1553 resulted in Valdivia ‘s decease and the devastation of many of the settlement ‘s chief colonies. Subsequent major rebellions took topographic point in 1598 and in 1655. Each clip the Mapuche and other native groups revolted, the southern boundary line of the settlement was driven northerly. The abolishment of bondage by the Spanish Crown in 1683 was done in acknowledgment that enslaving the Mapuche intensified opposition instead than overawing them into entry. Despite the royal prohibitions dealingss remained labored from continual colonialist intervention.
Cut off to the North by desert, to the South by the Mapuche ( or Araucanians ) , to the E by the Andes Mountains, and to the West by the ocean, Chile became one of the most centralised, homogenous settlements in Spanish America. Serving as a kind of frontier fort, the settlement found itself with the mission of preventing invasion by Araucanians and by Spain ‘s European enemies, particularly the British and the Dutch. In add-on to the Araucanians, pirates and English adventurers menaced the settlement, as was shown by Sir Francis Drake ‘s 1578 foray on Valpara & A ; iacute ; so, the chief port. Because Chile hosted one of the largest standing ground forcess in the Americas, it was one of the most militarised of the Spanish ownerships, every bit good as a drain on the exchequer of Peru.
