South & Central America
Highlights - Essential Info - Itineraries - History
On account of its geographical isolation with the Pacific Ocean, The Andes and the Atacama Desert acting as physical barriers to the rest of the world, Chile has developed and shaped its own future over the centuries in quite a distinct fashion from the rest of the continent.
The earliest properly recorded pre-Columbian cultures in Chile are from the Atacama Desert region where the extreme dryness of the climate has helped to preserve archaeological artefacts for millennia. The Chinchorro culture was prevalent around 5000 BC and perfected the world's earliest technique for mummifying their dead and many examples still survive today. Over the next five thousand years or so various cultures such as the Bolivian based Tihuanaco culture came and went and the peoples that lived here slowly turned from hunter gatherers to agriculturally based communities, although those based in the far south continued their traditions of hunter gathering due to the harsher nature of the environment, which on the whole is not hugely conducive to productive agriculture.
In the 15th Century the Incan emperor Pachacuti led a huge expansion of his empire, which spread as far south as the Rio Maule in Chile and many sites of Incan worship can still be seen in Chile . However their influence was shortlived as the Spanish arrived shortly after in the mid-16th Century under Pedro de Valdivia who founded the city of Santiago in 1541. For the early Spanish settlers the government began a system of handing out land, which generally came with a sizeable population of tribespeople who were made to work for that colonist and this practice ultimately created some of the finest haciendas or private agricultural estates that exist even to this day. At the same time, missionaries poured into the country looking to convert the indigenous peoples to Catholicism, which was hugely successful as it is now the predominant religion in the country.
A significant turning point in the country's history came when Napoleon invaded Spain and deposed King Ferdinand VII, which gave certain elements of the Chile population, who were being increasingly restless for independence, their opportunity. Jose Miguel Carrera effectively seized power and the Spanish declared war against this break-away movement. Carrera was ineffective militarily and was replaced by Bernardo O'Higgins who battled with the Royalist forces at the battle of Rancagua in 1814. O'Higgins was comprehensively defeated, but with the help of the Argentinian general Jose de San Martin and his forces, a series of battles were fought and won and by 1818 the colonialists were defeated and O'Higgins was leader of the country.
Over the next one hundred years the country experienced a huge amount of social and economic change as the country became more industrialized with the advent of roads and railways. At the same time a new middle class of managers, bureaucrats and merchants emerged, while with the decline of the important nitrate industry, so a large working class population grew and became restless for change. The early to mid 20th Century saw a constant change in government and even various military coups as the country wrestled with radical social reforms. In 1972 Salvador Allende became the country's first socialist president with a coalition of left-wing parties and instituted a programme of nationalisation of industry and farm reforms. This over the years produced an unsustainable government fiscal deficit, which was exacerbated by the dramatic drop in world copper prices. This in turn led to uncontrollable inflation rises with wages being unable to keep pace and the inevitable civilian unrest and industrial strikes that followed. The government effectively lost control and it is this that led to the military coup of 11 September 1973 that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power at the head of the junta. His regime was brutal and dictatorial, but he set in motion a programme of reform, reversing all of Allende's policies and he adopted a free-market economy, which over the next fifteen years slowly, but surely reduced inflation and reversed the fortunes of the once ailing economy.
In 1989 Pinochet lost the plebiscite and handed power back to the democratically elected Patricio Aylwin and the next decade saw a steady growth in the country's economy and a fascinating and protracted legal battle over Pinochet's proposed extradition back to Chile from Britain to stand trial for his governments abuses against the people (he was later released and declared to be unfit to stand trial). In 1999 Ricardo Lagos won the general plebiscite and is still President of Chile with the country enjoying a relatively prosperous few years with an ongoing ambitious programme of health, welfare and educational reforms.
