Chile

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South American country, bounded north by Peru and Bolivia, east by Argentina, and south and west by the Pacific Ocean.

Government
Chile is a presidential democratic republic. Under its 1981 constitution, as amended in 2005, it has an executive president who is elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term. The president appoints a cabinet and is constitutionally barred from serving consecutive terms. There is a two-chamber legislature, consisting of a senate (Senado) with 38 elected from Chile's regions, and a chamber of deputies (Camara de Diputados) with 120 elected members. Members of the senate serve for eight years, with staggered terms, and deputies for four years. Amendments to the constitution in 2005 eliminated senators-for-life and appointed senators and gave the president the power to remove the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

History
The area now known as Chile was originally occupied by an American Indian people, who called themselves Mapuche (warriors), and were called by the Spanish Araucanian Indians. The area was invaded by the Incas in the 15th century, but the Spanish conquest of the Incas in the 16th century left the Araucanians in possession of a state of their own. A portion of this area, along the slopes of the Andes from Copiapó to Chiloé, is still inhabited by them.

Spanish colonial rule
The first European to reach Chile was Ferdinand Magellan, who in 1520 sailed through the strait now named after him. A Spanish expedition under Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago in 1541, and Chile was subsequently colonized by Spanish settlers who established an agricultural society, although the Araucanians continued to rebel until the late 19th century.

Spanish colonial rule in Chile lasted until 1810, when Chile repudiated its allegiance to the Spanish crown. The struggle for independence began, under the leadership of Bernardo , but Chile's geographical isolation meant that in the wars of independence it was isolated from the mainstream of events in South America. The independence of the country from Spain was conclusively established by 1818.

Politics and development in the 19th century
Chile being less thoroughly militarized than, for example, Peru or Argentina, the civilian elite soon emerged as the dominant political force in the newly emergent country. In 1833 a conservative constitution representing the interests of the landed aristocracy resolved a decade of disputes about the political organization of Chile. The constitution gave very extensive powers to the president, Diego Portales, restricted the franchise to the literate and propertied classes, and established an aristocratic legislature.

This constitution provided the framework for nearly 30 years of internal stability, during which Chile established itself as the world's leading copper producer and even exported wheat to Australia and California during the gold rushes of the 1840s and 1850s.

Political stability attracted some German immigrants who settled in the south of the country, pushing the frontier back at the expense of the Araucanians. In the 1840s Chile's first railways were constructed and steamship contact with Europe was established. Internal political stability was broken by a brief dispute over the power of the church in 1861.

The late 19th century witnessed a series of important innovations in education and transport. A major contest between Congress and the presidency culminated, in 1891, in the weakening of the presidency and the balance of power shifted in favour of the legislatures until 1924.

Territorial wars
In the 19th century Chile was engaged in a series of external disputes. A war against Peru and Bolivia over the control of ports in the Atacama Desert ended in 1841 in Chilean victory. Between 1864 and 1866 Chile was Peru's ally in a war in which Spain tried unsuccessfully to regain its lost colonies.

Chile established a reputation as the strongest naval power along the Pacific coast, and until the 1880s its navy was larger than that of the USA. A strong navy was more important than a strong army to Chile's governments because it was the sea that united the country – travel by sea was for many years more important and rapid than that by land.

Frontier disputes, reinforced by the discovery of nitrates in the Atacama Desert, culminated in the Pacific War against Peru and Bolivia (1879–83), in which Chile's superior navy and army were victorious.

The extraction and export of nitrates brought prosperity, and at provided the government with up to two-thirds of its revenues. The trade was affected by the discovery of synthetic nitrates during World War I, and largely destroyed by the depression of the 1930s.

Chile in the 20th century
From 1890 to 1930 there was a large-scale immigration from Europe. Chile's population expanded by 50% and its cities, notably Santiago and Valparaíso, expanded dramatically. Working conditions in the cities and mines and inflation combined to cause working-class discontent, resulting in the formation of trade unions and, in 1922, of the Socialist Party.

Arturo Alessandri Palma became president in 1920, promising a radical programme of social change. A military coup in 1924, led to political instability at a time of worldwide depression following the 1929 Wall Street crash. The depression caused widespread hardship and extensive unemployment in Chile. Constitutional rule was restored in 1932, when Alessandri was elected president again, but he had shifted to the right. His repression of discontented urban workers and miners prompted the formation of a Popular Front alliance consisting of the old Radical Party, the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party (founded in 1933). The Popular Front won the 1938 election, and the new government, led by Pedro Aguirre Cerda, expanded state intervention in the economy through the Chilean Development Corporation.

The governments of Frei and Allende
After 1945 the struggles between left and right continued, and urbanization and demographic expansion accelerated. In 1952, General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who had been the country's dictator between 1927–31, became president, as candidate of the centre-right Agrarian Labour Party, and sought to sweep out political corruption. He was succeeded as president, in 1958, by the conservative Jorge Alessandri, the son of Arturo Alessandri. The Christian Democrats under Eduardo Frei Montalva held power 1964–70, and began a series of social, agrarian, and economic reforms that included the first movements towards nationalization of major foreign-owned properties.

Frei's government was followed in 1970 by a left-wing coalition led by Dr Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist head of state. Allende won 38% of the vote, in a closely fought three-way contest. He promised social justice by constitutional means. His government embarked on the nationalization of industries, including US-owned copper mines, a programme of agrarian reform (most land was in the hands of a few large landowners), and extensive state intervention. His programme polarized public opinion and was held responsible by his opponents for accelerating inflation (which had actually begun to increase during the Frei administration, with economic depression and rising unemployment from 1967).

The Pinochet regime
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) painted Allende as a pro-Cuban communist and encouraged opposition to him. Both right- and left-wing extremists took to guerrilla action, which Allende could not contain, making Chile ungovernable. In September 1973, with inflation out of control and strikes crippling the economy, Allende was overthrown in a military coup, led by Gen Augusto Pinochet, and Allende reportedly committed suicide.

Pinochet became president, and governed ruthlessly, crushing all political opposition (including more than 3,000 people who ‘vanished’ or were killed and over 30,000 who were tortured). In 1976 Pinochet proclaimed an ‘authoritarian democracy’ and in 1977 banned all political parties, using a plebiscite in 1978 to ‘endorse’ his policies.

Pinochet introduced free-market reforms, which encouraged foreign investment and economic expansion in the 1980s, but also a sharp decline in working-class employment and living standards for the poor. In 1981 a new constitution, described as a ‘transition to democracy’, was announced, but imprisonment and torture continued. By 1983 opposition to Pinochet had increased, with demands for a return to democratic government. He attempted to placate opposition by initiating public works. In 1984 an anti-government bombing campaign began, aimed mainly at electricity installations, resulting in a 90-day state of emergency, followed by a 90-day state of siege. In 1985, as opposition grew within the Catholic Church and the army, as well as among the public, another state of emergency was declared, but the bombings continued, as did the state terror.

The return of democracy in 1989
In October 1988 Pinochet put himself forward as sole nominee to be president for a further eight years, but voters rejected the plebiscite, by a 56% to 44% margin. Another plebiscite in August 1989 approved constitutional changes leading to a return to pluralist politics and the formal adoption of the 1981 constitution, and in December 1989 the moderate Christian Democratic Party (PDC) candidate, Patricio Aylwin, won the presidential election, heading Concertación, a centre-left coalition of parties for democracy. He became president in March 1990.

Pinochet remained as head of the armed forces, but in January 1990 the secret police of the National Information Centre (CNI) were disbanded. In September 1990, a government commission was set up to investigate political executions, political murders, and disappearances under Pinochet, and the formerly discredited Salvador Allende was officially recognized by being buried in a marked grave. In 1991 the official report for President Aylwin revealed 2,279 deaths during Pinochet's term, of which over 2,115 were executions carried out by the secret police.

The ruling Concertación coalition won the December 1993 general election, with PDC leader Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, son of the former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, becoming president in March 1994.

Efforts to extradite Pinochet in 2000
In March 1998 Pinochet stepped down as commander of the country's armed forces and took the post of senator for life, which potentially gave him legal immunity for any crimes committed when in power. Human-rights groups, and Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon, campaigned for Pinochet's arrest on charges of crimes against humanity during his dictatorship, especially secret executions. In October 1998, he was arrested in London, England, where he was undergoing medical treatment, on a warrant from Garzon, a Spanish lawyer investigating the crimes of his regime and seeking his extradition. In January 2000, after advice from a team of doctors that Pinochet was medically unfit to stand trial, the British authorities decided not to allow Pinochet to be extradited to Spain.

Lagos comes to power and Pinochet returns to Chile
The February 2000 presidential elections were closely fought and were won, after an unprecedented run-off election, by Ricardo Lagos, who became Chile's first socialist president since 1970. Lagos, a former dissident who publicly challenged Pinochet while he was in power, said that it would be up to Chilean courts to decide whether to try Pinochet. Despite protests from four European countries and from human-rights campaigners, Pinochet was allowed to return to Chile in March 2000. The Chilean government distanced itself from the public welcome which was staged by the military, while thousands of Chileans demanded his prosecution.

After ten months of legal proceedings in Chile, Pinochet was placed under house arrest in January 2001, after medical tests established that he was fit to stand trial. In July 2001, Chile's appeals court ruled that Pinochet was suffering from vascular dementia and was unfit to stand trial for human-rights abuses. Pinochet resigned his senate seat in 2002, but in May 2004 Chile's Supreme Court ruled that he was capable of standing trial, and he was charged with crimes in December 2004. When Pinochet died, in December 2006, around 300 criminal charges were still pending against him for alleged human-rights abuses.

The December 2005 presidential elections resulted in another run-off contest, which was won, in January 2006, by the socialist Michelle Bachelet, heading the centre-left Concertación coalition which had ruled the country since 1990. She became Chile's first-ever woman president.

Red stands for strength. White symbolizes faithfulness. Green represents hope. Effective date: 1 October 1957. >>