Chile History

Chile - national flag

Chile's flag was adopted in 1817, ie. the year before independence. It is designed jointly by a Chilean and a visiting American officer and is clearly inspired by the United States flag, Stars and Stripes. The white color symbolizes the snow in the Andes, the blue sky over the Andes and the red blood sacrificed for freedom. The white star points the way to progress and honor.

• Countryaah: What does the flag of Chile look like? Follow this link, then you will see the image in PNG format and flag meaning description about this country.

Chile - history

Unlike Mexico and Peru, there were neither highly developed Native American cultures nor large gold and silver deposits in Chile. Only in northern Chile did the Atacama and Diaguita Indians create interesting pottery. Domestication of llamas and cultivation of corn and potatoes they probably learned from approximately 1460 AD as subjects of the Incas, see also Incas.

When Diego de Almagro reached Chile in 1536 after a bitter voyage through the Andes that cost 10,000 Auxiliary Indians their lives, he met no significant resistance and returned to Peru. In 1540, Pedro de Valdivia conquered the country without much difficulty and called it Nueva Extremadura. The capital Santiago was founded in 1541.

First, the Mapuche Indians between the Bío-Bío and Toltén rivers offered severe resistance. Mapuche did not form a centralized state, but were scattered in independent local tribes under chiefs such as Lautaro (d. 1557), who led exhausting wars and in late 1553 captured and executed Valdivia.

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The Spaniards fought in Chile not so much because of silver and gold, but because the country was lush with good climatic conditions similar to those of the Spanish and allowed the cultivation of Spanish crops. The Picunche and Huilliche Indians supplied the labor. Unlike other parts of the New World, the Spaniards in Chile were less divided among themselves and stood firmly together against the Mapuche. The meager welfare came from gold, silver, wheat as well as cattle breeding and its by-products.

In the late 1700's. a general desire for independence arose in Chile, supported in part by Enlightenment ideas and failed administrative and economic reforms, and in part by Napoleon's invasion of Spain, which led to the Spanish formation of provisional local governments, junta.

On September 18, 1810, a Chilean junta was elected government, and after a long war of liberation, independence was signed by Bernardo O'Higgins on February 12, 1818. A decade followed with bloody civil wars between the liberals and the conservatives and between centralists and federalists. The period ended with the victory of the Conservatives in 1830.

The powerful minister Diego Portales organized the nation state, solidly supported by the conservative agricultural and trade oligarchy, the Catholic Church and by the army. Portales was the architect behind the Constitution of 1833, which legitimized an authoritarian and centralized political system that created the greatest political stability and economic development in Latin America and was among the preconditions for Chile's victory in the war against the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation in 1836-39 and in the war. against Spanish intervention in Peru 1865-66.

Peace and order reigned, interrupted only by the liberals' uprisings and coup attempts in 1851 and 1859. The military was deployed against the gang and the rebellious Mapuche Indians, who were finally defeated in 1882.

The liberals ruled Chile 1861-91 and helped to promote industrialization and mining and modernize the infrastructure with railways, ports, telegraphs, roads, etc. The liberal government did away with the church's position of power through a secularization policy with introduction of civil marriage, establishment of population registers, civilian cemeteries, education reforms, etc. Chile became the world's largest exporter of silver and copper.

After the victory in the Nitrogen War 1879-83 against Peru and Bolivia, Chile became the world's largest Nitrous producer when the territories of Atacama and Tarapacá were conquered from, respectively. Peru and Bolivia. The disagreements between Parliament and Liberal President Balmaceda over, among other things, reform policy and national budget brought the country into a civil war that ended with the victory of Congress and the introduction of a parliamentary system.

Already in the late 1800-t. Chilean society became more disparate due to the emergence of a working class, especially at the salt mines, and at the emergence of the middle classes in the big cities. Social issues were raised by protest movements demanding better living conditions, freedom of association, etc. vis-à-vis those in power who responded with bloody repression. At that time, the first workers' parties, the first trade unions and the first LO, FOCH were formed . The social struggle against the oligarchic state was waged within the framework of the system.

A broad left-liberal election coalition gave A. Alessandri Palma the presidency in 1920 with the support of the middle classes and part of the working class. Alessandri Palma pursued a policy of social reform, and in 1925 a new constitution was drafted, which was valid until the coup in 1973. In the period 1924-32, the armed forces became involved in politics through a series of military interventions, which ended with part of the air force in 1932 established a short-lived socialist republic.

The takeover of government power by the Popular Front in the presidential election of 1938 marked the beginning of a long period of political stability, in which changing political coalitions took turns. The working class with the Communist and Socialist parties and the middle classes with the Radical Party as mouthpieces occupied key positions in the system of compromise and negotiation which laid the foundation for the "compromise state". It enabled both increased industrialization in order to limit imports of goods and a strengthening of the public education system.

The Christian Democrats' election victory in 1964 caused the so-called "Revolution in Freedom", supported by the Progress Alliance, which broke the first cracks in the compromise state and in the system of social alliances and consensus on which it was based. The Christian Democrats ruled without forming coalitions, and their reform policies were strongly opposed from both the right and the left. This led to increasing social mobilization among peasants, slum dwellers, workers and students, which pressured the government for a more comprehensive reform policy.

The People's Unity's election victory in 1970, led by Salvador Allende, continued the reform process with e.g. nationalization of copper mines and of up to 100 companies and banks, and the Christian-Democratic land reform was implemented. The opposition, which had a majority in parliament, blocked the government's bill and forced Allende to govern through legislative decrees. Society was split into two irreconcilable groups, and the parties of the People's Unity could not come together on a common strategy. The political crisis escalated in 1972-73 and created the conditions for the coup on 9/11/1973.

A military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet declared a state of emergency, and thousands of supporters of the People's Unity were summarily executed, imprisoned or forced into exile. All political and professional activities were banned while the junta government dismantled the rule of law and pursued an extremely liberal economic policy.

Within a few years, inflation was brought down drastically, production increased, state-owned enterprises were privatized, foreign investment flowed in, and the country began to settle its foreign debt. These positive economic traits created the "Chilean miracle" whose negative social costs were high unemployment, extreme poverty and continued oppression.

Thanks to the efforts of the Catholic Church, the social movements and the first national protests against the regime resurfaced. Elections were held within the framework of the 1980 dictatorship of the dictatorship, and Patricio Aylwin was elected president in 1989 of the Democratic Association, which consisted mainly of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Left Liberals.

Aylwin insisted on a market-oriented economic policy that enabled continued economic growth, while the government aimed for a more equitable distribution of income and on aid programs for the benefit of the poor. The rule of law was improved, but the army's veto power and Pinochet's position of power in government prevented the criminals of the dictatorship from being brought to justice. In March 1994, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (b. 1942) was elected president.

Chile slowly emerged from the shadow of the dictatorship in the 1990's. The country's presidents had to work within the constraints that Pinochet had laid down in his constitution, and which, among other things, meant that Pinochet, after his departure, continued as army commander for eight years. After being placed under house arrest in London, Pinochet returned to Chile in 2000. After years of tug-of-war in 2005, the desiccator was placed under house arrest in Chile, accused of human rights violations; he had also been accused of tax fraud and corruption.

In 2000, Ricardo Lagos, as a candidate for the Party Coalition for Democracy, La Concertación, narrowly won the presidency ahead of the right-wing candidate. Lagos became the first socialist president since Salvador Allende. Among other things, he eliminated the military's right to receive special subsidies from the copper mining industry and installed a female party colleague, Michelle Bachelet, as Secretary of Defense. Under Lagos, Chile became one of the most prosperous countries in South America, but relations with Bolivia and Argentina in particular became more difficult.

Michelle Bachelet became the left-wing candidate in the 2005/06 presidential election; she won the second round and thus became Chile's first female president. Half of the members of the new government were women.

Bachelet was replaced in 2010 as president by the conservative businessman Sebastián Piñera, who in 2005/06 had competed with Bachelet for the presidency. Sebastián Piñera's first major task as president was to rebuild the parts of Chile that were hit in February 2010 by a powerful earthquake with epicenter near the country's second largest city, Concepción. Next, Piñera promised a penal reform after a fire in a prison in Santiago claimed 81 lives.

Following the 2013 presidential election, Michelle Bachelet won the post again, taking office in March 2014.