Chile: History

Pre-20th-Century History

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 exposed to Incan aggression. Native groupings included Aymara farmers in the desert north, who cultivated maize and tended flocks of llamas and alpacas; fisherfolk in the coastal areas; Diaguita Indians in the mountainous interior; Araucarian Indians in the center and south, whose fishing and agricultural settlements were barely touched by Incan 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 these 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 a stagnant and complacent 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 O'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 had 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 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 landowning oligarchy in a brief but bloody civil war in the 1890s.

Modern History

The first half of the 20th century saw the political climate swing between right and left. Infrastructure development was generally sluggish, leading to rural poverty, and urbanization through desperation. By the 1960s social reforms were instituted by the Christian Democrats, who targeted housing, education, health and social services. Chile's politics were becoming increasingly militant and polarized when Salvador Allende's leftist coalition crept to victory in 1970. Allende introduced sweeping economic reforms, including the state takeover of many private enterprises and the wholesale redistribution of income. The country was plunged into economic chaos.

General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a bloody coup on September 11, 1973. Allende died, apparently by his own hand, and thousands of his supporters were murdered. Dark days followed, with assassinations, purges and enforced exiles; up to 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.

Pinochet dissolved Congress, banned leftist parties and suspended all opposition. His monetarist economic policies brought stability and relative prosperity, but in a 1988 referendum to approve his presidency, voters rejected him. In the 1989 multiparty elections, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin beat Pinochet's candidate, Hernan Buchi, and power was peacefully transferred. Democracy returned to Chile, although many of the previous regime's power brokers wielded a lingering influence for many years.

Elected president in 1994, Eduardo Frei undertook the challenge of reconciling Chileans with their difficult past by accelerating human rights tribunals and inquiries into the fate of Chile's 3000 disappeared. Unfortunately, resistance from the political arm of the military machine severely hampered his efforts. Frei's economic reforms, however, did help alleviate crushing poverty to some degree.

Recent History

Pinochet has continued to dominate recent political history. He was arrested in London in 1998 and in March 2000 he returned to Chile, where a court stripped him of immunity from prosecution and formally charged him with kidnapping.

In July 2001, a Chilean court ruled that he was unfit to stand trial. This setback also meant that Pinochet could no longer hold on to his lifelong senatorial sinecure. Chileans then witnessed a string of yo-yoing court decisions - first stripping his immunity or declaring him fit for trial, then subsequently reversing the ruling. Revelations made in early 2005 about Pinochet's secret foreign bank accounts - holding more than US$27,000000.00 - added to the charges. He died in 2006.

In 2006 Chile elected its first female president, Michelle Bachelet, marking the fourth consecutive term for the ruling Concertación coalition.

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