Chile

Before the Spanish, the Inca ruled as far south as the Maipo river near today's Santiago. Beyond it lived the Mapuche, farmers and herders who resisted both the Inca and, after Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago in 1541, the Spanish. Valdivia was killed by Lautaro's forces in 1553, and the Biobío river became a frontier for three centuries.

Chile declared independence in 1810 and won it in 1818 under Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín. Victory over Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific (1879–84) brought the nitrate-rich Atacama; in the same decades the army 'pacified' Araucanía, taking Mapuche lands and opening them to settlers, including many Germans in the south.

In 1970 Salvador Allende became the first Marxist elected president in the Americas. On 11 September 1973 the armed forces, backed by the US, bombed La Moneda palace; Allende died inside. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship killed or disappeared over 3,000 people, tortured tens of thousands and imposed free-market reforms. A 1988 plebiscite voted him out, and democracy returned in 1990.

Democratic Chile grew richer but unequal. In October 2019 a metro-fare rise sparked the 'estallido social', months of mass protest. Two constitutional drafts, one from the left (2022) and one from the right (2023), were both rejected, leaving the 1980 constitution in place. The right-wing José Antonio Kast won the presidency in 2025 and took office in March 2026.

Chile has about 20 million people, a third of them in Greater Santiago. Most are of mixed European and Indigenous descent; about one in ten identifies as Mapuche, concentrated in Araucanía and Santiago. Land claims in the south remain a source of conflict, with occupations, arson attacks and military deployments.

Other Indigenous peoples include the Aymara and Atacameño (Lickanantay) in the north, and the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, a Polynesian people annexed in 1888. In Patagonia, the Kawésqar, Selk'nam and Yagán were almost destroyed by settlers, sheep ranching and disease in the late 19th century.

Chile calls itself a land of poets. Gabriela Mistral won the Nobel Prize in 1945, the first Latin American laureate in literature; Pablo Neruda won in 1971. Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara shaped the nueva canción movement; Jara was murdered in the stadium that now carries his name days after the coup.

Social life is family-centred and polite, with a strong sense of class that Chileans themselves joke about. Chilean Spanish is famously fast, with its own vocabulary, and the cueca, the national dance, is danced everywhere in September.

The cold Humboldt Current makes Chile's coast one of the richest fishing grounds on earth. Sea urchins, razor clams, conger eel and southern king crab are everyday luxuries; Santiago's Mercado Central and coastal caletas serve them in stews such as caldillo de congrio.

Inland, Chilean cooking uses corn, beans and squash from the Indigenous kitchen with Spanish beef and onions: pastel de choclo, humitas, porotos granados and the empanada de pino, baked in every home for Fiestas Patrias. Bread is central, and Chileans eat more of it per person than almost any other nation.

Chile's wine industry, founded by the Spanish and modernised with French vines in the 19th century, escaped the phylloxera plague that destroyed European vineyards. Carménère, thought extinct, was rediscovered in Chilean vineyards in 1994 and became the country's signature grape.

Pisco is distilled in the Elqui and Limarí valleys and drunk as piscola or pisco sour; Peru disputes the name. Summer brings mote con huesillo, a sweet drink of peaches and wheat sold from street carts.

Chile spans 38 degrees of latitude. In the north the Atacama gets almost no rain; some weather stations have never recorded any. Its clear, dry air has made it home to the world's largest observatories, from ALMA to the Extremely Large Telescope under construction.

The centre has a Mediterranean climate like California's, with most of the people, farms and vineyards. Further south come temperate rainforests, lakes and more than 90 active volcanoes; the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, magnitude 9.5, is the strongest ever measured.

Below Puerto Montt the land breaks into fjords and islands. The Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields are the largest ice outside the poles and Greenland, feeding glaciers such as Grey in Torres del Paine.

Torres del Paine's granite towers and horns rise from the steppe beside lakes coloured by glacial flour. The park has survived several visitor-caused fires, and since 2016 its trekking has been managed with mandatory bookings and entry times.

Easter Island lies 3,700 km off the Chilean coast, among the most remote inhabited islands on earth. Polynesian voyagers settled it perhaps around 1200 CE and carved almost 1,000 moai from the volcanic tuff of the Rano Raraku quarry, moving them upright to ahu platforms along the coast.

The older idea that islanders destroyed their own society by cutting down the forest is now contested; rats, and above all Peruvian slave raids in the 1860s and imported diseases, reduced the population to about 110 people by 1877. Chile annexed the island in 1888 and leased most of it as a sheep ranch until 1953.

Today about 8,000 people live on the island, around half of Rapa Nui descent. The community co-manages the national park through the Ma'u Henua organisation, which since 2017 has required visitors to go with licensed guides at most sites and allows one entry each to Rano Raraku and Orongo.

To protect the island, Chilean law limits visitor stays to 30 days and requires an online entry form (FUI) with registered lodging and a return ticket. The Tapati festival in February revives traditional sports, song and body painting.

Chile is one of the easiest countries in South America to travel: good roads and airports, safe tap water in most cities, card payments everywhere and a dense network of flights. The challenge is distance, which makes every region change a flight.

Most Western passports need no visa for 90 days. Customs is strict about food, and Easter Island and Torres del Paine have their own booking rules: the FUI and a 30-day limit for the island, a pre-bought entry ticket and booked beds for the park.

Costs are higher than in Peru or Bolivia. Foreigners can often avoid the 19% VAT at hotels by paying in dollars or with a foreign card, and set lunches keep food costs down.

Nature sets the risks: earthquakes and tsunamis on the coast, wildfires in summer, altitude in the Atacama and fierce winds in Patagonia. Follow SENAPRED alerts and ranger instructions.