Some basic facts you should know about Chile

(CNN Spanish) – Chile is a long and narrow country in South America, with a population of just over 18 million people.

These are some facts you should know about this southern country.

What you should know about Chile

(According to the CIA Factbook)

Area: 756,102 km2, with 743,812 km2 of land and 12,290 of water. This area includes Easter Island and Sala y Gomez Island. With 4,329 kilometers, Chile it is the longest country in the world and one of the narrowest.

Population: 19.5 million, according to the OECD.

Borders: Chile is located in the south of South America. It limits to the west with the Pacific Ocean, to the north with Peru, to the northeast with Bolivia and to the east with Argentina.

Climate: It has a temperate and desert climate to the north. Mediterranean in the central region, and cool and humid in the south.

Middle Ages: 35.5 years.

Capital: Santiago de Chile (6.8 million inhabitants). Other main cities in terms of population: Valparaíso (992,000) and Concepción (892,000) estimated in 2021.

Ethnic groups: White and non-indigenous (88.9%); Mapuches (9.1%); Aymaras (0.7%); other indigenous groups such as Rapa Nui, Likan Antai, Quechua, Colla, Diaguita, Kawesqar, Yagan or Yamana (1%), estimated as of 2012.

Language: Spanish 99.5% (official), English 10.2%, indigenous 1% (includes Mapudungun, Aymara, Quechua, Rapa Nui), other 2.3%, unspecified 0.2%.

Unemployment rate: 8.9%, according to August 2021 data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Currency: Chilean peso. US $ 1 = CLP 826 approximately.

President: Sebastián Piñera (since 2018).

Some important events of the last decades

Chile had a dictatorship

Chile had a dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet in 1973, after a coup against the socialist president Salvador Allende on September 11 of that year. Pinochet ruled Chile until he was overthrown by a democratic election in 1990.

Allende, a socialist leader who had ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other US opponents during the Cold War, was replaced by a right-wing military dictatorship led by Pinochet.

The subsequent government of Pinochet, that lasted 16 years, was marked by the death and disappearance of thousands of alleged enemies of the regime. Government investigations conducted after the end of the dictatorship say that about 2,300 people died between 1973 and 1990, and about 40,000 were tortured.

President Salvador Allende committed suicide

A Chilean court resolved in 2012 the question of how then-President Salvador Allende died. The court confirmed that Allende took his own life in 1973 in the middle of a coup.

Questions about how Allende’s life ended culminated in the exhumation of his body in 2011 to perform forensic evidence.

An appeals court in Santiago confirmed in September 2012 that the evidence confirmed the accounts in the historical texts: that the leftist leader shot himself in the presidential palace as General Augusto Pinochet’s troops approached.

Some of Allende’s supporters doubted the story of his suicide. There were theories that he was killed by the military or by members of his own security service.

The death of Victor Jara

One of the visible victims of the dictatorship was the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, one of the first victims of the 1973 military coup. Jara, a member of the Communist Party and Allende’s cultural ambassador, was arrested immediately after the military coup of September 11, 1973. His body, with signs of torture and 44 gunshot wounds, was found days later in an abandoned field.

His is considered one of the most emblematic deaths of the political repression that followed the coup.

Hundreds of perceived enemies of the new military regime were arrested and transported to the stadium.

While in detention, Jara was banned, chained and beaten by soldiers under the command of Barrientos, alleges a lawsuit imposed by his family in 2013.

During the few days he was held captive before he was killed, Jara wrote a poem, lamenting “How difficult it is to sing when I must sing in horror,” according to the lawsuit. “Horror that I am living, horror that I am dying.”

Neruda and Mistral, two Chilean Literature nobels

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalt, later known as Pablo Neruda, was born in Parral, Chile on July 12, 1904.

Neruda was a well-known political and public figure; He worked as a legislator and diplomat and had a prolific literary career that earned him the Nobel Prize in 1971.

He died on September 23, 1973, just 12 days after the Pinochet military coup. Neruda, as a member of the Communist Party, criticized that coup and Pinochet himself.

In 2017, a panel of national and foreign experts reported that Neruda did not die from the prostate cancer that affected him.

Aurelio Luna, an expert from the University of Murcia, pointed out that “the certificate does not show the reality of death (cancerous cachexia)”, stating that a bacterium was found in a molar and said that it is a toxin grown in the laboratory, so that third party intervention is not ruled out.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, who would be recognized worldwide as Gabriela Mistral, was born in Vicuña, Chile, on April 7, 1989 and died on January 10, 1957 in New York.

The Chilean poet and writer was the first Latin American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

In addition to being a great poet, she was a prominent feminist, diplomat, and educator.

33 miners were trapped underground for months

On August 5, 2010, the world had news of one of the most remembered tragedies in the region, when 33 miners were trapped under 750 meters of earth in the San José mine, in the Atacama Region in Chile, after a landslide.

‘The 33’, as the miners are known, managed to survive thanks to the little food they had in the refuge, and later, on August 22, it was possible to send them food through a probe, which also functioned as a communication channel of the miners with the outside world.

After 70 days, on October 13, 2010, the 33 Chilean miners were rescued alive, thanks to a capsule through which the men were returned safely to earth, after nine hours of arduous work.

In 2011, 14 of the miners were given life pensions of about 250,000 Chilean pesos (US $ 540 at the current exchange rate). The government chose which miners would receive the lifetime pensions based on their health, age and the opinion of the survivor group.

In November 2015 the film “Los 33” was released, starring Antonio Banderas and directed by Patricia Riggen.

A social outbreak managed to change Pinochet’s constitution

The protests in this country began in mid-October 2019 due to the increase in the price of tickets for the Santiago metro, a measure that was withdrawn by President Sebastián Piñera days later.

The protests spread, revealing social discontent among Chileans. As the days went by, the demonstrations did not stop and although Piñera apologized, announced an increase in pensions, the creation of a guaranteed minimum income and a mechanism to stabilize electricity prices, social discontent no longer had reverse.

In an interview with the newspaper Financial times A week before the protests began, the president compared Chile to other Latin American countries ruined by economic and political turmoil and said that “Chile looks like an oasis,” but soon that oasis would become a nerve center for social protests. in the region.

Chileans made complaints about serious and systematic human rights violations committed by state agents in the last month, so the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, sent a verification mission to examine these complaints.

After weeks of strong protests, on November 15, the Chilean Congress announced an agreement to draft a new Constitution, which will replace the one from the 1980 dictator Augusto Pinochet, to achieve peace.

In November 2019, the majority of Chilean politicians agreed to change the current Constitution, approved in 1980 under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Chile, the 21st national team in the FIFA rankings

Chile’s men’s soccer team ranks as of November 2021 21st in the FIFA world rankings. And in Conmebol the fifth place after Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia.

Its market value is 95.2 billion euros (about US $ 107 million), according to the TransferMarkt page. La Roja has been twice champion of the Copa América, in 2014 and 2016.

In 2021 the most valuable player is the defender central Guillermo Maripán, who plays for AS Monaco, with a market value of 14 million euros (about US $ 15.85 million).