Chile

Northern and central Chile were the southern edge of the Inca Empire when the Spanish arrived in the 1530s, but the Mapuche of the south fought Spanish and later Chilean forces to a standstill for more than 300 years, keeping their territory until the late nineteenth century. Chile declared independence in 1810 and secured it in 1818 under Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín.

The young republic was unusually stable for the region. It won the War of the Pacific (1879–83) against Peru and Bolivia, gaining the nitrate- and copper-rich northern deserts and leaving Bolivia landlocked. Nitrate wealth, then copper, shaped the economy and its booms and busts.

In 1970 Salvador Allende was elected as the first Marxist president of a Latin American country by open vote. On 11 September 1973 the military under General Augusto Pinochet overthrew him in a coup; Allende died in the presidential palace. The 17-year dictatorship that followed killed or "disappeared" some 3,000 people and tortured tens of thousands, while imposing free-market reforms. Democracy returned in 1990. A mass wave of protests over inequality in 2019 led to two attempts to replace Pinochet's constitution, both rejected by voters.

Chile sees itself as sober, legalistic, and a little apart from the rest of South America — geographically walled off by desert, ocean, ice, and the Andes. Society is largely Catholic, though observance has fallen sharply, and family and a strong work ethic are common self-descriptions.

The country has an outsized literary reputation: two Nobel laureates in poetry, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, and later Isabel Allende in fiction. The cueca, a courtship dance with handkerchiefs, is the national dance, performed above all around the 18 September independence holidays, the Fiestas Patrias, when the country fills with fondas, barbecues, and kite-flying.

Football is the main sport, wine and the asado the main social rituals, and the huaso — the Chilean cowboy of the central valley — the rural national figure. Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has its own Polynesian language and culture within the Chilean state.

Around 40 percent of Chileans live in Greater Santiago, a modern city in a valley ringed by the Andes, often trapped under winter smog. Valparaíso and Viña del Mar on the coast, Concepción in the south, and Antofagasta in the mining north are the other main centres. The far south and the desert north are thinly populated.

The economy rests heavily on copper — Chile is by far the world's largest producer — along with fruit, wine, salmon, and forestry exports, and a large services sector. Incomes are the highest in South America, but so is inequality, and pensions, healthcare, and the cost of living drove the 2019 unrest.

Daily life is comparatively orderly and middle-class in the cities, with a long lunch, once (an evening tea) rather than a late dinner in many households, and weekends at the coast, in the hills, or at a family parcela.

Chilean cooking is hearty and less spicy than most of Latin America, built on seafood, maize, beans, and beef. Pastel de choclo, a baked pie of sweet ground corn over a meat, chicken, egg, and olive filling, is a summer classic, and cazuela, a clear stew with a piece of meat, a potato, and a chunk of pumpkin, is the everyday winter dish.

The 4,000-kilometre coastline delivers exceptional seafood: machas, locos (abalone), king crab from the far south, conger eel, and ceviche and paila marina stew. Empanadas de pino (baked beef turnovers), completos (loaded hot dogs), and sopaipillas (fried squash pastry) are the street staples.

Chile is a major wine country — Cabernet and Carmenère from the central valleys, crisp whites from Casablanca and the coast — and pisco, a grape brandy also claimed by Peru, is the base of the pisco sour and the piscola.

Torres del Paine, in the far south, is the icon: granite towers and horns above turquoise lakes and glaciers, walked on the multi-day "W" and "O" circuits or seen on day trips from Puerto Natales. Further south still, Punta Arenas is the jumping-off point for Tierra del Fuego, penguin colonies, and Antarctic cruises.

At the other end of the country, the Atacama Desert around San Pedro offers salt flats and flamingo lagoons, the Valle de la Luna, the El Tatio geysers, and some of the clearest night skies on Earth, dotted with major observatories. Between the two extremes lie the Lake District and Chiloé, with their volcanoes, forests, German-influenced towns, and wooden churches.

Santiago and nearby Valparaíso — a UNESCO-listed port city of steep painted hills, funiculars, and street art — anchor a central-Chile visit, along with the Colchagua and Maipo wine valleys. Far out in the Pacific, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) holds the moai, the monumental stone figures of its Polynesian civilisation.