History of Chile
This in turn resulted in the 1973 coup d'état and the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, whose seventeen-year regime was responsible for many human rights violations and deep market-oriented economic reforms.
The current prevalent theories are that the initial arrival of humans to the continent took place either along the Pacific coast southwards in a rather rapid expansion long preceding the Clovis culture, or even trans-Pacific migration.
However, Pedro de Valdivia, captain of the army, realizing the potential for expanding the Spanish empire southward, asked Pizarro's permission to invade and conquer the southern lands.
Responsible to the governor, town councils known as Cabildo administered local municipalities, the most important of which was Santiago, which was the seat of a Royal Appeals Court (Real Audiencia) from 1609 until the end of colonial rule.
Their combined army freed Chile with a daring assault over the Andes in 1817, defeating the Spaniards at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12 and marking the beginning of the Patria Nueva.
Chile won its formal independence when San Martín defeated the last large Spanish force on Chilean soil at the Battle of Maipú on April 5, 1818.
San Martín then led his Argentine and Chilean followers north to liberate Peru; and fighting continued in Chile's southern provinces, the bastion of the royalists, until 1826.
He maintained Catholicism's status as the official state religion but tried to curb the church's political powers and to encourage religious tolerance as a means of attracting Protestant immigrants and traders.
In August 1828, Pinto's first year in office, Chile abandoned its short-lived federalist system for a unitary form of government, with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
For the next forty years, Chile's armed forces would be distracted from meddling in politics by skirmishes and defensive operations on the southern frontier, although some units got embroiled in domestic conflicts in 1851 and 1859.
President Prieto had four main accomplishments: implementation of the 1833 constitution, stabilization of government finances, defeat of provincial challenges to central authority, and victory over the Peru-Bolivia Confederation.
During the presidencies of Prieto and his two successors, Chile modernized through the construction of ports, railroads, and telegraph lines, some built by United States entrepreneur William Wheelwright.
In 1881, it signed the Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina confirming Chilean sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan, but conceding all of oriental Patagonia, and a considerable fraction of the territory it had during colonial times.
As a result of the War of the Pacific with Peru and Bolivia (1879–1883), Chile expanded its territory northward by almost one-third and acquired valuable nitrate deposits, the exploitation of which led to an era of national affluence.
In order to preempt Ross's victory, the National Socialists mounted a coup d'état that was intended to take down the rightwing government of Arturo Alessandri Palma and place Ibáñez in power.
Under the slogan "Revolution in Liberty", the Frei administration embarked on far-reaching social and economic programs, particularly in education, housing, and agrarian reform, including rural unionization of agricultural workers.
Despite pressure from the government of the United States,[17] the Chilean Congress, keeping with tradition, conducted a runoff vote between the leading candidates, Allende and former president Jorge Alessandri.
[17] In addition, the CIA's website reports that the agency aided three different Chilean opposition groups during that time period and "sought to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office".
An economic depression that had begun in 1967 peaked in 1972, exacerbated by capital flight, plummeting private investment, and withdrawal of bank deposits in response to Allende's socialist program.
The combination of inflation and government-mandated price-fixing led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour, and a "disappearance" of such basic commodities from supermarket shelves.
[25] In its "Agreement", on August 22, 1973, the Chamber of Deputies of Chile asserted that Chilean democracy had broken down and called for "redirecting government activity", to restore constitutional rule.
Subsequently, rather than restore governmental authority to the civilian legislature, Augusto Pinochet exploited his role as Commander of the Army to seize total power and to establish himself at the head of a junta.
[32] The crippled economy was further battered by prolonged and sometimes simultaneous strikes by physicians, teachers, students, truck owners, copper workers, and the small business class.
[43] The four-man junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet abolished civil liberties, dissolved the national congress, banned union activities, prohibited strikes and collective bargaining, and erased the Allende administration's agrarian and economic reforms.
Under these new policies, the rate of inflation dropped:[46] A new constitution was approved by plebiscite characterized by the absence of registration lists, on September 11, 1980, and General Pinochet became president of the republic for an 8-year term.
[54] Frei Ruiz-Tagle was succeeded in 2000 by Socialist Ricardo Lagos, who won the presidency in an unprecedented runoff election against Joaquín Lavín of the rightist Alliance for Chile,[55] by a very tight score of fewer than 200,000 votes (51,32%).
Upon descending the plane on his wheelchair, he stood up and saluted the cheering crowd of supporters, including an army band playing his favorite military march tunes, which was awaiting him at the airport in Santiago.
In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4), also signed under Lagos' presidency.
On 5 August 2010, the access tunnel collapsed at the San José copper and gold mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó in northern Chile, trapping 33 men 700 metres (2,300 ft) below ground.
[72][73] The center-left and center-right political conglomerates alternating power during the last 32 years (ex-Concertación and Chile Vamos) ended up in fourth and fifth place of the presidential election.
