Chile
The first European to visit what is now
Chile was the Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan, who landed at
Chiloé Island following his voyage, in 1520,
through the strait that now
bears his name. The region was then known to its
native population as Tchili,
a Native American word meaning "snow." At
the same time of Magellan's visit,
most of Chile south of the Rapel River was
dominated by the Araucanians, a
Native American tribe remarkable for its
fighting ability. The tribes
occupying the northern portions of Chile had been
subjugated during the 15th
century by the Incas of Peru. In 1535, after the
Spanish under Francisco
Pizarro had completed their conquest of Peru, Diego de
Almagro, one of
Pizarro's aides, led a gold-hunting expedition from that country
overland
into Chile. The expedition spent nearly three fruitless years in the
country
and then withdrew to Peru. Chile is a republic in southwestern
South
America, bounded on the north by Peru, on the east by Bolivia and
Argentina, and
on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. It has an extreme
northern-southern
length of approximately 4270 km (about 2650 mi), but its
average width is less
than 180 km (less than 110 mi). Archipelagoes extend
along the southern Chilean
coast from Chiloé Island to Cape Horn, the
southernmost point of the South
American continent. Among these are the
Chonos Archipelago, Wellington Island,
and the western portion of Tierra del
Fuego. Other islands belonging to Chile
include the Juan Fernández Islands,
Easter Island, and Sala y Gómez, all of
which lie in the South Pacific. The
country has a total area of 756,626 sq km
(292,135 sq mi). Chile also claims
a section of Antarctica. The country's
capital and largest city is Santiago.
Two lively and contrasting cultural
strains predominate in Chile: the
cosmopolitan culture of the affluent urban
population and the popular culture
of the peasants, which is predominantly
Spanish but contains traces of
Araucanian heritage. The latter influences are
strongest in Chilean music and
dance. Chile has a flourishing literary tradition
and has produced two Nobel
Prize winners in literature, Gabriela Mistral and
Pablo Neruda, both
poets.