Chile
by Tyler Kies
Geography
Culture
Do you ever wonder what holidays Chile celebrates? The culture of Chile reflects the relatively homogeneous population as well as the geographic isolation of the country in relation to the rest of South America. Since colonial times, the Chilean culture has been a mix of Spanish colonial elements with indigenous (mostly Mapuche) culture.
The Huasos of Central Chile and their folk music and dance are central to Chilean folk culture. Even though the folk traditions the Central Chile are central to Chilean cultural and national identity, Chile is both geographically and culturally diverse with both the North and the South having their own folk music and dance due to different indigenous peoples and immigrant groups settling there. Additionally, while some regions of Chile have very strong indigenous heritage, such as AraucanÃa Region, Easter Island, and Arica y Parinacota Region, some regions lacks considerable indigenous communities and a few other regions have noteworthy non-Spanish European immigrant heritage.
History
Who discovered Chile? The territory of Chile has been populated since at least 12,000 B.C. By the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to subdue and colonize the region of present-day Chile, and the territory became a colony between 1540 and 1818, when it gained independence from Spain. The country's economic development was successively marked by the export of first agricultural produce, then saltpeter and later copper. The wealth of raw materials led to an economic upturn, but also led to dependency, and even wars with neighbouring states. Chile was governed during most of its first 150 years of independence by different forms of restricted government, where the electorate was carefully vetted and controlled by an elite.
Failure to address the economic and social disparities and increasing political awareness of the less-affluent population, as well as indirect intervention and economic funding to the main political groups by both the KGB[1][2] and the CIA[3] as part of the Cold War, led to a political polarization under Socialist President Salvador Allende. This in turn resulted in the 11 September 1973 d'eat and the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, whose 17-year regime was responsible for numerous human rights violations and deep market-oriented economic reforms. In 1990, Chile made a peaceful transition to democracy.
Economy
Chile has many resources. The economy of Chile is ranked as a high-income economy by the World Bank,[10] and is considered one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations,[11] leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.[12] However, it has a high economic inequality, as measured by the Gini index,[13] At a regional level, Chile is ranked around the mean in terms of the Gini index.[14]
In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join theOECD.[15] The tax revenues, all together 20,2 percent of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010.[16]In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capital in Latin America.[17] Chile has an inequality-adjusted human development index of 0.664, compared to 0.662, 0.653 and 0.531 for neighbouring Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, respectively. In 2008, only 2.7% of the population lived on less than US $2 a day.[18]