A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF CHILE

Chile became an independent republic in 1810–1818 by rebelling against almost 300 years of Spanish colonization. By the 1830s, Chile was able to build one of the most orderly and stable political systems in Latin America (Collier, 1985; Heise, 1979). Contrary to its democratic tradition, from 1973 to 1990 Chile lived under a military regime led by General Augusto Pinochet, with systematic gross human rights violations. The recent political transition toward democracy has been intertwined with a free market economic model.

The current population of Chile is 15 million inhabitants, one-third of whom live in its capital, Santiago. At present, just 4.6 percent of the population considers itself as belonging to some of the surviving indigenous ethnic groups, most of whom (87.3 percent) claim to be Mapuches (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, 2003).

ECOLOGICAL FEATURES

Located between the Cordillera de Los Andes and the Pacific Ocean, Chile is a narrow country, 4,270 km long and with an average width of 177 km, in southwestern South America. Chile is mountainous, with less than 20 percent of its surface flat. With the exception of some military posts, the vast Chilean Antarctic territories remain uninhabited. Chile has a very variable climate, with the northern desert of Atacama, rich in mining ore, a central template region where 65 percent of the population is concentrated and whose land is fertile for agriculture, and a southern area with a cold and rainy maritime climate, suitable primarily for cattle and sheep raising.