History of Chile

A textile figure depicting a tree (temu, meaning the tree Temu divaricatum), from a seventeenth-century Mapuche woman’s belt called ñimintrarüwe FROM ONE OF THE MOST neglected outposts of the Spanish Empire, Chile developed into one of the most prosperous and democratic nations in Latin America. Throughout its history, however, Chile has depended on great external powers for economic exchange and political influence: Spain in the colonial period, Britain in the nineteenth century, and the United States in the twentieth century. Chile’s dependence is made most evident by the country’s heavy reliance on exports. These have included silver and gold in the colonial period, wheat in the mid-nineteenth century, nitrates up to World War I, copper after the 1930s, and a variety of commodities sold overseas in more recent years. The national economy’s orientation toward the extraction of primary products has gone hand in hand with severe exploitation of workers. Beginning with the coerced labor of native Americans during the Spanish conquest, the exploitation continued with chile/cl_glos.asp#mestizo">mestizo (see Glossary) peonage on huge farms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and brutal treatment of miners in the north in the first decade of the twentieth century. The most recent victimization of workers occurred during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (1973-90), when unions were suppressed and wages were depressed, unemployment increased, and political parties were banned. Another persistent feature of Chile’s economic history has been the conflict over land in the countryside, beginning when the Spaniards displaced the indigenous people during their sixteenthcentury conquest. Later chapters of this struggle have included the expansion of the great estates during the ensuing four centuries and the agrarian reform efforts of the 1960s and 1970s. Politically, Chile has also conformed to several patterns. Since winning independence in 1818, the nation has had a history of civilian rule surpassed by that of few countries in the world. In the nineteenth century, Chile became the first country in Latin America to install a durable constitutional system of government, which encouraged the development of an array of political parties. Military intervention in politics has been rare in Chile, occurring only at times of extraordinary social crisis, as in 1891, 1924, 1925, 1932, and 1973. These interventions often brought about massive transformations; all the fundamental changes in the Chilean political system and its constitutions have occurred with the intervention of the armed forces, acting in concert with civilian politicians. From 1932 to 1973, Chile built on its republican tradition by sustaining one of the most stable, reformist, and representative democracies in the world. Although elitist and conservative in some respects, the political system provided for the peaceful transfer of power and the gradual incorporation of new contenders. Undergirding that system were Chile’s strong political parties, which were often attracted to foreign ideologies and formulas. Having thoroughly permeated society, these parties were able to withstand crushing blows from the Pinochet regime of 1973-90. Republican political institutions were able to take root in Chile in the nineteenth century before new social groups demanded participation. Contenders from the middle and lower classes gradually were assimilated into an accommodating political system in which most disputes were settled peacefully, although disruptions related to the demands of workers often met a harsh, violent response. The system expanded to incorporate more and more competing regional, anticlerical, and economic elites in the nineteenth century. The middle classes gained political offices and welfare benefits in the opening decades of the twentieth century. From the 1920s to the 1940s, urban laborers obtained unionization rights and participated in reformist governments. In the 1950s, women finally exercised full suffrage and became a decisive electoral force. And by the 1960s, rural workers achieved influence with reformist parties, widespread unionization, and land reform. As the political system evolved, groups divided on either side of six main issues. The first and most important in the nineteenth century was the role of the Roman Catholic Church in political, social, and economic affairs. Neither of the two major parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, opposed the practice of Catholicism. However, the Conservatives defended the church’s secular prerogatives; the Liberals (and later the Nationals, Radicals, Demo