Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Chile had a population of 17.5 million as of the latest census in 2017 and has a territorial area of 756,102 square kilometers (291,933 sq mi), sharing borders with Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. The country also controls several Pacific islands, including Juan Fernández, Isla Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island, and claims about 1,250,000 square kilometers (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica as the Chilean Antarctic Territory. The capital and largest city of Chile is Santiago, and the national language is Spanish.
The territory of Chile has been populated since at least 3000 BC. By the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to colonize the region of present-day Chile, and the territory was 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 neighboring 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.
Chile's 2017 census reported a population of 17,574,003 people. Its rate of population growth has been decreasing since 1990, due to a declining birth rate. By 2050 the population is expected to reach approximately 20.2 million people, at which point it is projected to either stagnate or begin declining. About 85% of the country's population lives in urban areas, with 40% living in Greater Santiago alone. The largest agglomerations according to the 2002 census are Greater Santiago with 5.6 million people, Greater Concepción with 861,000 and Greater Valparaíso with 824,000.
The National Congress of Chile is the legislative branch of the Republic of Chile. According to the current Constitution, it is a bicameral organ made up of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate. Established by law No. 18678, the city of Valparaíso is its official headquarters.
Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos is the national stadium of Chile, and is located in the Ñuñoa district of Santiago. It is the largest stadium in Chile with an official capacity of 48,665. It is part of a 62 hectare sporting complex which also features tennis courts, an aquatics center, a modern gymnasium, a velodrome, a BMX circuit, and an assistant ground/warmup athletics track.
Igreja Presbiteriana de Moçambique is one of the largest Protestant denominations of Mozambique.
The National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru is the largest and oldest museum in Peru, housed at the Palacio de la Magdalena, located in the main square of Pueblo Libre, a district of Lima, Peru. The museum houses more than 100,000 artifacts spanning the entire history of human occupation in what is now Peru. Highlights include the Raimondi Stele and the Tello Obelisk from Chavín de Huantar, and an impressive scale model of the Incan citadel, Machu Picchu. As of 2023, the museum is under restoration and very few rooms are open for visitors.
This is a timeline of Chilean history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Chile and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Chile. See also the list of governors and presidents of Chile.
VTR is a Chilean telecommunications company. It is the country's largest provider of subscription television, with 1,065,675 subscribers, and of fixed broadband Internet access. It is also the second largest provider of fixed telephone service, behind Telefónica. It also has a small but growing participation in the mobile phone business.
Calle-Calle River, also called Gudalafquén in Mapuche language, is a river in Valdivia Province, southern Chile. It drains waters from the San Pedro River to the Valdivia River, which in turn flows into Corral Bay on the Pacific Ocean.
La Imperial or Ciudad Imperial was a city founded by Pedro de Valdivia on 16 April 1552 and named in honor of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, then (also) king of Spain. It was abandoned on 5 April 1600 and destroyed as a result of the Mapuche Uprising of 1598 during the War of Arauco. The ruins were called Antigua Imperial. A city was refounded there in 1882 under the name Carahue.
The Chilean National Museum of Natural History is one of three national museums in Chile, along with the Museum of Fine Arts and the National History Museum. It is located in Quinta Normal Park. Founded on September 14, 1830 by the French naturalist Claudio Gay, the director of the Museum and the Botanical garden was another Frenchman Jean-François Dauxion-Lavaysse.
Koreans in Chile formed Latin America's sixth-largest Korean diaspora community as of 2011, according to the statistics of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Presbyterian Church of Brazil is an Evangelical Protestant Christian denomination in Brazil. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country, having an estimate 702,949 members, 4,915 ordained ministers and 5,420 churches and parishes. It is also the only Presbyterian denomination in Brazil present in all 26 States and the Federal District.
El Manso is a village and municipality in Río Negro Province in Valle El Manso in Argentina. Located in the vicinity of Chile El Manso was settled in the late 19th century by Chileans of mestizo and Mapuche stock as well by European immigrants. Chiloé Archipelago in particular was the place of origin of most Chilean settlers. Early settlers engaged in subsistence farming.
The National Astronomical Observatory of Chile is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the Department of Astronomy of the University of Chile (UCh). It is located on Cerro Calán, a hill in the commune of Las Condes. The commune is an eastern suburb of Santiago located in Santiago Province of the Santiago Metropolitan Region. OAN was founded in 1852 and became a part of UCh in 1927. The facility on Cerro Calán was completed in 1962.
The National Presbyterian Church in Mexico is the second-largest Protestant church, and the largest Reformed denomination in Mexico. It is present throughout the country, and is particularly strong in the states of Tabasco, Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan, Nuevo León, Aguascalientes and Mexico City.
The Presbyterian Church in Chile was founded on June 7, 1868 in the city of Santiago and was the first Protestant church in the country. The Chile mission was coordinated by Dr. Rev. David Trumbull and the United Presbyterian Church in the USA. On June 13, 1883 the first Presbytery was organised in Chile. It adopted the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA. Till 1963 the church was dependent on the United Presbyterian Churches Synod of New York. With the creating of 3 more Presbyteries, the church become independent from the American Presbyterian church in January 1964.
The National Conservative Presbyterian Church in Mexico is a Christian denomination in Mexico.
The Chilean–Peruvian territorial dispute is a territorial dispute between Chile and Peru that started in the aftermath of the War of the Pacific and ended significantly in 1929 with the signing of the Treaty of Lima and in 2014 with a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The dispute applies since 2014 to a 37,610 km2 territory in the Chile–Peru border, as a result of the maritime dispute between both states.
