Travel

Independent from Spain since 1810, Chile has exhibited a rather unusual history. While the Spaniards conquered with relative ease the indigenous empires elsewhere on the continent, here they ran against three centuries of fierce Mapuche resistance. In the century and a half that followed Independence, a large chunk of Latin America was run by authoritarian governments or suffered political instability; Chile, by contrast, had a democracy that ran like a clock. In the 1970's, this situation reversed itself: here ruled a military regime, while elsewhere the men in uniform were heading back to their barracks. In 1989, Chile regained its democratic traditions. By then, it had become one of the countries with the most open economy in the world. Nowadays, its astounding economic growth, unbroken for over a dozen years, attracts attention around the world. Its political and institutional stability, in turn, has opened the doors to an increasingly rich commercial, cultural and touristic interchange with the rest of the world.

Facts & Figures

• Area: 756,626 km2 [300,000 sq. miles], plus 1,250,000 km2 [480,000 sq. mi] of Antarctic territory
• Population: 14.2 million
• Population Density: 18.7 hab/km2
• GDP Average Growth: 7% per year in the past 12 years
• Per capita income: US$ 4,876 (1996)
• Inflation (1997): 5.8%
• Main Religion: Catholicism