Chile

Chile is a long, thin country with its own words for everything: palta for avocado, volantín for a kite, marraqueta and hallulla for two kinds of bread that families argue over. Its evening meal is the once, bread and tea at seven that for many people has replaced dinner, and an invitation to it means stay a while.

In September the whole country stops for el dieciocho: dance halls of wood and branches go up in the squares, everybody dances the cueca they learned at school, millions of empanadas are eaten, and the bars serve a drink called the earthquake. The German kuchen of the south and the Mapuche word inside empanada de pino say where the country's mix comes from.

History

History of Chile: a timeline (7 moments of its history)

Start with

  • 12 February 1541–25 December 1553: Santiago de Chile and the Mapuche war — Pedro de Valdivia, a veteran of the Italian wars, left Cusco in January 1540 with Pizarro's licence and on 12 February 1541 founded Santiago in the Mapocho…
  • January 1817–5 April 1818: San Martín crosses the Andes — After the patriots' defeat at Rancagua in 1814 and the Spanish reconquest of Santiago, Chilean exiles led by Bernardo O'Higgins joined José de San Martín in…
  • 1847: Andrés Bello's grammar for Americans — In 1847 Andrés Bello published in Santiago his Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos.
  • February 1879–April 1884: The War of the Pacific — The Atacama desert held the world's richest nitrate, used for fertiliser and explosives, mostly worked by Chilean companies on Bolivian and Peruvian soil.
  • 11 September 1973–11 March 1990: The coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile — Salvador Allende, a socialist, had been elected president of Chile in 1970 and tried to build socialism by law: nationalising copper, speeding land reform,…
  • October 1982: García Márquez wins the Nobel: the Boom — In the 1960s a handful of Latin American novelists became world famous almost at once: the Argentine Julio Cortázar with Rayuela (1963), the Peruvian Mario…
  • c. 2015: The Venezuelan exodus — Venezuela, once the richest country in South America and a magnet for immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Colombia, has in a decade become the source of…

Culture

Culture of Chile

Food and drink

  • La once — The meal that replaced dinner for many Chileans: bread, tea and something on top at seven, avocado on everything, a name nobody can explain, and an invitation that really means stay.

Festivals and celebrations

  • Fiestas Patrias: el dieciocho — The week Chile stops for the eighteenth: dance halls built of wood and branches, a handkerchief dance everybody learned at school, empanadas by the million, kites over the hills, and a drink named after an earthquake.

Customs and etiquette

  • La hora latina: the elastic hour — An invitation for eight means you may arrive from eight. The skill is knowing when the time is literal — and there is a phrase for saying so.

Literature and storytelling

Places and landscapes

History

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