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Chilean History and Literature

Resources for the history and literature of Chile.

History (before 1973):

Timeline of key events. Info from The History of Chile by John L. Rector:

  • 13,000–10,000 B.C.: Arrival of first humans in Chile, according to most archeologists.
  • 2000 B.C.: Chinchorro culture in the northern coastal area.
  • 500 A.D.: Significant human populations established throughout Chile.
  • 600–1000: Influence of the Tiahuanaco culture on northern Chilean peoples.
  • 1470–1535 Inca conquest of communities north of the Río Maule. Imposition of labor tribute including gold mining.

Encyclopeida Britannica: 

  • At least 500,000 indigenous Chileans lived in the region prior to the Spanish conquest.
  • The groups in the North lived by fishing and farming in the oases. Sections of the Incan empire of Peru took control in the 15th century. 
  • The Araucanian people were dispersed throughout southern Chile. These mobile peoples lived in family clusters and small villages. A few engaged in subsistence agriculture, but most thrived from hunting, gathering, fishing, trading, and warring. The Araucanians resisted the Spanish as they had the Incas, but fighting and disease reduced their numbers by two-thirds during the first century after the Europeans arrived.

Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino:

The Mapuche are considered the direct descendants of the ancient pre-Hispanic cultures of Pitrén (100 – 1100 CE) and El Vergel (1100 – 1450 CE) that inhabited the lands between the Bío Bío Rover and Reloncaví Sound. When the Spanish came to this region, however, the Mapuche tongue of Mapudungun was in use all the way from the Choapa River to Chiloé, even though this extensive territory was inhabited by different cultures. Indeed, the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th Century seems to have triggered the amalgamation of several indigenous groups and the forging of closer social and cultural ties, all of which is part of what we know today as the history of the Mapuche identity. 

Resources:

Timeline of key events:

  • 1520: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan explores the strait that now bears his name.

  • 1541: Pedro de Valdivia, authorized by Francisco Pizarro, leads an expedition to Chile. He takes possession of Chile and the territory becomes the  General Captaincy of Chile under the Viceroyalty of Peru. He establishes Santiago. Mapuche resistance in September forces Valdivia to rebuild the city. 

  • 1553-1556: The indigenous Mapuche continue to resist the Spanish invasion. A Chief, Lautaro, leads the capture and execution of Pedro de Valdivia at Tucapel.

  • 1557: Francisco de Villagra kills Lautaro at Peteroa.

  • 1557: García Hurtado de Mendoza named governor of Chile. 

  • 1559: The Araucana is published. 

  • 1567: Chile’s first royal court, the audiencia, was inaugurated at Concepción.

  • 1599–1604: Great Mapuche rebellion. Six out of thirteen of the cities founded by the Spanish in Chile were destroyed and the surviving Mapuche populations were enslaved in the frontier wars.

  • 1608: Crown authorizes enslavement in Chile.

  • 1612–26 Jesuit priest Luis de Valdivia convinces the crown to build forts north of the Biobío River and turn Mapuche territory over to his order’s jurisdiction. Policy called the Defensive War.

  • 1641: Initiation of negotiations, called parliaments, with the Mapuche.

  • 1647: Earthquake destroys Santiago.

  • 1680: English pirate Bartholomew Sharp destroys La Serena.

  • 1700: End of the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty with the death of Charles II. Beginning of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty under Philip V.

  • 1738: King authorizes the creation of the Universidad de San Felipe.

  • 1750: Earthquake destroys Concepción. It is rebuilt in a new location.

  • 1767: Charles III expels the Jesuit order and confiscates its properties.

  • 1788-1796: Administration of Governor Ambrosio O’Higgins.

  • 1791: Encomiendas (enslavement of Indigenous peoples) were abolished.

  • 1808: Francisco Antonio García Carrasco was named Chile’s interim governor.

  • 1808: Napoleon forces Spanish kings to abdicate and places his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne.

Sources: 

Rector, John Lawrence. “Timeline of Historical Events.” The History of Chile, Greenwood, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA, 2019, pp. xviii–xx.

Redden, Andrew. “‘Guided By God’ beyond the Chilean Frontier: The Travelling Early Modern European Conscience.” Renaissance Studies, vol. 23, no. 4, 2009, pp. 486–500.

“Chile History Timeline.” Chile History, Culture and Travel, 2023, www.chileculture.org/chile-history-timeline/.

Resources:

The Mapuche in Modern Chile:  a cultural history / Joanna Crow.

Chile: a country study / Rex A Hudson.

Indigenous Response to State Colonization in Southern Chile / Oscar Salvador Toro.

Recopilación de fuentes para la historia Mapuche, siglos XVII, XVIII y XIX Edición y comentarios / Stefan Rinke et. al.

De la naturaleza al paisaje: Los viajes de Francisco Vidal Gormaz en la colonización visual del sur de Chile en el siglo XIX / Rodrigo Booth & Catalina Valdés

 

Timeline of key events:

1810: Junta in Santiago proclaims autonomy for Chile following the overthrow of the king of Spain by Napoleon.

1814: Spain regains control of Chile.

1817: Spanish defeated by Army of the Andes led by Jose de San Martin and Bernardo O'Higgins at the battles of Chacabuco and Maipu.

1818: Chile becomes independent with O'Higgins as supreme leader.

1823-30: O'Higgins forced to resign; civil war between liberal federalists and conservative centralists ends with conservative victory.

1851-61: President Manuel Montt liberalises constitution and reduces privileges of landowners and church.

1879-84: Chile increases its territory by one-third after it defeats Peru and Bolivia in War of the Pacific.

Late 19th century: Pacification of Araucanians paves way for European immigration; large-scale mining of nitrate and copper begins.

1891: Civil war over constitutional dispute between president and congress ends in congressional victory, with president reduced to figurehead.

- BBC

Resources (in English):

Troubled Negotiations: The Mapuche and the Chilean State (1818–1830) / Joanna Crow.

The Chilean Economy during the 1810–1830s and its Entry into the World Economy / Manuel Llorca-Jaña et. al. 

Ideas and politics of Chilean independence 1808-1833 / Simon Collier. F3094 .C7

Connections after Colonialism : Europe and Latin America in The 1820s. / Matthew Brown et. al.

From Araucanian warriors to Mapuche terrorists: contesting discourses of gender, race, and nation in modern Chile (1810-2010) / Joanna Crow

Timeline of key events:

1891: Civil war over constitutional dispute between president and congress ends in congressional victory, with president reduced to figurehead.

1891–96: Jorge Montt’s presidency.

1905: The meat riot in Santiago begins as urban residents protest high price of food. Army is deployed and death toll estimates reached 250. 

1906: The Great Valparaiso Earthquake damages much of central Chile and is felt from Peru to Buenos Aires.

1907: The Siege of Santa Maria de Iquique: Chilean workers in nitrate mines went on strike with demands for humane working conditions and higher wages. Eighteen thousand miners were met with a slew of bullets fired by the army, killing two thousand people. 

1912: Forrahue Massacre: at least 15 Mapuche people killed by police. 

1914: The Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral makes her name with her first collection, Sonetos de la muerte.

1914: Port of Valparaíso enters economic decline due to the opening of the Panama Canal. 

1920: Arturo Alessandri is elected president.

1924: 20-year-old Chilean poet Pablo Neruda publishes one of his best-known collections, Twenty Love Poems.

1924: Military pressures Alessandri to resign. He goes into exile.

1925: Alessandri returns to the presidency. New constitution increases presidential powers and separates church and state.

Sources:

Oxford Reference, BBC, John Rector

Resources (en Español):

Estrategias del yo: construcción del sujeto autorial en los textos de cinco autobiógrafas chilenas / Lorena Amaro Castro

Forrahue 1912: La historia jamás contada en Osorno y en Chile

Timeline of key events:

1925: Arturo Alessandri is elected president. 

1927: General Carlos Ibanez del Campo seizes power and establishes dictatorship.

1932: Alessandri is re-elected. Social progressive reforms undertaken in Chile.

1933: Socialist party founded.

1937: Ley de Seguridad Interior del Estado (State Interior Security Law) authorizes the president to restrict political attire, meetings, and publications deemed threatening to the state.

1938: Seguro Obrero Massacre: 59 members of the fascist National Socialist Movement of Chile, known as "nacistas," were killed by law enforcement after an attempted coup d'état.

1938-41: Popular Front candidate, Padro Aguirre Cerda, supported by the Radical, Socialist, Democratic, and Communist parties wins the presidency.

1939: Devastating earthquake destroys Chillán.

1942-1946: Juan Antonio Ríos’s presidency.

1942: Chile breaks diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan.

1945: Gabriela Mistral is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature becoming the first South American writer to win the prize.

1949: Women are granted the right to vote.

1948-58: Communist Party banned.

1952-58: Carlos Ibanez re-elected president.

1958-64: Jorge Alessandri’s presidency.

1960: Valdivia earthquake, the most destructive in Chile’s history.

1964: Eduardo Frei Montalva, Christian Democrat, elected president and introduces cautious social reforms.

1970: Salvador Allende becomes world's first democratically elected Marxist president and embarks on an extensive program of radical social reform. Supported by coalition of parties called the Unidad Popular.

1971: The March of the Empty Pots; women’s protest against food scarcity.

1971: Pablo Neruda wins the Nobel Prize in Literature becoming the second Chilean writer to win the prize.

1971: Nationalization of the Gran Minería copper mines; all copper mines now government owned. Rapid acceleration of hacienda expropriations.

1972: In August, a national retail merchants strike, and in October, a truckers strike; workers occupy factories.

1973: In the March congressional election, Democratic Confederation receives 55 percent of the votes and the Unidad Popular, 44 percent.

1973: Military overthrows Salvador Allende on September 11. Chief of Staff General Augusto Pinochet ousts Allende in coup and proceeds to establish a brutal dictatorship.

Sources: 

BBC, John Rector. 

Resources: 

Harmer, Tanya. Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Baldez, Lisa. “Catapulting Men to Action: The March of the Empty Pots.” Why Women Protest. N.p., 2002. 76–97.

Sigmund, Paul E. The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. F3100 .S5.

September 11, 1973 Military Coup D'etat:

On the morning of September 11, 1973, the military launched another coup against the Allende government. At 9:10 a.m., Allende made his final broadcast from the presidential palace, announcing that he would not resign the presidency and rallying his supporters with the cry, “Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!” After the address, Allende purportedly joined in defending the palace, which was under heavy attack. Once it became clear that the military would take the palace, Allende told the defenders to surrender. Allende died during the final events of the coup: his death is now widely regarded a suicide.

On September 13, Pinochet was named President of Chile, whereupon he dismantled Congress and outlawed many Chilean leftist political parties. The takeover of the government ended a 46-year history of democratic rule in Chile. In June 1975, Pinochet announced that there would be no future elections in the country.

- US Office of the Historian

Covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was extensive and continuous. The Central Intelligence Agency spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the outcome of the 1964 Chilean presidential elections. Eight million dollars was spent, covertly, in the three years between 1970 and the military coup in September 1973, with over three million dollars expended in fiscal year 1972 alone. - Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities

Photo via Marjorie Apel in WikiMedia Commons: "Fotografías de personas desaparecidas tras el golpe de estado del 11 de septiembre de 1973 en Chile. Exposición de la Fundación Salvador Allende con motivo del 30. aniversario de su muerte." (Photographs of people disappeared after the coup d'état on September 11, 1973 in Chile. Exhibition of the Salvador Allende Foundation on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his death.) 

History (after 1973):

Timeline of key events:

1973: Military rounds up thousands of Unidad Popular supporters. Begins executions and the routine use of torture.

1973: Military junta suspends constitution, closes Congress, and prohibits any political activities.

1975: Friedman delivers economic seminar in Santiago. Initiation of neoliberal economic shock treatment.

1978: Pinochet declares amnesty for political crimes committed since September 11, 1973.

1980: New constitution ratified.

1982: Devaluation of the peso and debt crisis initiate drastic recession.

1983: Strikes on the eleventh day of each month protest the military government.

1987: Pope John Paul II visits Chile. Calls for social justice.

1989: The "No" campaign wins a majority with 53 percent of the vote; this result denies Pinochet eight more years in the presidency.

1989: First election since 1973. Coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, and smaller parties called the Concertación wins presidency and a majority of congressional seats.

1990–94: Patricio Aylwin’s presidency (Christian Democrat). Leads transition to democracy. Finance Minister Alejandro Foxley, continues the neoliberal economic model but with emphasis on eliminating poverty.

1990–91: Rittig Commission investigates human rights abuses during the military regime.

1990: Augusto Pinochet steps down

Source: John Rector, Steve Stern.

Timeline of key events:

1990 – 1994: Transition period, Patricio Aylwin serves as president.

1998: Augusto Pinochet is arrested in England but he is eventually released on medical grounds.

2002: Chile signs an association agreement with the European Union.

2003: Chile finalizes a free trade agreement with the United States.

2004: Chile signs a free trade agreement with South Korea. Chile becomes the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to legalize divorce.

2006: Chileans elected their first female president, Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party.

2008: Peru files a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in a bid to settle a long-standing dispute over maritime territory with neighboring Chile.

2010: Sebastian Piñera from the center–right was elected president.

2010: Hundreds die and widespread damage is caused as massive earthquake strikes central Chile. The 8.8 magnitude quake is the biggest to hit the country in 50 years.

2010: Thirty-three miners trapped deep underground for 69 days are winched to safety, watched by TV audiences around the world.

2012: A judge orders the arrest of eight former army officers over 1973 murder of well-known left-wing singer Victor Jara, who was killed only days after the coup that brought Gen Pinochet to power.

2013: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru agree to scrap most of the tariffs on trade between their countries.

2013: Left-wing candidate Michelle Bachelet wins second round of voting in presidential election.

2014: Two retired Chilean colonels are sentenced to jail for torturing the father of President Michelle Bachelet in the months that followed the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973. A Chilean court orders the state to pay millions of dollars of compensation to 30 former political prisoners who were held on a remote island in the extreme south of the country during the military rule of Augusto Pinochet.

2017: Presidential election won by conservative former president Sebastián Piñera.

2019: Chile is rocked by mass protests at economic inequality, prompted by a subsequently-reversed rise in Santiago metro fares.

2020: A referendum backs rewriting the constitution, which was adopted during the rule of August Pinochet.

2021: Socialist candidate Gabriel Boric wins presidential election. 

2022: Almost 62 percent of voters rejected the draft constitution.

2023: May - Chile’s far-right won vote to select the committee that will rewrite its constitution. 

Sources: ChileCulture.org, BBC, Human Rights Watch, The Guardian.

Resources: 

Sehnbruch, Kirsten, and Peter Siavelis. Democratic Chile : the Politics and Policies of a Historic Coalition, 1990-2010. Ed. Kirsten Sehnbruch and Peter Siavelis. Boulder, Colorado ;: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014. Web.

Espinosa, Christian Spencer. “Narrativizing Cities, Localizing Urban Memories: The (Re)Construction of Place Through Urban Cueca in Santiago de Chile (1990-2010).” Space and culture 19.1 (2016): 94–109. Web.

Jara Ibarra, Camila. (Des)movilización de la sociedad civil chilena : post-trauma, gobernabilidad y neoliberalismo (1990-2010). Santiago de Chile: Ariadna Ediciones, 2019.