CHILE, FLAG OF

national flag with a horizontal white stripe over a red stripe; a dark blue canton with a large white star is in the upper hoist corner. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. In the early 19th century, when Chile took its first steps toward independence from Spain, cockades were worn by many patriotic Chileans in the colours blue, white, and yellow, but the significance of those colours is not known. A tricolour flag based on the cockades was hoisted on September 30, 1812, when the break between Chile and Spain was made official; however, Spanish defeat of the rebels in 1814 terminated use of this flag. When patriot forces under Jos de San Martn engaged the royalist army three years later, what is now known as the "Flag of Transition" was established. It was apparently formed of three equal horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue. Finally, on October 18, 1817, the flag now in use was established for the emerging republic. The star is seen as a "guide on the path of progress and honour," while the blue stands for the sky. The white stripe corresponds to the snow of the Andes Mountains, the red stripe below reminding citizens of the blood of those who sacrificed themselves for the fatherland. In addition historians have noted that the Araucanian Indians of Chile in the 15th century gave sashes of the same three colours to their warriors, although there is no known direct connection with the modern national flag. Whitney Smith History Precolonial period At the time of the Spanish conquest of Chile in the mid-16th century, at least 500,000 Indians inhabited the region. Nearly all of the scattered tribes were related in race and language, but they lacked any central governmental organization. The groups in northern Chile lived by fishing and by farming in the oases. In the 15th century they fell under the influence of expanding civilizations from Peru, first the Chincha and then the Quechua, who formed part of the extensive Inca Empire. Those invaders also tried unsuccessfully to conquer central and southern Chile. The Araucanian Indian groups 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. The Spanish conquest of Chile began in 1536-37, when forces under Diego de Almagro, associate and subsequent rival of Francisco Pizarro, invaded the region as far south as the Maule River in search of an "Otro Peru" ("Another Peru"). Finding neither a high civilization nor gold, the Spaniards decided to return immediately to Peru. The discouraging reports brought back by Almagro's men forestalled further attempts at conquest until 1540-41, when Pizarro, after the death of Almagro, granted Pedro de Valdivia license to conquer and colonize the area. Valdivia, with about 150 companions, including his mistress, Ins Surez, the only Spanish woman in the company, entered Chile in late 1540 and founded Santiago (Feb. 12, 1541). For the next two decades the settlers lived a precarious existence and were constantly threatened by the Indians, who resisted enslavement. Before the safety of the colony was guaranteed, land was apportioned to the conquerors, and thus began the system of large estates. The estates were later institutionalized through the mayorazgo, a practice of transmitting estates by entail. Valdivia did not undertake the conquest of the region south of the Bo-Bo River until 1550. In that year Concepcin was founded, and preparations were made to move southward. During the next two years settlements and forts were established in La Frontera, but in 1553 the Araucanian Indians, under a skilled military chieftain named Lautaro, rose in a revolt that led to the capture and death of Valdivia and to the beginning of a costly struggle. The Araucanians, often referred to as the Apache of South America, kept the struggle alive until the 1880s by successfully adapting their way of life and military tactics to changing conditions. Although Concepcin was destroyed on several occasions, it remained as the Spanish outpost in the south as did La Serena, founded in 1544, in the north. The province of Cuyo held the same position east of the Andes until 1776, when it was made a part of the newly created Viceroyalty of the Ro de la Plata. The conquest of Chile was finally consolidated during the late 1550s under Gov. Don Garca Hurtado de Mendoza. Before the end of the 16th century English pirates and freebooters, including Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish, and later Dutch adventurers harassed the coast in search of sudden wealth and as part of a prolonged effort to force Spain to permit neutral nations to trade with its New World colonies. Colonial period Because only quite limited amounts of precious metal were found in Chile, the settlers early turned their attention to agriculture. They grew a wide variety of cereals, vegetables, and fruits; raised livestock; and consumed nearly all of their production locally. Largely because of the poverty of the colony, there were never more than a few thousand black slaves; and, because the Indians proved to be an unreliable source of labour, the settlers often had to work the fields themselves. The lack of mineral wealth also made the area unattractive to Spaniards, and at the end of the 16th century there were no more than 5,000 Spanish settlers in the entire colony. In this regard it should be pointed out that, beginning in 1600 and continuing until trade restrictions were relaxed in the late colonial period, Chile was a "deficit area" in the empire, and the Spanish crown had to provide an annual subsidy to meet the expense of maintaining officials in Santiago and an army on the Araucanian frontier. Chile lived under the same administrative and religious systems as its neighbours, but because the colony was poor, there was until the 18th century a tendency to send mediocre officials to preside over its destinies. The Spanish crown and the Roman Catholic Church combined to limit the colonists' administrative experience and economic development. The power of the captain-general, the highest royal official in the colony, was absolute. Appeals to the viceroy in Peru or the king in Spain were always possible, at least in theory. Chilean trade was tightly controlled from Peru. The influence of the Catholic Church in secular affairs was always significant and frequently decisive. The most apparent social development after 1600 was the rapid growth of a mestizo (mixed Indian and European) group, which gives present-day Chile its homogeneous ethnic character. By the end of the colonial period, when the population reached an estimated 500,000 (not including unsubjugated Indians), approximately 300,000 were mestizos and about 150,000 were Creoles (native-born persons of European descent). About 20,000 were peninsulares (recently arrived Spaniards), perhaps 15,000 were blacks, and a handful were recently emancipated Indians. Society was highly structured, with peninsulares at the top, followed by Creoles, mestizos, Indians, and African slaves. At the end of the colonial period, the vast majority of the population was concentrated in the Aconcagua Valley and the Central Valley (extending from Santiago to Concepcin), which together form "the cradle of Chilean nationality." Education in colonial Chile was almost a complete monopoly of the Catholic clergy and reinforced the society's strong class differences. In 1758, however, courses were opened in the Royal and Pontifical University of San Felipe at Santiago and attracted students from the Spanish colonies across the Andes. Nonetheless, intellectual life in Chile developed slowly. The colony did not have a printing press until shortly before it won independence from Spain in 1818, and the paucity of contacts with the outside world reinforced its insularity.