CHILE



Chile 1662
Photo by: rafcha

Republic of Chile

República de Chile

CAPITAL : Santiago

FLAG : The flag, adopted in 1817, consists of a lower half of red and an upper section of white, with a blue square in the upper left corner containing a five-pointed white star.

ANTHEM : Canción Nacional (National Song) beginning "Dulce Patria, recibe los votos."

MONETARY UNIT : The peso ( P ) of 100 centavos replaced the escudo as the nation's monetary unit in October 1975. There are coins of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 pesos, and notes of 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 pesos. P 1 = US $0.00141 (or US $1 = P 708) as of May 2003.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES : The metric system is the legal standard, but local measures also are used.

HOLIDAYS : New Year's Day, 1 January; Labor Day, 1 May; Navy Day (Battle of Iquique), 21 May; Assumption, 15 August; Independence Day, 18 September; Army Day, 19 September; Columbus Day, 12 October; All Saints' Day, 1 November; Immaculate Conception, 8 December; Christmas, 25 December. Movable religious holidays include Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

TIME : 8 AM = noon GMT.


LANGUAGES

Spanish is the national language. A sizable segment of Mapuche (Araucanian) Amerindians use Spanish in addition to their native tongue. The only other language of any importance is German, spoken mainly in the Valdivia region.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agosin, Marjorie. Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: the Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974–1994. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of Mexico Press, 1996.

Arriaza, Bernardo T. Beyond Death: the Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

Barr-Melej, Patrick. Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Caistor, Nick. Chile: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture. New York: Interlink Books, 2002.

Castillo-Feliú, Guillermo I. Culture and Customs of Chile. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Chile Since Independence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Collier, Simon. A History of Chile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Drake, W. and Ivan Jaksic. The Struggle for Democracy in Chile, 1982–1990. Rev. Ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Health in the Americas, 2002 edition. Washington, D.C.: Pan American Health Organization, Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Regional Office of the World Health Organization, 2002.

Hojman, D. E. Chile: The Political Economy of Development and Democracy in the 1990s. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Lavrin, Asuncion. Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Lowden, Pamela. Moral Opposition to Authoritarian Rule in Chile 1973–90. N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Oxhorn, Philip. Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Petras, James F. Democracy and Poverty in Chile. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

Sater, William F. Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Spooner, Mary Helen. Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Stewart-Gambino, Hannah W. The Church and Politics in the Chilean Countryside. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992.

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