Chile: Encyclopedia II - Chile

Unlike some of its South American neighbours, Chile is a relatively homogenous country. Around 95% of Chileans descend from early Spanish colonists, with the overwhelming part also possessing Native American ancestry in varying degrees - thus deeming the population majority as mestizo.

During the colonial period, Spain found it necessary to maintain a continual influx of soldiers to protect its distant American colonies. Spaniards arrived from all regions of Spain, including Andalucia, Extremadura, and the Basque country. Many of these ended up settling in Chile. The combination of an economy based on temperate-zone agriculture, Amerindian resistance to Spanish occupation, and a continuous influx of Spaniards from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the colonial period defined the main body of Chile's mestizo majority population to one where the average Spanish input is greater than in neighbouring Andean mestizo populations. People of relatively unmixed Spanish ancestry are not uncommon. Those of unmixed European ancestry are estimated between five to ten percent.

People that self-identify solely as members of any of the country's many indigenous groups number around 700,000 individuals, or 5% of the country's total population. Of that 700,000, around 80% are Mapuche that reside mainly in the south-central area of the country. Aymara and Quechua-speaking populations live along the northern border with Peru and Bolivia. There are also around 5,000 polynesian people who are indigenous to the Chilean territory of Easter Island (Rapanui) in the Pacific.

Throughout much of Chile's modern history there has been a slow but steady work related trans-Andean migration to Chile - primarily from Peru and Bolivia - due mostly to the economic situation of its neighbours. Peruvians have historically constituted the largest immigrant group of the country. However, Argentina's eventual economic collapse in 2001 caused such an escalation in their migratory influx into Chile, that by 2005 Argentinians comprised the largest immigrant group, outnumbering Peruvians.

Chileans descended from non-Spanish European immigrants are not very numerous. They include a small but influential number of descendants of Irish immigrants which arrived in Chile during the Spanish colonial period and descendants of English immigrants, arrived during and after independence (mainly merchants and sailors). A government-sponsored immigration from Germany began in 1848, and in time, changed the cultural makeup of the southern provinces of Valdivia, Llanquihue, and Osorno, which still show a strong German influence. Other historically significant immigrant groups include people of Italian ancestry (Valparaíso Region), Croatian (Antofagasta and Punta Arenas), French, and Polish backgrounds. There are also people from Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds, including the second largest Palestinian colony outside of the Middle East. In the last decade there has been an influx of Koreans who settled in small sections of Santiago.

Although all these immigrants never came to comprise a large segment of the population, they nevertheless contributed greatly to Chilean socity and the development of the nation. Most retained their traditions, cultures and national affiliations by maintaining close-knit communities - although many also mixed into the majority - while at the same time co-existed peacefully with the host population.