Santiago

national capital, Chile
Also known as: Santiago del Nuevo Extremo

Santiago, capital of Chile. It lies on the canalized Mapocho River, with views of high Andean peaks to the east. Santiago is the largest city in Chile and is also one of the most populous in Latin America. The city’s skyline, dotted with sleek modern skyscrapers, stands in contrast to its historical neighborhoods and stately colonial architecture. Pop. (2017) city 5,250,565; Greater (Gran) Santiago, 6,562,300.

History

During the period of Spanish colonial rule, growth was slow. Santiago’s checkerboard layout was maintained until the early 1800s, when the city grew to the north, to the south, and especially to the west. The southern arm of the Mapocho River was drained and converted into a public promenade, now the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins. The city was only slightly damaged during the War of Independence (1810–18), since the decisive Battle of Maipú took place west of the city limits. Santiago was named the republic’s capital in 1818, and thereafter the wealth of the country flowed into the city.

The city was founded as Santiago del Nuevo Extremo (“Santiago of the New Frontier”) in 1541 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. The area was inhabited by the Picunche people, who were placed under the rule of the Spanish settlers. The original city site was limited by the two surrounding arms of the Mapocho River and by Huelén (later renamed Santa Lucía) Hill to the east, which served as a lookout.

Tower Bridge over the Thames River in London, England. Opened in 1894. Remains an Important Traffic Route with 40,000 Crossings Every Day.
Britannica Quiz
Guess the City by Its River Quiz

Contemporary city

Colonial-era remnants stand alongside modern buildings throughout Santiago. One of the city’s oldest structures, the San Francisco Church (Iglesia de San Francisco), was originally founded as a chapel by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia in 1554. After an earthquake destroyed the chapel in 1583, Franciscan monks rebuilt it. The church’s bell tower was reconstructed in 1857, and in 1881 the original Baroque altars were replaced with Neoclassical ones. The church also houses one of Chile’s most significant colonial art collections, including paintings commissioned by the Spanish viceroy. Another notable landmark in Santiago is the Metropolitan Cathedral (Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago), which was constructed between 1748 and 1906. It serves as the main cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, showcasing an impressive blend of architectural styles from several centuries.

In addition to these religious landmarks, La Moneda Palace, also known as “the Mint,” is a key historic site. Its construction began in 1784, and it opened in 1805. Originally a mint for coin production, it later became the official residence of the president of Chile and the headquarters of several government ministries. The Mint has witnessed pivotal historic events, including the military coup d’état of 1973, which left lasting marks on both the building’s structure and the country’s history. The north facade of the Mint was severely damaged by rockets fired from military jets in an attack during the coup. It was during this attack that the democratically elected Pres. Salvador Allende—who refused to resign or leave the building—was overthrown by forces led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Today the Mint continues to serve as the seat of the executive branch, and it is also a cultural and historic site open to the public. A monument honoring Allende now stands opposite the building in Plaza de la Constitución.

Buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries also contribute to Santiago’s architectural landscape. The Cousiño Palace, a prominent example of 19th-century architecture, was once the residence of the wealthy Cousiño Goyenechea family, known for their silver mines in the Atacama region of Chile. Reflecting the fashionable French-style mansions of the time, the Cousiño Palace (completed 1878) is now open to the public as a museum. The National Fine Arts Museum (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes) is an important 20th-century building, completed in 1910 in a Neoclassical style with Art Nouveau elements. Its design bears similarities to the Petit Palais in Paris, a nod to the French background of its architect, Emilio Jéquier. The museum houses Chile’s primary collection of paintings and sculptures, including religious works from the colonial period and pieces by modern artists, such as Roberto Matta.

Santiago also boasts modern architecture, such as the Gran Torre Costanera (completed 2014). The skyscraper tops out at 984 feet (300 meters), making it the tallest building in the city and one of the tallest in Latin America. Another striking modern structure is the Bahāʾī Temple of South America, which opened in 2016. The temple consists of nine glass veils shaped like a flower bud, creating a curved dome that allows light to filter through.

Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

In addition to these architectural landmarks, the city contains the National Archives and numerous libraries and museums. Founded in 1813, the National Library of Chile (Biblioteca Nacional de Chile) is one of the oldest and largest libraries in Latin America. Santiago also boasts advanced educational institutions, such as the University of Chile (founded 1842), the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (1888), and the State Technical University (1947). Moreover, Santiago’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights (Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos) was inaugurated in 2010 by Pres. Michelle Bachelet. It stands as a powerful and solemn reminder of Chile’s history, commemorating the victims of human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Greater Santiago is the hub of Chile’s industrial activity, producing foodstuffs, textiles, shoes, and clothes; metallurgy and copper mining also play important roles. The city has an active financial sector, including a stock exchange, major banks with hundreds of branches, and many insurance companies.

Santiago is the center of the nation’s railroads. Highways and roads connect the city with the ports of San Antonio to the west and Valparaíso to the northwest, thus providing outlets to the Pacific Ocean. The city has a subway system, and air service is provided by the international airport at Pudahuel. There are also two smaller civil airports—Lo Castillo and Tobalaba—as well as El Bosque, a military airport.

Santiago’s cultural life is dynamic and cosmopolitan, and residents lead a fast-paced lifestyle. Each neighborhood within the city has its own distinct character. Barrio Bellavista, for example, is known for its edgy, artistic atmosphere, vibrant nightlife, exceptional dining, and a wealth of art galleries and artisanal boutiques. This neighborhood was once home to the celebrated Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. In contrast, such neighborhoods as Vitacura have fine dining and high-end shops. Additionally, such areas as Barrio Italia, influenced by immigrant communities, particularly from Italy, offer a rich multicultural atmosphere.

Santiago offers a variety of parks and activities. The Metropolitan Park (Parque Metropolitano) is the largest park in the city, featuring such attractions as two outdoor swimming pool complexes, an astronomical observatory, a botanical garden, and the National Zoo. At the southwest end of the park is San Cristóbal Hill, the highest point in Santiago, offering panoramic views of the city from the summit, which can be reached by cable car.

Santiago is situated in a region prone to earthquakes, and in 2010 a magnitude-8.8 earthquake that was centered some 200 miles (325 km) to the southwest damaged the city. The earthquake was the second strongest in Chile’s history, surpassed only by the 1960 Valdivia earthquake. It caused a nationwide blackout, affecting 93 percent of the population. At the time, President Bachelet declared a “state of catastrophe,” and the army was deployed to assist in hard-hit areas. In total, 370,000 homes and numerous other buildings were damaged. In addition, a large fire broke out at a plastics plant in one of Santiago’s neighborhoods, forcing many residents to evacuate. The earthquake resulted in repair costs estimated to be between $4 billion and $7 billion.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Katie Angell.

Andean peoples, aboriginal inhabitants of the area of the Central Andes in South America.

Although the Andes Mountains extend from Venezuela to the southern tip of the continent, it is conventional to call “Andean” only the people who were once part of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire in the Central Andes, or those influenced by it. Even so, the Andean region is very wide. It encompasses the peoples of Ecuador, including those of the humid coast—many of whose contacts were as frequently with maritime peoples, to both north and south, as with the highland peoples. Most of the populations and civilizations of Bolivia and Peru are Andean in a central, nuclear way, and here again are included the kingdoms of the irrigated desert coast. The peoples who for the past four and a half centuries have occupied the northern highlands of Chile and Argentina also must be included. (For a description of northern Andean peoples, see Central American and northern Andean Indian. For additional cultural and historical information, see pre-Columbian civilizations: Andean civilization.)

There is a stereotyped image of the Andes showing poverty against a background of bleak, unproductive mountains, where millions insist, against all apparent logic, on living at 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) or more above sea level. Nowhere else have people lived for so many thousands of years in such visibly vulnerable circumstances.

Yet, somehow this perception of the Andean peoples coexists with another, based on the breathtaking stage setting of such archaeological sites as Machu Picchu, the majesty of Inca stone palaces at Cuzco or Huánuco Pampa and such Chimú mud-walled cities as Chan Chan, the beauty of Andean textiles or ceramics in museums the world over, the reported concern of the Inca kings for the welfare of their subjects, and the mostly abandoned large-scale irrigation works or terraces constructed by these peoples.

These two visions of Andean peoples and their accomplishments can be reconciled only if it is recognized that what the resources and ecologic potential of an area and a people may be depends on what part of these resources the people use or are allowed to use by their masters. The Andean region was once rich and produced high civilizations because, over millennia, its people developed an agriculture, technologies, and social systems uniquely adapted to the very specialized if not unique ecologic conditions in which they lived.

Economic systems

Since 1532, under European rule, extractive activities, such as silver, tin, and copper mining, for foreign markets have been favoured to the point to which Andean agriculture and the ecologic wisdom in handling productively the extremely high altitudes have been gradually devalued and mostly forgotten. The population of the Central Andes is both less dense and less urban today than it was in 1500. The coastal cities of South America, from Guayaquil to Buenos Aires, are filling with highlanders who have been convinced by four and a half centuries of colonial rule that cultivating at 12,000 feet is too strenuous.

Although human occupation began over 20,000 years ago, the beginnings of agriculture and population growth are much more recent. Within the last 8,000 years a specialized desert-and-highland agriculture was developed. There are two significant achievements in the Andean agricultural endeavour. First, given the wide range of geographic circumstances—very high mountains in equatorial and tropical latitudes, a 3,000-mile coastal desert, the Amazon rain forest to the east—there were thousands of quite different ecologic pockets, each with its own micro-environment to be understood and exploited. Dozens of crops, with literally thousands of varieties, were domesticated; most of them remain unknown outside the Andean area. Only the potato has acquired a following elsewhere; and only maize (corn) and possibly cotton were known in the Andean region as well as in the rest of the Americas. It is this multiplicity of minutely adapted crops and the domestication of the alpaca and the llama that made the mountains habitable to millions (the bulk of the population in the Central Andes has always lived between 8,000 and 13,000 feet).

Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Second, no matter how specialized Andean plants or herds may become, the leap from bare survival to dense populations and civilizations requires something more. The high altitude, with its 200, 250, even 300 frost-threatened nights a year, represents a challenge to any agricultural system. On the high, cold plains, known in the Andes as puna, there are only two seasons: summer every day and winter every night. By alternately using the freezing temperatures of the nocturnal winter and the hot sunshine of the daily tropical summer, Andean peoples developed preserves of freeze-dried meat, fish, and mealy tubers (charki, chuñu) that kept indefinitely and weighed much less than the original food. The giant warehouses that lined the Inca highways could be filled with these preserves and used to feed the engineers planning cities and irrigation canals, the bureaucracy, and the army, not to mention the royal court, with its thousands of male and female retainers.

Political systems

Even these two technological developments, however, are not enough to characterize and explain the emergence of Andean civilizations. From the intimate knowledge of their environmental conditions, the people developed a set of values that may have started from a desire to minimize risks but that soon was elaborated into an economic and political ideal. Every Andean society—be it a tiny, local ethnic group of 20 to 30 villages in a single valley or a large kingdom of 150,000 souls, such as the Lupaca—tried to control simultaneously a wide variety of ecologic stories up and down the mountainsides; some of them were many days’ march from the political core of the nation. If the society was small, the outliers (herders or salt winners above the core; maize, cotton, or coca-leaf cultivators in the warm country below) would be only three or four days away. When the political unit grew large and could mobilize and maintain several hundred young men as colonists, the outliers could be 10 or even 15 days’ walk away from the core.

The colonies were permanent, not seasonal establishments. Since more than one highland kingdom or principality would have maize or coca-leaf oases in a given coastal or upland Amazonian valley, there would be not only competition for their control but also coexistence for long periods of time in a single environment of outlying colonies sent out by quite different core societies.

The Inca state, or Tawantinsuyu as it was known to its own citizens, was perhaps the largest political or military enterprise of all. It reached from Carchi in northern Ecuador to at least Mendoza in Argentina and Santiago in Chile. Its scouts roamed even wider, as recent Chilean archaeology has shown. The Incas expanded and projected on earlier, pre-Incan solutions and adaptations; in the process, many tactics that had worked well on a smaller scale became inoperative; others were reformulated in such ways that their original outline was barely recognizable. For example, they kept an old Andean method of creating revenues for their princes, which involved setting aside acreage for regional authorities and demanding from the conquered peasantry not tribute in kind but rather labour on the field thus set aside. In this way the granary of the peasant household was left untouched; the authority took the risk of hail, frost, or drought decreasing its own revenues.

The Inca state at its zenith did not breach this tradition overtly; the local ethnic groups continued to work the state’s acreage and owed nothing from their own larders. But since the needs of kings kept growing, revenues produced on state lands were soon inadequate; acreage could be and was expanded through such public works as irrigation and terracing. A more tangible way was to increase the amount of energy available for state purposes. For some reasons, still insufficiently understood, the kings did not increase productivity by introducing tribute; they preferred to magnify on an imperial scale the patterns of reciprocal obligations and land use familiar to everyone from earlier times.

Beyond the strategic colonies set up on an expanded model, the Incas did not interfere too much with life of the many local groups that they had incorporated into Tawantinsuyu. Most of the cultures that existed in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile before the Inca expansion can be identified. In fact, because the European invasion beginning in 1532 was mostly concerned with breaking the resistance of the Inca overlords, frequently more is known about the pre-Inca occupants than about Cuzco rule. Inca power was broken and decapitated within 40 years of 1532. The ethnic groups, many of which (like the Wanka or the Cañari) sided with Europeans against the Inca, were still easy to locate and identify in the 18th century. In isolated parts of Ecuador (Saraguro, Otavalo) and Bolivia (Chipaya, Macha) this can still be done today.

John V. Murra