The word Chile comes from the native Aymara word meaning the land where the earth ends.
Chile has been nurtured by immigrants such as Germans, French and Italians. Chilean cuisine is influenced by Indian and European cuisines. 65 percent of Chileans are of mixed European-indigenous descent. Chilean language was influenced by the natives and most Chileans understand their ancestors native tongue Mapudungun. The Chilean flag is made up of two horizontal lines that are white and red. The red represents the Chileans blood in their struggle against Spanish invaders. Also the white stands for the Andean snow. The flag also has a blue square at the end of the white stripe with a star located in the center. The blue represents the clear blue skies and the star represents Araucanian Indians coat of arms used in battle field banners. Chilean dance has been influenced by Peru and their Peruvian dancing. Chile's national dance is called the cueca and it was developed from Zamacueca which is a Peruvian dance. Chilean music reflects the spirit of the indigenous people. In Chile the population has grown to over 16 million with annual revenues generation around 36.71 billion.
History
The indigenous people of Chile were the Incas. Chile's first discover from Europe was Ferdinand Magellan. The next people to arrive were Spanish people coming from Peru on an expedition lead by Pedro de Valdivia in 1540. There was little to no cultural diffusion until the early 19th century. In 1818 Chile won it's independence from Spain. Then in the late 1870's through the early 1880's Chile went to war against both Bolivia and Peru. The war ended in 1883 when they signed the treated of Ancรณn.
Natural Disasters
Chile is an active earthquake zone with recent years seeing an increase in high magnitude quakes and subsequent damage and destruction that inevitably follows. As an example in early 2010 a masses earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale. It approximately hit 300 km south of the countries' capital Santiago. hundreds of people loss their lives and countless others were injured. The quake also caused wide spread damage to buildings and roads, and triggered several tsunamis which heavily damaged the coastal areas of the country.
One of the most important things to Chileans is sports. The Chilean Rodeo is a paired team event whereby the members of the team have to take turns between driving and pinning positions. The objective of the sport is to show control in driving a steer to a given section on the half-moon arena (called “medialuna” in Spanish) wall where some part of the side of the bovine’s anatomy is pushed by the chest of the pinning horse until the steer is pinned to a standstill on the padded cushion that defines the Pinning Zone. The Rodeo is judged and establishes a score that is made up o fa system where points can be earned and/or points may be deducted for faults. The positive points are determined by one point that is given to all paired teams that drive the steer correctly around the Holding Pen. In a given run with one steer the paired team will have four drives that always start off with a right hand drive and then alternate with left hand drives. The first three drives can terminate in scored pins that vary between 2-4 points depending how far back on the steer’s anatomy the pin took place. The fourth drive receives no positive points as it is simply a left hand drive to exit the steer from the arena but penalty points can be assigned if there is a loss of control of the steer. Since there is one possible point earned in the holding pen and three drives that theoretically could score a maximum of four points each, the highest possible score in a run is 13 points and this is very rarely seen.
