The Denver Jewish news., 1922-10-11
View Of Santiago, Chile.

passage and Lynn canal Of the Alas
kan coast.
When Chile Expanded.
1t is the extreme northern portion.
of Chile as shown by the maps that
Is now the center Of interest Chile
did not always have a length Of 200
miles. Until the last quarter of the
past century, the northern boundary
of the country fell more than 500
miles short OF its present position.
North of it Bolivia owned a coastal
strip 200 miles or more in length. and
Peru's southern border extended some
300 miles farther south than 1t does to-
day. All of this region, which now
forms the northernmost 800 miles OF
Chile, was considered of little worth,
and much of it had not been explored.
When extensive nitrate deposits
were discovered. In the Bolivian por-
tion of the coastal strip in the sixties.
there was n rush like that to Califor-
MAS gold fields in 1S49. A large pro-
portion of the newcomers were Chill
cans. Friction arose between Chilean
mining companies and Bolivian tax
collectors, and. finally in 1879 war
broke out between Chile and Bolivia.
Peru swns drawn In as I'm ally of Bo-
livia, and the three-cornered war ran
on for several years. At Its con-
clusion Chile was completely victor
ious and extended lrer boundaries mt
the expense of the two vanquished
countries. Bolivia became "the Swift
zerland of America" In n double sense;
1t is not only perched high among
mountains, but by the loss Of its Pa
ciflc provinces II became completely
.landlOcked. This mountain country
has attempted In recent years to buy
from Chile Corridor" to the sea
Since the war of the Pacific. as 1t
was called. Peru has had toward Chile
the relations which Italy held toward
Austria In the late Nineteenth and
early Twentieth centuries. Tacna and
africa have constituted its Peru 1rre-
denta," and all its leaders have
dreamed of restoring the lost prov
inces.
Economically, Chile las prodted
greatly by the war OF ns paciiic. Gut
of the former Peru -H province of
Tarapaca and the foruer bolivian pro-
. vince of Atacama (nOw the Chilean
Autobiography have been taken since
tie war nitrates worth many millions
of dollars, and much remains to be
extracted. Valuable deposits of nj
trate have come to light, too in Tacna
since the war. The export tax on nj
trates supplies nearly three-fourths of
the income of the government. Incl
- ~ fx,xt
areas along this desert portion of the
coast capable of producing crops, and
the section is therefore of great strate-
gic value. These are some of the COM
plex factors which make the Tacna-
africa problem much more than 81 mere
question whether plebiscite shall be
held to assign the region permanently
to either Peru or Chile.
Santiago the Capital.
Santiago is the chief city of Chile.
but not in the same degree us Buenos
Aires is of the Argentine republic.
Buenos Aires has become almost the
republic itself, in the sense that Paris
is France but Santiago is but the cap
ital of the country, which has other
cities that may compare with it in To-
cal importance. Santiago contrasts
with Buenos Aires as the conservative
capital of a small country with the me-
tropolis of the continent. You feel in
the Chilean capital the conservative
character of the people; in Buenos
Aires the liberal spirit of the world
city.
Valdivia and his successors, the in
vaders of Chile in the Sixteenth GEN.
fury. were soldiers bent solely on con-
quest, such as they had taken part in
in Peru. for immediate gain; whereas,
the colonists who in successive cNpe-
ditions founded Buenos Aires came
with wives and children, with horses,
mares. and implements Of husbandry,
to settle in the land. Thus there was
n marked difference between Chile and
Argentina from the beginning
The warning Invaders of Chile met
and mingled with warlike Indian
race. the Araucanians, and their issue
is without question the most indie
pendent, the boldest, the most aggres-
sive OF South American peoples.