Chile

The Inca in Chile — the southern edge of an empire

The Incan Empire's expansion into northern and central Chile (c. 1430–1532 CE) brought the Andean civilisation to its southernmost limit — the Atacama Desert communities and the Mapuche people of central Chile both encountered the Inca, with very different results: the Atacameños were absorbed; the Mapuche successfully resisted, becoming the only people to halt the Inca advance.

The Arauco War — three centuries of Mapuche resistance

The Arauco War (1536–1825 CE) was one of history's longest colonial conflicts — the Mapuche people of southern Chile resisted Spanish conquest for nearly 300 years, developing innovations in warfare (adopting the horse, copying Spanish tactics) that made them the most successful resisters of European colonialism in the Americas.

Pablo Neruda — the poet of the Pacific

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973 CE), born Neftalí Reyes in Parral, Chile, was the 20th century's greatest Spanish-language poet — his Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924, published at 19) made him world-famous; his Canto General (1950) created an epic of the Americas; and his Nobel Prize (1971) was followed by his death twelve days after Pinochet's coup, under circumstances suggesting foul play.

Salvador Allende — the socialist who was overthrown

Salvador Allende's election as president of Chile (1970 CE) and subsequent overthrow in a CIA-backed military coup (11 September 1973) became the defining episode of Cold War Latin American politics — the world's first democratically elected Marxist head of government was killed when General Pinochet's air force bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda.

Pinochet and the disappeared — Chile's reckoning

General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973–1990 CE) was one of Latin America's most systematic state terror campaigns — the DINA secret police, Operation Condor (coordinating repression with Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Bolivia), and the "caravan of death" executed thousands, while tens of thousands were tortured and hundreds of thousands driven into exile.

The Atacama — Earth's driest desert and its cosmic ceiling

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile is the driest non-polar desert on earth — some meteorological stations have never recorded rainfall — and its extreme aridity and altitude (4,000+ metres), combined with virtually zero light pollution and the Southern Hemisphere's clearest skies, makes it home to the world's greatest concentration of astronomical observatories.