Chile

Chile is a unitary presidential republic occupying a narrow strip of land between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean in South America's Southern Cone, the southernmost country in the world, with Santiago as its capital and largest city and a bicameral legislature of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Chile declared independence from Spanish rule on 12 February 1818 after a period of armed conflict, and Spain formally recognized that independence on 25 April 1844. The country lived through a sixteen and a half year right wing military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, marked by documented human rights violations, before transitioning to democracy; its current constitutional framework dates to 11 March 1981, adopted during the military period. Covering 756,102 square kilometers with about 18.5 million people as of the 2024 census, Chile functions today as a high income economy and joined the OECD in 2010.