a treaty of 1881 recognizing their mutual border – although one 50km section of this, just north of Torres del Paine, remains unresolved. (Although the two governments agreed on the position of the border in 1991, this was not ratified by the Argentine parliament, and at the time of writing no formal agreement had been concluded.)
In 1890 the authoritarian president José Manuel Balmaceda’s decision to act in direct defiance of Congress led to Civil War, with the army backing Balmaceda and the navy backing Congress. Following his defeat, Balmaceda committed suicide.
The 20th century
Chilean society remained deeply divided, with a vast gap between the disempowered workers and the ruling and landed elite, and strikes became increasingly common, typically resulting in brutal oppression. A number of social reforms were introduced by president Arturo Alessandri in a new constitution in 1925, a theme which was to be taken further by a later president, Eduardo Frei, in the 1960s.
Following his election as Chile’s first socialist president in 1970, Salvador Allende instigated a series of radical social reforms aimed at closing the gulf between rich and poor, nationalizing companies and redistributing land. Despite initial successes, however, rising inflation and a drastic fall in world copper prices, combined with covert operations by the CIA to destabilize Allende’s government, led to a military coup in 1973, in which Allende was killed in the Moneda Palace when it was bombed.
The 1973 coup ushered in 17 years of brutal military dictatorship under Auguste Pinochet, in which thousands were executed or tortured, opposition parties banned, press freedom curtailed and Congress dissolved. Pinochet’s re-privatization of industry and other free-market economic policies eventually led to a reduction in unemployment and inflation, but only at the expense of welfare and education and at massive social cost. Pinochet drafted a new constitution in 1980, which guaranteed him power for a further eight years, following which a referendum would be held.
The referendum of 1988 saw Pinochet voted out of power and a return to democracy under Patricio Aylwin, and both he and his successors Eduardo Frei and Ricardo Lagos attempted to tackle the thorny issue of human rights abuses under Pinochet and to reform the long-neglected health and education sectors.
Chile today
Today Chile has a strong economy – one of the healthiest in South America – although the distribution of wealth remains very uneven, as attested by the shanty towns south of Santiago. In 2006 Michelle Bachelet was elected President – the first woman to hold this position in Chile – and in 2009 Chile became the first South American country to gain full membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Bachelet was succeeded by Sebastián Piñera in 2010, but returned to office in 2014.
UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES IN CHILE
Chiloé churches
Rapa Nui national park (Easter Island)
Valparaíso old city centre
Humberstone and Santa Laura saltpetre works
Sewell mining town
Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System
Torres del Paine national park, despite being submitted to the tentative list in 1994, is yet to be accepted pending a resolution of the Chilean-Argentine border dispute.
Early exploration and mountaineering
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field was first explored in detail by Federico Reichert in 1913–14. Alberto de Agostini followed in 1928 and 1931, and in 1928–29 Gunter Plüschow undertook an aerial exploration, the aircraft later crashing in Lago Argentino. HW Tilman and Jorge Quinteros crossed the Ice Field from east to west in 1955–56, starting from Tilman’s yacht ‘Mischief’, moored in the Chilean fjords, and the two ending up swimming in Lago Argentino before returning.
Eric Shipton visited the area in 1960–61, completing an epic crossing from north to south between the Jorge Montt glacier and Lago Argentino (a distance of over 200km). The first full north–south crossing of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field was completed by Pablo Besser, Mauricio Rojas, José Montt and Rodrigo Fica in 1998. Cerro Lautaro, an active 3380m volcano in Bernardo O’Higgins national park (named after the Mapuche military leader who defeated Valdivia), was first climbed in 1964 by Pedro Skvarca and Luciano Pera.
The first European to see and describe Torres del Paine was Lady Florence Dixie who, bored with England, passed this way on horseback in the 1870s, and described the region in her book Across Patagonia (1880): ‘Beyond the hills rose the three red peaks and the Cordilleras. Their white glaciers, with the white clouds resting on them, were all mirrored to marvellous perfection in the motionless lake, whose crystal waters were of the most extraordinarily brilliant blue I have ever beheld.’ Baquedano Santiago Zamora, Tomás Rogers and Carl Skottsberg all visited the area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The great Swedish explorer Otto Nordenskjöld visited the area in the 1920s, followed in the 1930s–40s by the Silesian priest and mountaineer Alberto de Agostini – hence the names Lago Nordeskjöld and Torre di Agostini.
A cattle ranch was established in Torres del Paine in 1896, running until the 1970s, and a large area of the national park on the eastern side still lies on private land. Part of the area was declared a national park in 1959 (although not before large tracts had been cleared for livestock), this being enlarged over the following years until reaching its present size of over 240,000 hectares. It was declared a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in 1978.
Climbing expeditions to Torres del Paine began in earnest in the late 1950s, following on the heels of several expeditions to the Fitzroy area of Los Glaciares national park in Argentina a few years earlier. These included Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone on Fitzroy in 1952; Walter Bonatti on the western side of Cerro Torre and the Adele Cordón, and on Cerro Mariano Moreno, in 1958–59; and Cesare Maestri’s much disputed climb on Cerro Torre in 1959. Torres del Paine’s North Tower (Torre Norte) was first climbed by Guido Monzino in 1957–58; the Central Tower (Torre Central) by Chris Bonington and Don Whillans in 1963; and the South Tower (Torre Sur) by Armando Aste, also in 1963. Fortaleza, at the head of the Valle Francés, was climbed by a British team in 1968.
Getting to Chile
The most direct route is to fly to Santiago (17hrs from the UK, 11hrs from New York, 13hrs from Los Angeles, 16hrs from Sydney, 12hrs from Auckland), and from there to Punta Arenas (3hrs 30mins), from where it’s a 3hr bus trip to Puerto Natales, the ‘gateway’ town for the Torres del Paine national park. Chile’s national carrier, LAN (www.lan.com), tends to offer the best fares, and (at least in my experience) in-flight comfort and entertainment aboard LAN is way ahead of the main competitor on this route, Iberia (www.iberia.com).
Approaching El Chaltén, Los Glaciares national park, Argentina (Walk 8)
Fares are not cheap – expect to pay at least £900 for a return flight from the UK or the US to Santiago in season, and a further £300 for the return flight on to Punta Arenas. LAN sometimes offers promotional fares on domestic flights, but these are not usually available very far in advance, so if you are tying in domestic flight times and dates to an international flight, it’s safer to just book the whole flight (international and domestic) at once (unless you are flexible with your itinerary). Check the individual airlines’ websites, as well as search engines such as Opodo (www.opodo.com) and agencies
