History:
Santiago, Chile was founded on February 12, 1541 by Pedro de Valdivia, a Spanish conquistador of Chile. He was one of Francisco Pizarro’s best officers and he obtained permission from Pizarro to subdue Chile. Marching south through the Atacama Desert he sequentially conquered the Chilean territory all the way to what is named Valdivia, in the south.
The native people of South Central Chile were called the Araucanians and were mostly an agricultural people living in three main groups, the Huilliche, the Pichunche and the Mapuche who constituted the largest group. When Valdivia tried to conquer them, they resisted and eventually eliminated most of the Spanish settlements and killed Valvidia. There were intermittent struggles during the 17th and 18th centuries and eventually white immigration brought on the war of 1880-81 which ended with submissionb of the Araucanians. There are still about 1 million Araucanians in Chile and they still try to get Chile to return some of the forest lands in north central Chile to them.
Santiago, Chile was founded on February 12, 1541 by Pedro de Valdivia, a Spanish conquistador of Chile. He was one of Francisco Pizarro’s best officers and he obtained permission from Pizarro to subdue Chile. Marching south through the Atacama Desert he sequentially conquered the Chilean territory all the way to what is named Valdivia, in the south.
The native people of South Central Chile were called the Araucanians and were mostly an agricultural people living in three main groups, the Huilliche, the Pichunche and the Mapuche who constituted the largest group. When Valdivia tried to conquer them, they resisted and eventually eliminated most of the Spanish settlements and killed Valvidia. There were intermittent struggles during the 17th and 18th centuries and eventually white immigration brought on the war of 1880-81 which ended with submissionb of the Araucanians. There are still about 1 million Araucanians in Chile and they still try to get Chile to return some of the forest lands in north central Chile to them.
The original city was a triangular patch of land on the Mapocho River and was layed out in a grid pattern between the mountains and the river.
Today, the city has spread over the valley plain and has over 5 million people. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=population+of+santiago,+chile&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
It is the capital co Chile and as such, it has become a center for commercial, financial and administration for the country. The worldwide great depression of 1929 also affected Santiago and with the collapse of the nitrate industry in the north, people flooded the city looking for work. This brought widespread disease, including tuberculosis, that killed hundreds of indigent people.
Gradually, Santiago became an industrial center and the population continued to grow and the city expanded. The wealthy moved to the foothills and as the center of the city was abandoned, banking indutries moved in.
In 1973, there was social unrest culmination and a military coup d’etat threw out the President Allende, a Marxist, with the help of Nixonin the USA. Allende was replaced by a military dictator, Augusto Pinochet who remained in power from 1974 to 1990. Pinochet was no saint, and persecuted leftists and political critics, executing between 1200 to 1300 people and incarcerating as many as 80,000. Many were subjected to torture.
Pinochet did stabilize the economy and for most of the 1990’s, Chile was the best performing economy in Latin America. Pinochet stepped down as President in 1990 but continued to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army intil 1998. He retired to a position of senator-for-life until he was arrested in 1998 for human rights violations, tax evasion and embezzelment. Although indicted, he only served time in house arrest. Pinochet died in December 2006 at the age of 91.
Climate:
The climate is Mediterranean, with mild winters and warm, dry summers. During the winter, it snows on the Andes Mountains but nighttime temperatures usually only fall to 31 degrees F. Summers can get as warm as 95 degrees F. There can be air inversion effects because of the location and there can be high concentrations of air particulate matter.
Getting Around the City:
| If you are staying in town more than a few days get a |
| Metro |
| Bus |
Cooking Terms
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/spanish/spanish-food-vocabulary/#
1. Re: ordering steak in Spanish
Jun 6, 2011, 8:51 PM
Jugoso means juicy and is the word to use for medium to rare steak.
Bien cocido for well cooked. El Punto for just right (medium)
Some restaurants do have English menus but you will pick up what each thing means on an parilla menu. Remember that usually Argentines eat their bife well cooked so you do need to ask for it to be cooked rarer if you like it pink or blue.
At a parrilla you might find: morcilla (blood sausage/black pudding), chorizo (sausage), mollejas (sweetbreads), rinones (kidneys), and chinchulines (intestines) as well and a parilla completa comes with a few of some or each of these.
There are also different cuts of steaks of which the following are popular:
Bife de lomo - equivalent of filet steak and priciest
Bife de costilaa - T bone
Vacio - like a flank/skirt steak with a fat bit of fat running around it and very popular with portenos.
Bife de chorizo - with a bone inside it and the best value quite tasty choice as it has a little more fat than lomo which makes it impart flavour when cooked on the bbq.
Asado de tire - short ribs of beef - my favourite
Here you will find more terms - asadoargentina.com/argentinas-cuts-of-beef-f…
Good luck and have fun in BA!
Re: ordering steak in Spanish
Jun 7, 2011, 6:23 PM
Many menus have English translations, though sometimes they are run through a computer translator and are a little inaccurate/silly (like when the Coffee Store menu informed me that my palmito sandwich consisted of "little palm trees" instead of hearts of palm.)
A few other dining phrases that might be helpful:
"Se puede envolver?" = can you wrap it to go?
"Aderezo/salsa aparte" = dressing/sauce on the side
"Necesito unos minutos, por favor" = I need a few more minutes
"Para compartir" = to share ("vamos a compartir la ensalada blah blah...")
"Un corcho, puede ser?" = can we get a cork for the wine? (in BA, restaurants will let you take your unfinished bottle of wine home, woohoo)
"Para llevar" = to go/carry-out
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A few interesting observations that might help you. I tried to exchange US$ for Chilean pesos at the local cambio and discovered that they would only take one of my two $50 US bills. They told me that the rejected bill “is too old”. I said “like me?” but they were not amused. Make certain that you only bring the newest bills from the USA with the updated security measures. My older bill did not have these features and were rejected. Fortunately, I had other bills to exchange. You need some local currencies for tips (propinas.)
Hotel Orly coffee:
We needed to leave the hotel for the airport at 6 am. They advertise that coffee is available 24 hours a day in the lobby. However, the coffee pot contains hours old coffee that becomes quite bitter as they turn the pot on multiple times to keep it warm and pour extra water into the perculator periodically as it get “thick.”. We asked the desk clerk if he actually was a coffee drinker. Of course his answer was “no.” There are no coffee places open at 6 a.m. so we had to wait until we arrived at the airport. I think the hotel should invest in an espresso machine similar to those found on cruise ships or even in auto repair facilities. Palatable coffe is a necessity when leaving at such an early hour.