chile (Republic of Chile)

WOI - missions teams in Chile

geography
. Area 756,626 sq km. A 4,200 km long country wedged between the mountains of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean and averaging only 150 km in width.
. Also Easter Island in the Central Pacific.
. Great extremes of climate from the hot northern Atacama Desert to Antarctic tundra in the south.

capital
Santiago 5,261,000.
Urbanites 86%.

population
2000    15,211,294
2010    17,010,268
2025    19,547,916

About 40% of the population live near the capital and 85% overall in the temperate central provinces. The northern desert and wet, cold mountains in the south have few inhabitants.

people
A relatively homogeneous society.
Chilean 89.7%.
Amerindian 8%. 9 peoples. Mapuche (Auracan) about half of whom still speak Mapudungun 1,100,000; Quechua 120,000; Aymara 76,000.
Polynesian 0.2%. Rapa Nui 27,000.
Other 2.1%. European 120,000; Roma 60,000; Arab 3,000; Chinese 2,000.

literacy: 95%

language
Official Language: Spanish (but Mapudungun increasingly recognized).
All Languages 10.
Languages with Scriptures: 2Bi 2NT 1por 2w.i.p.

religion
The Catholic Church was disestablished in 1925.
There is freedom of religion, but legislation to make all denominations equal under law foundered in the 1990's on Catholic objections.

Religions Chrisitian Non-religious/other Traditional Ethnic Jewish Baha'I Buddhist Muslim

Population % 89.16 9.55 0.88 0.22 0.12 0.04 0.03

Country profiles supplied courtesy of Operation World. http://www.gmi.org/ow/