To a traveler arriving in Santiago from Lima, Chileans will in general seem more Latin European-looking than Peruvians. By contrast, to a visitor arriving from Buenos Aires, certain native American features will seem apparent in large numbers of Chileans in contrast to Argentines. These differing perspectives can be explained by tracing the distinctive historical roots of the Chilean people.

The Spaniards who settled in the pleasant Central Valley of what is now Chile beginning in the late sixteenth century found no rich lodes of gold or silver to exploit, and therefore saw no need for employing masses of indigenous forced laborers such as those who were put to work in the Andean highlands and in the mines of Mexico. Although copper mining became an important part of the late colonial economy, even the most successful of operations employed no more than a few salaried workers. Settlers took to developing the agricultural potential of the land, which, given Chile's climate, was well suited for growing the crops they knew from the Old World. This seasonal form of farming was different from that practiced in semitropical plantations in that it required few workers except during the harvest. As a result, the Spanish settlers in Chile did not seek to force large numbers of native Americans to toil for them, and they had little use for slaves. Relatively few enslaved Africans were brought into Chile and slavery was abolished soon after the country declared its independence from Spain in 1818.

The Spaniards encountered fierce resistance to their occupation efforts from one of the main indigenous groups, the Araucanians, who lived in the south-central part of the country. The settlers managed to take control of the land down to the Río Bío-Bío and to establish strongholds farther south, but throughout the colonial period the area that is now Chile consisted of two distinct nations: one a poor outpost of the Spanish Empire and the other an independent territory, Arauco, occupied by the Araucanians, whose territory consisted of most of south-central Chile between the Río Bío-Bío and the coastal areas around Temuco. By the end of the colonial period, the Araucanian territories had been reduced, but they had not been fully incorporated into Spanish rule. The indigenous wars lasted for more than three centuries, with a final skirmish in 1882.

Although warfare and the diseases brought by the Spaniards decimated the native population, Spain found it necessary to keep sending soldiers to protect its distant colony. They came from all regions of Spain, including the Basque country, and many of them ended up settling in Chile. The combination of an economy based on temperate-zone agriculture, native American resistance to Spanish occupation, and a continuous influx of Spaniards from the midsixteenth century to the end of the colonial period defined the main body of the Chilean population--a mixture of native American and Spanish blood, but one in which the Spanish element is greater than in the other Andean mestizo populations.

During the nineteenth century, the newly independent government sought to stimulate European immigration. Beginning in 1845, it had some success in attracting primarily German migrants to the Chilean south, principally to the lake district. For this reason, that area of the country still shows a German influence in its architecture and cuisine, and German (peppered with archaic expressions and intonations) is still spoken by some descendants of these migrants. People from England and Scotland also came to Chile, and some established export-import businesses of the kind that the Spanish crown previously had kept at bay. Other European immigrants, especially northern Italians, French, Swiss, and Croats, came at the end of the nineteenth century. More Spaniards and Italians, East European Jews, and mainly Christian Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians came in the decades before World War II. Many of these immigrants became prominent entrepreneurs or professionals, and their numbers never exceeded 10 percent of the total population at any given time. Thus, in contrast to Argentina, whose population was transformed around the turn of the century by numerous European immigrants, especially Italians, the Chilean population continued to be defined by the original Spanish and native American mixture. Acculturation was fairly rapid for all immigrant groups. Because second-generation residents saw themselves primarily as Chileans, ethnic identities had little impact on national society.

Chileans of all color gradations between the fair northern European and the darker native American complexion can be found, although most have brown hair or dark brown hair and brown eyes. There have been no really salient racial distinctions affecting daily life and politics in Chile, but there is unquestionably a strong correlation between high socioeconomic status and light skin.

The social definition of who is a native has not depended so much on phenotypical characteristics as on cultural ones. This means that Chileans generally have considered someone to be a native only if, in addition to native American features, he or she has an indigenous last name, wears native clothing, speak a native language, or resides in a native community. Consequently, the native Americans who wish to assimilate fully into Chilean society often take Spanish surnames after moving out of reservations.

The term Mapuche ("people of the land") now encompasses most of the native Chilean groups. The number of Mapuche residing on the reservations that were set up beginning in the late 1880s has declined in recent years. About 300,000 were counted as living in the reservations by the 1982 census. The 1992 census asked respondents to identify themselves ethnically as Mapuche, Aymara (the native population of northern Chile whose main trunk lies in Bolivia), Rapa Nui (the Polynesian group that lives in or originates from Easter Island), and other. The results showed that 9.6 percent of the population over age fourteen self-identified as Mapuche, 0.5 percent as Aymara, and less than 0.25 percent as Rapa Nui. This means that about 1.3 million Chileans are native Americans, mainly Mapuche, or the descendants of one of the fourteen or so different tribal groups that occupied what is now Chile before the Spanish conquest.

Although indigenous culture was most strongly retained on the reservations, penetration by Chilean national culture was also extensive. For example, research on a sample of Mapuche living on four reservations in the south showed that only 8.5 percent of them were monolingual Mapuche (sometimes call Mapudungu) speakers; 50.7 percent lived in homes where both Spanish and Mapuche were spoken, and 40.8 percent lived in homes where only Spanish was spoken. This situation was largely a result of the extension of primary rural education. Of all Mapuche over fifteen years of age living on the same reservations that were studied, 81 percent had gone to school for at least one year (85.5 percent of the men and 76.2 percent of the women). Significant differences in schooling by age among the Mapuche reveal how wide the reach of rural education has been in recent years. In the sampled reservation communities, the literacy rate was 81.2 percent for all residents over five years of age, and yet the rate was more than 96.2 percent for the age-group between ages ten and thirty-four. The acquisition of language and literacy skills is, of course, a principal means of acculturation.

With the partial exception of the indigenous groups, the Chilean population perceives itself as essentially homogeneous. Despite the configuration of the national territory, regional differences and sentiments are remarkably muted. Even the Spanish accent of Chileans varies only very slightly from north to south; more noticeable are the small differences in accent based on social class or whether one lives in the city or the country. The fact that the Chilean population essentially was formed in a relatively small section of the center of the country and then migrated in modest numbers to the north and south helps explain this relative lack of differentiation, which is now maintained by the national reach of radio and especially of television. The media diffuse and homogenize colloquial expressions.

The Chileans are racially a mixture of Europeans and American Indians. The first miscegenation occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries between the indigenous tribes, including the Atacameños, Diaguitas, Picunches, Araucanians (Mapuches), Huilliches, Pehuenches, and Cuncos, and the conquistadores from Spain. Basque families who migrated to Chile in the 18th century vitalized the economy and joined the old Castilian aristocracy to become the political elite that still dominates the country. Few blacks were brought to Chile as slaves during colonial times because a tropical plantation economy, common in much of the New World, did not develop.

After independence and during the republican era, English, Italian, and French merchants established themselves in the growing cities of Chile and incidentally joined the political or economic elites of the country. The official encouragement of German and Swiss colonization in the Lake District during the second half of the 19th century was exceptional. The censuses of the late 19th century showed that foreigners—principally Spaniards, Argentines, French, Germans, and Italians—formed scarcely more than 1 percent of the total population. At the turn of the century, small numbers of displaced eastern European Jews and Christian Syrians and Palestinians fleeing the Ottoman Empire arrived in Chile. Today they spearhead financial and small manufacturing operations.