History
Italian emigration in Chile was limited to a few tens of Italians during the centuries of the Spanish colony.
After independence, the Chilean government encouraged European emigration, but without getting the results of nearby Argentina.
However, there was a substantial flow of migration of Liguria to the area of Valparaíso, which came to control 70% of the city. These immigrants founded the "Body of Fire" (called "Cristobal Colon") of the city and its "Italian School", whose building the Government of Chile has declared a National Historic Monument (Spanish: "Monumento Histórico Nacional").
At the end of the 19th century, many Italian merchants were rooted in the northern part of Arica, where they began exploiting the rich mines of saltpetre. Meanwhile, many Italian families settled in the capital Santiago, Concepción and Punta Arenas.
In 1904 was planned an emigration of 700 immigrants of Emilia to a town of the Araucanía Region, which was named "Colonia Nueva Italia" and now called Capitán Pastene.
Throughout the central-southern zone of Chile, 7,740 Italians were transplanted to the early 20th century.
Some Italian-Chileans voluntarily returned to Italy, like the aviator Arturo Dell'Oro, who died in the skies of Belluno in 1917, which was head to Valparaíso one of the main Italian schools in Chile. Giulio Ravazzano (medal of honor) went back to Italy to defend his country during the Great War, to return later on where he married.
After World War I, it had exhausted major migration from Italy, and in Chile currently there are only 39,650 Italian citizens (including those with dual passports).
Many Italian Chileans, have reached positions of leadership in the society of Chile, like the president Jorge Alessandri.
Read more about this topic: Italian Chilean
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)