00:00A brutal dictatorship, a booming mining industry and a recent immigration surge are among the
00:08five things to know about Chile before Sunday's presidential election, which will choose the
00:14successor to leftist president Gabriel Boric. Postwar Chile was irrevocably changed by the
00:27U.S.-backed overthrow of the first democratically elected socialist president in Latin America,
00:34Salvador Allende. The coup led by General Augusto Pinochet was one of the most dramatic of the Cold
00:41War, with fighter jets bombing the presidential palace on September 11, 1973, in what Pinochet
00:48justified as an operation to prevent Chile from becoming communist. Allende committed suicide in
00:56the presidential palace. There followed 17 years of dictatorship marked by arrests, torture,
01:02bodies thrown from airplanes, and children of dissidents whisked away for illegal adoption.
01:08Rejected in a 1988 referendum, Pinochet finally gave up power in 1990, but remained in command of the
01:16military for another eight years. He died in 2006 without ever having been brought to justice for
01:23the crimes committed by his regime, which left more than 3,200 people dead or missing. The Pinochet-era
01:31constitution is still in force, despite two failed attempts in recent years, one by the left,
01:37the other by the right, to write a new charter.
01:40Chile is a key destination for refugees and migrants fleeing humanitarian, political and economic crises
01:55in other Latin American countries, primarily Venezuela. Some 337,000 undocumented immigrants live
02:04in Chile, according to official estimates. Illegal migration is a central issue in the election campaign,
02:11with a majority of Chileans linking a rise in crime to the migration wave foreign nationals represented
02:17approximately 8.8% of Chile's population in 2024, the second-highest proportion of foreign residents
02:26in a Latin American country after Costa Rica, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
02:34The country of nearly 20 million inhabitants is the world's leading producer of copper,
02:46accounting for a quarter of global supply, and the second-largest producer of lithium.
02:51Chile's poverty rates are the lowest in the region, according to the World Bank. But inequality remains high.
02:58The rise to power of former student leader Boric in 2021 signalled a rejection of the fervent pro-business
03:06economic model that had prevailed since the dictatorship four years later. However, Chileans
03:12are transfixed by crime and have put social issues on the back burner.
03:16Chile is famously long and thin. It stretches 4,300 kilometers from north to south from the Atacama
03:31Desert, the world's driest, to the glaciers of Patagonia. But averages only about 170 kilometers
03:38across, three tectonic plates converge on its territory, making it one of the most seismically
03:45active countries in the world.
03:53Years of dictatorship, the harsh life in its rugged south, and Chile's social struggles
03:59have inspired generations of authors, particularly poets. Poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda
04:07were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945 and 1971, respectively.
04:14Chile also produced one of the best-selling authors in the Spanish language, Isabel Allende.
04:20Chip and James, if you like.
04:24You too.
04:26If you are a person who wants to be produced, you are already in Canada.
04:30You can do everything I do.
04:31I think that's all of you.
04:32You can't do everything, but you're not too well.
04:34We are the only people.
04:36You cannot do everything.
04:36I think this is an important role that we make most of you.
04:38I like the fact that we are trusting.
04:40We are the only people on behalf of Canada as much as much as a way to the country.
04:44We will see there, and I'll see the people who are growing up with Canada.
04:47This is an important role that we want to women.
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