Chile is well known for being a long skinny country in South America. Although its location seems to be “at the end of the world” there are many cultural aspects from this country that makes it interesting and exciting to visit. Learn more about this fascinating country, plus find a free printable at the end!
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Since Chile is such a long country, it is also influenced by its neighboring countries: Argentina, Perú and Bolivia. These three countries have many things in common besides the language. One of them that many people might not be aware of is that the Inca Empire influenced Chile going up to central part, Maule. The very well known Camino del Inca (Inca Trail) went through Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura, or Santiago de Chile, the capitol city of Chile. The Incans couldn’t go farther south since they ran into the Mapuche people, and that did not go well. But that’s a different story.
Since Chile is a country surrounded by the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, its people seems to feel isolated from the rest of South America. Some parts of the culture are very much “made in Chile”, such as a dark sense of humor, slang (cachay?, si poh!), types of bread (marraqueta), beverages (carménère wine), and other foods (cazuela, or raise-the-dead soup), etc. Others aspects of the culture were inherited from our indigenous people, such as Mapuche. Merken is one of my favorite Mapuche seasonings that I always keep in my kitchen. It is something like pepper, but a bit smoky and spicy. You can always find Chilean Merken
on Amazon.
on Amazon.
If you want to learn about Chile and have some inspirational setting in your homeschool, classroom, summer school, etc., these posters are perfect. In La clase de Sra. DuFault’s post you can see a group of children actively learning about Chile. The post is in Spanish, however, the pictures are self explanatory.
It is a great honor for Chile to be in the Olympics, and before the Olympics even start, I thought it would be a good idea to learn a little bit about this skinny country in South America. For this purpose I have created a poster with important information about Chile. Of course there are many more things I could’ve added, however, the space didn’t help. Enjoy this FREEBIE!
