Imperialism In Chile

Chile was once a colony of Spain. Spanish built extractive institutions in Chile and other regions of Americas to gain themselves wealth by exploited the indigenous people. Firstly, they captured the indigenous leader. Secondly, they made themselves higher state than the leaders and took control of the whole system. They created encomienda, mita, repartimiento, and trajin to extract as more wealth as possible and forced the indigenous people to live in the lowest standard. The indigenous people was forced to work, their land was achieved by expropriating. Using extractive institutions, Spanish easily gain a large sum of wealth while the indigenous people lived in poverty. When Spain was defeated and Chile proclaimed independence, this situation was not improved for a long time. Because of the already built extractive institutions, vicious circle gave new elites enough power to control the nation and benefit themselves. There were few restrains to the rulers. Elites fight to be the rulers, but when they won, no change took place. Most people was still exploited. In 1870s and 1880s, Industrial Revolution changed the world. Chile, as well as Latin America was evolved. As a resource-rich country, it exported raw materials and …show more content…
Chile and Argentina were more fortunate in this process, they had few indigenous people which Spanish saw as almost free labor force, their mineral riches were “neglected” while Spanish focus on grabbing more wealth in Aztec, Maya, and Incan civilizations. In this way, the legacy of extractive institutions in Chile were not as serious as most other Latin American nations. Chile was able to diminish the influence of colonial build extractive institutions because of its relatively lighter