Castro, Chile

Castro is a city and commune in the Chilean island of Chiloé Island. Castro is the capital of the Chiloé Province in the Los Lagos Region. The city is located on Estero de Castro on the eastern coast of central Chiloé Island.

History

Castro is Chile's third oldest city in continued existence.Rodrigo de Quiroga as the temporary governor of Chile in 1567 launched a campaign led by his son in-law Captain Martín Ruiz de Gamboa to conquer Chiloé Island, establishing the city of Castro there, and pacifying its inhabitants, the Cuncos. From its founding on 12 February 1576 until 1767 Castro was the administrative centre of Chiloé Island. In 1594 Castro had 8.000 inhabitants most of whom were farmers. Up to the mid of the 17th century the town was looted by Dutch pirates several times. In 1767, during the time of the Bourbon Reforms that sought to modernize the Spanish Empire, Chiloé was separated from the General Captaincy of Chile to which it had previously belonged and made a direct subject of the Viceroyalty of Peru. To ease the communications with Lima the capital of the archipelago was moved from Castro to Ancud in the same year. Even after the incorporation of Chiloé of into the Republic of Chile Ancud remained the capital of the archipelago. Castro was destroyed by an earthquake in 1837 and had only 1.243 inhabitants in 1907. After the inauguration of the railway line to Ancud in 1912 the town developed better. Many buildings, e.g. railway station, town hall and many of the wooden palafitos houses, were destroyed or damaged by the earthquake and the tsunami of 1960. In 1960, Castro had 7.000 inhabitants. Only in 1982 did Castro regain its role as capital in Chiloé Archipelago.

Chile

Coordinates: 30°S 71°W / 30°S 71°W / -30; -71

Chile (/ˈtʃɪli/;Spanish: [ˈtʃile]), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish:  República de Chile ), is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty.

The arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. The relatively small central area dominates in terms of population and agricultural resources, and is the cultural and political center from which Chile expanded in the late 19th century when it incorporated its northern and southern regions. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes. The southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands.

Chilean peso

The peso is the currency of Chile. The current peso has circulated since 1975, with a previous version circulating between 1817 and 1960. Its symbol is defined as a letter S with either one or two vertical bars superimposed prefixing the amount,$ or ; the single-bar symbol, available in most modern text systems, is almost always used. Both of these symbols are used by many currencies, most notably the US dollar, and may be ambiguous without clarification such as CLP$ or US$. The ISO 4217 code for the present peso is CLP. It is officially subdivided into 100 centavos, although there are no current centavo-denominated coins. The exchange rate was around CLP$600 to 1 U.S. dollar at the end of 2014; by August 2015 it fell to 694 per 1 US dollar.

First peso, 1817–1960

The first Chilean peso was introduced in 1817, at a value of 8 Spanish colonial reales. Until 1851, the peso was subdivided into 8 reales, with the escudo worth 2 pesos. In 1835, copper coins denominated in centavos were introduced but it was not until 1851 that the real and escudo denominations ceased to be issued and further issues in centavos and décimos (worth 10 centavos) commenced. Also in 1851, the peso was set equal 5 French francs on the sild, 22.5 grams pure silver. However, gold coins were issued to a different standard to that of France, with 1 peso = 1.37 grams gold (5 francs equalled 1.45 grams gold). In 1885, a gold standard was adopted, pegging the peso to the British pound at a rate of 13⅓ pesos = 1 pound (1 peso = 1 shilling 6 pence). This was reduced in 1926 to 40 pesos = 1 pound (1 peso = 6 pence). From 1925, coins and banknotes were issued denominated in cóndores, worth 10 pesos. The gold standard was suspended in 1932 and the peso's value fell further. The escudo replaced the peso on 1 January 1960 at a rate 1 escudo = 1000 pesos.

Dingling

The Dingling (Chinese: 丁零) are an ancient people mentioned in Chinese historiography in the context of the 1st century BCE. They are assumed to have been an early Turkic-speaking people, whose original constituents mainly assimilated into the Xiongnu and Xianbei groups. They originally lived on the bank of the Lena River in the area west of Lake Baikal, gradually moving southward to Mongolia and northern China. They were subsequently part of the Xiongnu Empire, and thus presumably related to the invaders known as Huns in the west. Around the 3rd century they were assimilated into the Tiele, also named Gaoche (高車) or Chile (敕勒), who gradually expanded westward into Central Asia, expelled from Mongolia by the Rouran and establishing a state Turpan in the 5th century. The Tiele were a collection of early Turkic tribes, largely descended from the Chile.

Origin and migration

The Dingling were a warlike group of hunters, fishers, and gatherers of the southern Siberian mountain taiga region from Lake Baikal to northern Mongolia. Chinese records do not mention the physical appearance of the Dingling, suggesting general homogeneity with people of the Asiatic region, and their name appears rarely.