Current Event: 200 Years: Chile’s Battle of Chacabuco

February 12 marked the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Chacabuco, a key event in the history of Chile. The battle took place on Feb. 12, 1817, near Santiago, the capital, during Chile’s struggle for independence from Spain. The Army of the Andes (made up of Chilean and Argentine rebels) defeated a Spanish-led army at Chacabuco—a rebel victory that led to Chilean independence in 1818. The battle is famous for the actions of Argentine General José de San Martín and Chilean patriot Bernardo O’Higgins, who became Chile’s first head of state. After the battle, the Spanish royalists tried once more to retake Chile, but they were eventually defeated at the Maipo River (also spelled Maipú) near Santiago on April 5, 1818—the final major battle in Chile’s war of independence.

Chilean and Argentine soldiers attend a ceremony at the Monument to the Victory of Chacabuco on Feb. 12, 2007. The monument, built in 1971, stands on the site of the former battlefield. Credit: Kiko Benítez S. (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Objective:

Chile is a long, narrow country on South America’s west coast. The country is a land of great variety. The Atacama Desert in the north is one of the driest places in the world, but parts of the south are among the rainiest. The towering Andes Mountains form Chile’s eastern boundary, and low mountains rise along the country’s Pacific coast. A series of fertile river basins called the Central Valley lies between the mountain ranges in central Chile. Most Chileans are of mixed Spanish and indigenous (American Indian) ancestry. Many others are of unmixed European descent. Indigenous people—descendants of Chile’s original inhabitants—form another group. Nearly all Chileans speak Spanish, the nation’s official language, and a majority of the people are Roman Catholics. Santiago is Chile’s capital and largest city. The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles explore Chile and other Latin American countries.

Words to know:

• Andes Mountains
• Atacama Desert
• Bernardo O’Higgins
• Chile
• José de San Martin
• Latin America
• Santiago
• South America

Discussion Topics:

1. Ask your students what they know about South America. (Students might say that Brazil is the largest country in South America in both area and population; the continent is home to the Amazon rain forest, the world’s largest tropical rain forest; the continent is part of Latin America; most of the continent has warm weather the year around; Aconcagua is the continent’s tallest mountain.)

2. Ask your students to name some people who were alive in 1817 when the Battle of Chacabuco was fought. (Students might name Jane Austen, Ludwig van Beethoven, Davy Crockett, Charles Darwin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Victor Hugo, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Morse, Napoleon I, and William Wilberforce.)

3. Ask your students to debate the question, “When is war justified?”

4. Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to view or add to the Famous Wars and Conflicts from A.D. 1000 to 1850 timeline.