The Chilean Way to the Andes: Music, Politics and Otherness

Despite the dominant presence of the Andes Mountains in Chile, the country’s identity as an “Andean” nation, culturally speaking, has never been secure. As a nation ruled by Spanish, British and German descendants, with a majority of the population consisting of creoles and mestizos with no roots in indigenous Andean communities or cultures, “Andean” identity has in fact often been resisted by Chilean nationalists. The War of the Pacific (1879-1884), however, fought between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, dramatically changed the political boundaries of the west coast of South America. At the end of the war, Chile had won new territories in the north that definitively made it an “Andean” country— but again, only geographically; culturally and economically, the Aymara people who inhabited the highlands of the new Chilean territory did not integrate easily with the Chilean nation.