Chilean Americans (Spanish:chileno-americanos,chileno-estadounidenses,norteamericanos de origen chileno orestadounidenses de origen chileno) areAmericans who have full or partial origin fromChile.
According to the 2010U.S. census, the population of Chilean ancestry was 126,810. Chilean Americans are the fourth smallestLatino group from South America, and the fifth smallest overall. Most Chileans migrating to the United States settle in metropolitan areas. Chilean Americans live mainly in theNew York,Miami,Los Angeles,San Francisco and theWashington D.C. metropolitan areas. There are significant communities found inQueens inNew York City;Northern New Jersey;Miami, Florida; andNassau County, New York. After the 1960s, Chileans began to immigrate more for economic or academic rather than political reasons, and that continues into the modern day.
Chileans and other South Americans have been present in the state ofCalifornia since the1850s gold rush. Not all Chileans made it to the gold fields. Some remained inSan Francisco,San Jose,Sacramento, andStockton where they frequently worked as bricklayers, bakers, or seamen. Some with capital established themselves in various businesses, particularly the importation of flour and mining equipment from Chile. In the cities most tended to congregate and live in specific areas in the poorer sections of town. In the gold fields they lived in separate camp sites. In the summer of 1849 Chileans constituted the majority of the population ofSonora. Chileans frequently worked their mines as group efforts. When the placer gold ran out around Sonora the Chileans were amongst the first miners in California to extract gold from quartz.[2] Historical remnants of those settlements influenced the names of locations such asChileno Valley inMarin County,Chili Gulch inCalaveras andChili Bar inPlacer which was named after Chilean road builders. Names of Chilean towns and places are often found in the names of streets in Northern California: Valparaiso, Santiago, and Calera.[3][4]
AfterAllende was overthrown and a military regime was established in 1973, a large exodus of Chileans took place. Most fled to European countries, but a small group did emigrate to the United States. The U.S. government took these Chileans as refugees under a program for "political parolees."
Many of San Francisco's streets carry names of former residents of Chile: Atherton, Ellis, Lick, Larkin, and others. Chilean women also left their names: Mina and Clementina. Manuel Briseño, an early journalist in the mines was one of the founders of theSan Diego Union. Juan Evangelista Reyes was a Sacramento pioneer as were the Luco brothers. Luis Felipe Ramírez was one of the City Fathers inMarysville. The Leiva family owned at one time, much of the land in Marin County, includingFort Ross. In 1975, Chilean exiles of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship establishedLa Peña Cultural Center inBerkeley, California, which is to this day the largest Chilean cultural center in the United States.
Chilean Americans have achieved many skills as entrepreneurs, judges, musicians, and others.
As of 2022, no Chilean American has yet been elected to the United States Congress.
Most Chilean immigration to the U.S. has occurred largely since the 1990s.[5] For the most part, Chileans left as eitherpolitical asylees andrefugees first during the presidency of the MarxistSalvador Allende or foreconomic reasons; the involvement of the United States in Salvador Allende's overthrow in 1973 and supporting thedictatorship ofAugusto Pinochet, led to more political exiles fleeing from Chile to the U.S., as well as other countries.[6]
Also, there have been others that have emigrated to seekhigher education and career development opportunities. Since the1960 Valdivia earthquake and with2010 Chile earthquake, many Chileans have pursued economic opportunities in the United States, withPaterson,New Jersey, representing an increasingly common destination.
Many of the Pinochet-era immigrants were of middle or upper class origin. A significant proportion of them arrived with advanced educations and well-developed skills. They had contacts with other Chilean exiles and a sense of identity from their shared commitment to a democratic Chile. After a period of adjustment, many of them were able to pursue skilled jobs or professions. Unfortunately, others, who lacked skills or whose professional certifications were not recognized in the United States, were forced to take low-level jobs in which they were unable to use their skills. Some had been politically active students or union leaders in Chile who did not enter the United States with easily transferable skills.[5]
The second major arrival into the United States was mainly for economic or academic opportunities. Yet, in general, acquiring aU.S. Visa requires the applicant to have a stable economic background, so most Chileans emigrating to the United States since 1990 have done so mostly for study purposes or to further their academic backgrounds.[5]
Chileans are mostly diverse, their ancestry can be fully Southern or Western European as well as mixed with Indigenous and other European heritage. They commonly identify themselves as both Latino and white.[7] Some Chilean-owned stores and restaurants advertise as French and Italian.[7] Many often prefer living in suburban areas near major cities in the U.S., and have a strong sense of family.[7]
Most Chileans have customs that blend well into the American lifestyle. The Chilean workday is similar to the American workday, with the regular businessperson working 45 hours a week[8] from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm with a lunch break, as well as possibly staying behind at work for a few hours to work overtime. However, many Chileans outside Santiago are used to going home for lunch, something not as common in the U.S. and with Chilean Americans.
Unlike the "normal" American diet, Chileans are used to having four meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, tea (oronces) at about five o'clock, and a late dinner. Many people actually haveonces during the early evening hours and skip dinner. Surprisingly, Chile is one of the only Latin countries where tea is a more popular drink than coffee, differing from American consumption trends as well.
Of the 857,781 Chileanexpatriates around the globe, 13.3% (114,084) live in the United States, 50.1% reside inArgentina, 4.9% inSweden, and around 2% each inCanada andAustralia, with the remaining 18% being scattered in smaller numbers across the globe, particularly the countries of theEuropean Union.[11][12][13]
^Heredia, Juanita (2012). "South American Latino/a Writers in the United States".The Routledge Companion to Latino/A Literature:436–444.
^abcGomez, Luís (2018). "Chilean Americans: A Micro Cultural Latinx Group".Latinx Immigrants. International and Cultural Psychology. pp. 33–52.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95738-8_3.ISBN978-3-319-95737-1 – via Springer Nature Switzerland AG.{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)
Burson, Phyllis J. "Chilean Americans."Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 1, Gale, 2014), pp. 479–490.online
Pike, F. B.Chile and the United States: 1880–1962 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1963).
Gomez, L.A. (2018). "Chilean Americans: A micro cultural Latinx group." InPatricia Arredondo (Ed.), Latinx immigrants: Transcending acculturation and xenophobia (pp. 33–52). Springer.
