text: Three singles were released from the record: "Disposable Teens", "The Fight Song" and "The Nobodies", and the band embarked on the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour. In 2010, "Kerrang!" published a 10th-anniversary commemorative piece in which they called the album "Manson's finest hour ... A decade on, there has still not been as eloquent and savage a musical attack on the media and mainstream culture ... [It is] still scathingly relevant [and] a credit to a man who refused to sit and take it, but instead come out swinging."


title: Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)

text: In the late 1990s, Marilyn Manson and his eponymous band established themselves as a household name, and as one of the most controversial rock acts in music history. Their albums "Antichrist Superstar" (1996) and "Mechanical Animals" (1998) were both critical and commercial successes, and by the time of their Rock Is Dead Tour in 1999, the frontman had become a culture war iconoclast and a rallying icon for alienated youth. As their popularity increased, the confrontational nature of the group's music and imagery outraged social conservatives. Numerous politicians lobbied to have their performances banned, citing false and exaggerated claims that they contained animal sacrifices, bestiality and rape. Their concerts were routinely picketed by religious advocates and parent groups, who asserted that their music had a corrupting influence on youth culture by inciting "rape, murder, blasphemy and suicide".


text: On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot dead 12 students and a teacher and wounded 21 others, before committing suicide. In the aftermath of the school shooting, the band were widely reported to have influenced the killings; early media reports alleged that the shooters were fans, and were wearing the group's T-shirts during the massacre. Although these claims were later proven to be false, speculation in national media and among the public continued to blame Manson's music and imagery for inciting Harris and Klebold. Later reports revealed that the two were not fans—and, on the contrary, had disliked the band's music. Despite this, Marilyn Manson (as well as other bands and forms of entertainment, such as movies and video games) were widely criticized by religious, political, and entertainment-industry figures.


text: Under mounting pressure in the days after Columbine, the group postponed their last five North American tour dates out of respect for the victims and their families. On April 29, ten US senators (led by Sam Brownback of Kansas) sent a letter to Edgar Bronfman Jr. – the president of Seagram (the owner of Interscope) – requesting a voluntary halt to his company's distribution to children of "music that glorifies violence". The letter named Marilyn Manson for producing songs which "eerily reflect" the actions of Harris and Klebold. Later that day, the band cancelled their remaining North American shows. Two days later, Manson published his response to these accusations in an op-ed piece for "Rolling Stone", titled "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?", where he castigated America's gun culture, the political influence of the National Rifle Association, and the media's irresponsible coverage, which he said facilitated the placing of blame on a scapegoat, instead of debating more relevant societal issues.


text: On May 4, a hearing on the marketing and distribution of violent content to minors by the television, music, film and video-game industries was held by the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The committee heard testimony from former Secretary of Education (and co-founder of conservative violent entertainment watchdog group Empower America) William Bennett, the Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput, professors and mental-health professionals. Speakers criticized the band, its label-mate Nine Inch Nails, and the 1999 film "The Matrix" for their alleged contribution to a cultural environment enabling violence such as the Columbine shootings. The committee requested that the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Department of Justice investigate the entertainment industry's marketing practices to minors.


text: After concluding the European and Japanese legs of their tour on August 8, the band withdrew from public view. The early development of "Holy Wood" coincided with Manson's three-month seclusion at his home in the Hollywood Hills, during which he considered how to respond to the controversy. Manson said the maelstrom made him re-evaluate his career: "There was a bit of trepidation, [in] deciding: 'Is it worth it? Are people understanding what I'm trying to say? Am I even gonna be allowed to say it?' Because I definitely had every single door shut in my face ... there were not a lot of people who stood behind me." He told "Alternative Press" that he felt his safety was threatened to the point that he "could be shot Mark David Chapman-style." He began work on the album as a counterattack.


text: Several of the tracks that appear on "Holy Wood" date back to 1995, prior to the release of "Antichrist Superstar", although much of this material consisted of "scattered ideas". Manson, the band's vocalist, developed this material into more substantial compositions during his three-month period of seclusion. Following this, the full band worked for a year on re-writing and developing the material. The record is the group's most collaborative effort to date; all members contributed to the songwriting process. Most of the compositional work was done by Manson alongside guitarists Twiggy Ramirez and John 5. The vocalist contrasted his songwriting sessions between the two, calling sessions with the latter "very focused", saying that most of their compositions would be completed before being taken to the rest of the band for consideration. In contrast, his sessions with Ramirez were less demanding, and the pair frequently experimented with absinthe. Drummer Ginger Fish worked constantly on new material, and is credited with performing keyboards and programming, while keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy provided input on "President Dead" and "Cruci-Fiction in Space". Altogether, the band wrote 100 musical fragments, of which between 25 and 30 became songs.


text: Band members maintained a low profile during the album's recording. Manson indicated that their website would be their "only contact with humanity" during this period. The album was recorded at several locations, including Death Valley, Manson's home in the Hollywood Hills, and Rick Rubin's Mansion Studio in Laurel Canyon. Locations were chosen for the atmosphere they were intended to impart to the music, and the band visited Death Valley a number of times to "imprint the feeling of the desert into [their] minds", and to avoid composing artificial-sounding songs. Manson co-produced the album alongside mixing engineer Dave Sardy, while Bon Harris of electronic body music group Nitzer Ebb is credited with programming and pre-production editing. Experimental sound effects and acoustic songs were recorded using live instrumentation. Harris' programming skills would prove invaluable during the recording process, as he would take the natural sounds the band had been recording and reconstruct them into processed background effects. Manson also explained that the acoustic songs were "acoustic" in the sense that they were not recorded with electronic instruments, but he said the album's sonic landscape would be "intrinsically electronic".


text: Manson announced on December 16, 1999, that the album was progressing under the working title "In the Shadow of the Valley of Death", and that its logo would be the alchemical symbol for mercury. Expanding on the symbol's relationship to the album's concept, Manson said "It represents both the androgyne and the prima materia, which has been associated with Adam, the first man." The band spent considerable time at the Mansion Studio, where the bulk of Ginger Fish's live drumming would be recorded, with its cavernous rooms particularly suitable for recording percussion. On February 23, 2000, Manson delivered a 20-minute lecture via satellite to a current-events convention, "DisinfoCon 2000", aimed at exposing disinformation wherein he posed the question, "White teenagers, why are they mad? They're white. They're spoiled. Is it because they know that America's a lie? ... Is adult entertainment killing our children? Or is killing our children entertaining adults?" Six days later, it was announced that their upcoming album had been re-titled "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)". By April, the album was in the final stages of recording, and Manson began posting footage of the band from the studio.


text: Manson's ambitions for the project initially included an eponymous film exploring the album's backstory. In July 1999, he had reportedly begun negotiating with New Line Cinema to produce and distribute the film and its soundtrack. At the 1999 MTV Europe Music Awards in Dublin (where the band performed on November 11), he disclosed the film's title and his production plans. Manson met Chilean avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky at the event to discuss work on the film, although no final decision was made. By February 29, 2000, the deal fell through when Manson had reservations that New Line Cinema would take the film in a direction which would not have "retained his artistic vision".


text: Abandoning his attempt to bring "Holy Wood" to the screen, Manson announced plans to publish two books accompanying the album. The first was a "graphic and phantasmagoric" novel intended for release shortly after the album by ReganBooks (a division of HarperCollins). The novel's style was inspired by William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick, and would be followed by a coffee table book of images created for the project. In a December 2000 interview with Manson, novelist Chuck Palahniuk mentioned the "Holy Wood" novel (due for release in spring 2001) and complimented its style. Neither book has been released, reportedly due to a publishing dispute.


text: Manson described "Holy Wood" as a "declaration of war." The album's plot is a parable, which he told "Rolling Stone" was semi-autobiographical. While it can be viewed on several levels, he said its simplest interpretation is to see it as a story about an idealistic man whose revolution is commercialized, leading him to "destroy the thing he has created, which is himself." It takes place in a thinly-veiled satire of modern America called "Holy Wood", which Manson described as a Disney-esque city-sized amusement park where the main attractions are death and violence, and where consumerism is taken to hyperbolic extreme. Its literary foil is "Death Valley", which is used as a "metaphor for the outcast and the imperfect of the world."


text: The central character is the protagonist Adam Kadmon—a name derived from the Kabbalah which means "original man". The story follows him as he goes in search of a better life out of Death Valley and into Holy Wood. Disenchanted by what he finds, he fashions a counterculture revolution, only to have it usurped and co-opted by Holy Wood's consumer culture, and he finds himself appropriated as a figure of Holy Wood's ideology of "Celebritarianism": an ideology in which fame is the primary moral value of a religion deeply rooted in celebrity worship and martyrdom; where dead celebrities are revered as saints, and John F. Kennedy is idolized as the contemporary Jesus Christ. Holy Wood's religion parallels Christianity, in that it juxtaposes the dead-celebrity phenomenon in American culture with the crucifixion of Jesus.


text: The phrase "guns, god and government" is repeated multiple times throughout the album. It is suggested that these are the root cause of violence, and the album examines the role conservative American culture supposedly played in the Columbine massacre: specifically, what Manson perceived as its advocacy of gun culture, the inadequacies of traditional family values, the American inclination toward war-mongering solely for profit, and the Christian right's proclivity for moral panic. This glorification of violence within mainstream American culture is the central theme of the record. A substantive portion of the record analyzes the cultural role of Jesus Christ, specifically Manson's view that the image of his crucifixion was the origin of celebrity. Manson said that while his previous work argued against the Bible's content, for the purpose of "Holy Wood", he instead looked for things in the Bible to which he could relate. He developed an opinion that Christ was a revolutionary figure—a person who was killed for having dangerous opinions, and whose image was later exploited and merchandised for financial gain in the name of free market capitalism.


text: Christ's death is also compared to Abraham Zapruder's film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which Manson called "the only thing that's happened in modern times to equal the crucifixion." He watched the clip many times as a child, and said it was the most violent thing he had ever seen. John Lennon is also referred to on the album as an assassinated icon murdered by a born-again Christian, Mark David Chapman, who was incensed by Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark. While recording "Holy Wood", Manson was drawn to The Beatles' 1968 "White Album", due to its alleged role in inspiring the Charles Manson "Family" murders, and the parallels he observed between that incident and Columbine, saying: "To my knowledge, it's the first rock n' roll record that's been blamed and linked to violence. When you've got "Helter Skelter" [taken from the Beatles song of the same name] written in blood on someone's wall, it's a little more damning than anything I've been blamed for."


text: The record is primarily an industrial metal album, although it has also been described as hard rock, and gothic rock. The vocalist claimed in a pre-release interview with "Kerrang!" that the album would contain some of the heaviest material the band had recorded to date. "Holy Wood" combines the glam rock-influenced production of "Mechanical Animals" with the industrial rock soundscape of the band's earlier work. He also called the record "arrogant, in an art rock sense" and said that, as a result of the lyrical content, most of the songs contained three or four distinct parts, although the band took great care to avoid being "self-indulgent". He also said that the record was intended to be the "industrial "White Album"", and that he wrote "Holy Wood" in the same house where The Rolling Stones wrote their 1970 single "Let It Bleed"—another source of inspiration.


text: Like "Antichrist Superstar" before it, "Holy Wood" uses a song cycle structure, dividing the album into four movements. These movements are titled A: In the Shadow, D: The Androgyne, A: Of Red Earth, and M: The Fallen. Manson described the record as "the final piece of a triptych that I began with "Antichrist Superstar"." Despite being the last of the three albums to be released, Manson explained that the triptych's storyline takes place in reverse chronological order; "Holy Wood" began the story, and "Mechanical Animals" and "Antichrist Superstar" were sequels. The storyline unfolds in a multi-tiered series of metaphors and allusions; for example, the album's title refers not only to the Hollywood Sign, but also to "the tree of knowledge that Adam took the first fruit from when he fell out of paradise, the wood that Christ was crucified on, the wood that [Lee Harvey] Oswald's rifle is made from, and the wood that so many coffins are made of."


text: "GodEatGod" is the first song on the record. It opens with the sound of a focal-plane shutter in slow-motion capturing gunshots ringing in the background amid screaming onlookers before transitioning into the song. The song is driven by keyboards, synthesizers and a synth bass. "The Love Song" was described by Manson as about "America's romance with guns", and its title originated from his observation that "Love Song" is one of the most common titles in music. The lyrics are composed around an elaborate metaphor about guns. Manson explained: "I was suggesting with the lyrics that the father is the hand, the mother is the gun, and the children are the bullets. Where you shoot them is your responsibility as parents." The chorus is a rhetorical take on a popular American bumper sticker: "Do you love your God, gun, government?" "Kerrang!" described "The Fight Song" as a "playground punk anthem", and Manson revealed that its theme is Adam's desire to be a part of Holy Wood, saying that it is about "a person who's grown up all his life thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, but when he finally [gets there], he realizes that it's worse than where he came from." "Disposable Teens" is a "signature Marilyn Manson song" with a bouncing guitar riff composed of staccato articulation. Its lyrics juxtapose the disenfranchisement of contemporary millennial youth with the revolutionary idealism of their baby boomer parents' generation. The Beatles' influence is evident in this song; the chorus echoes the disillusionment of the "White Album" "Revolution 1".


text: Manson singled out "Target Audience (Narcissus Narcosis)" as his favorite song on the album and said that it describes every person's desire for self-actualization. The song features an optigan and is propelled by flanged arpeggiated chords, building into heavy guitar chugs and string bending during the chorus. Drowned In Sound described the song as "a shining moment" on the record. "President Dead" is a guitar-driven song showcasing John 5's technical skills and writing credits from John 5, Twiggy Ramirez, and Madonna Wayne Gacy. Manson also plays a mellotron. It opens with a sample of Don Gardiner's "ABC News Radio" broadcast announcing the death of John F. Kennedy. The song is 3:13 long, which is a deliberate numerological reference to frame 313 of the Zapruder film—the frame displaying the moment of impact of the fatal head shot which killed Kennedy. "In the Shadow of the Valley of Death" is an introspective song with Adam at his most emotionally vulnerable. The song is divided into two parts. The first portion consists of samples and a 'death loop' over a simple strum from John 5's 1952 Gibson acoustic guitar that make way for a bass guitar and drums over plucked chords in the second portion. "Cruci-Fiction in Space" further explores American gun culture, postulating that Americans took an alternate evolutionary path; from monkeys to men to firearms. Its composition is slow but heavy—bereft of "speed or intricacy." It has a mixed meter drum beat middle 8 in 4/4 time with two additional eighth notes at the end; "it doesn't start in 4/4, it doesn't end in 4/4, so it's confusing." "A Place in the Dirt" is another personal song, characterized by Adam's self-analysis of his place in Holy Wood.


text: "The Nobodies" is a mournful, elegiac dirge constructed over a clavecin électrique and synthesized-drums. Its title is taken from a quote by Mark David Chapman. The verse "Today I am dirty and I want to be pretty, tomorrow I'll know that I'm just dirt" has an Iggy Pop-style vocal delivery, building to the "adrenaline-fueled" chorus. "CMJ" noted that the song could be interpreted as a tribute to the Columbine shooters, but its point was not to glorify violence; rather, it was to depict a society drenched in its children's blood. "The Death Song" is the turning point for Adam; he no longer cares. Manson described it as sarcastic and nihilistic: "it's like 'We have no future and we don't give a fuck'." "Kerrang!" described it as one of the album's heaviest songs. The bridge of "Lamb of God" paraphrases the chorus of "Across the Universe" (from 1970's "Let It Be"), whose lyric "Nothing's gonna change my world" inspired the song. Manson elaborated that: "Mark David Chapman came along and proved him very wrong. That was always something growing up that was very sad and tragic to me". The song uses the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and John Lennon to criticize the media's veneration of death, and for turning tragedy into televised spectacle. It is keyboard-heavy and feature a variety of instrumentation ranging from a piano, a minipiano, a leslie speaker, and multiple synthesizers. Unusual recording techniques were employed for its rhythm and acoustic guitar parts. "Born Again" is the second song on the record to use the synth bass and is the only other song, apart from "The Nobodies", to use the drum machine. The song's guitar tracks were led by Ramirez and supplemented by contributions from John 5. "Burning Flag" is a pounding heavy-metal song reminiscent of American industrial metal band Ministry.


text: Ramirez and John 5 collaborated on the guitar compositions for "Coma Black"; the song alternates between Ramirez's "warped guitar" and the phaze guitar employed by John 5, with Manson providing additional rhythm guitar support. The album ends with an interlocking group of songs: "Valentine's Day", "The Fall of Adam", "King Kill 33°" and "Count to Six and Die (The Vacuum of Infinite Space Encompassing)" each end abruptly before being instantaneously followed by the introduction of the proceeding track. "Valentine's Day" was composed by Ramirez and Manson and feature Gacy playing the mellotron—the second time the eccentric instrument appears on the record. John 5 recorded guitar parts for "The Fall of Adam" in the pouring rain in an effort to extract a unique sound and deliberately mistuned his Gibson for the song's intro to "produce a sweeter sound." Bon Harris contributed the piano work for the final song "Count to Six and Die (The Vacuum of Infinite Space Encompassing)" while Gacy exchanged his mellotron for this track in favor of a string synthesizer. It concludes on a cliffhanger; it ends with the sound of a solitary bullet being loaded into a revolver against a background of distant fireworks followed by the chamber being spun repeatedly. Its hammer is cocked six times, although its trigger is pulled only five times. The result of the sixth and final chamber is left for the listener to determine.


text: Manson posted a four-minute video clip on the band's website on December 16, 1999, featuring clips of two previously unreleased songs. The first clip was of a rock song which later became "Disposable Teens", while the second was a rough demo of a cover of Frankie Laine and Jimmy Boyd's 1953 single "The Little Boy and the Old Man" (composed by Wayne Shanklin a year earlier as "Little Child"; it was most popularly performed under the title "Mommy Dear" in the 1964 movie "The Naked Kiss"). As a Valentine's Day gift for fans, Manson posted a download of the band's cover of Charles Manson's "Sick City", from his 1970 album "". In August, he announced an October 24 release date for the record, and posted a partial track listing containing 13 song titles, while also indicating that their website would be updated weekly. Within three weeks, the album's full track listing had been revealed, and sound files of "Burning Flag", "Cruci-Fiction in Space" and "The Love Song" had been released for free download, along with the cover of the "Holy Wood" novel.


text: On September 18, Manson announced that the album's US release would be postponed until November 14 (to fine-tune the final mix), and that its first single would be "Disposable Teens". The album was released on three formats on November 13 in the UK by Nothing and Interscope Records. Versions of the enhanced CD edition released in the UK featured an acoustic version of "The Nobodies" as a bonus track, while Japanese editions also included a live version of "Mechanical Animals". The album was released on double-LP and cassette. Universal Music Japan released a remastered version of the album on Super High Material CD (SHM-CD) on March 23, 2013.


text: Artwork for the album was designed by Manson and P. R. Brown. Manson began conceptualizing it as he wrote the songs, and Brown and Manson worked in tandem to realize the imagery after deciding to do the work themselves. The cover art, which portrays Manson as a crucified Christ with his jawbone torn off, is intended as a criticism of censorship and America's obsession with martyrs. It is a cropped reinterpretation of The Hanged Man Tarot card. Underneath is an obscured portion of John F. Kennedy's coroner report, displaying the words "clinical record" and "autopsy". The typeface used on the band's name is the same font used on the Disney World logo in the 1960s.


text: The cover was controversial; editions of the album sold at Circuit City came housed in a cardboard sleeve featuring an alternative cover, while Walmart and Kmart refused to stock the album at all. A pastor in Memphis, Tennessee threatened to go on a hunger strike unless the album was pulled from shelves. Manson described these actions as attempts at censorship: "The irony is that my point of the photo on the album was to show people that the crucifixion of Christ is, indeed, a violent image. My jaw is missing as a symbol of this very kind of censorship. This doesn't piss me off as much as it pleases me, because those offended by my album cover have successfully proven my point." In 2008, Gigwise ranked it at number ten on their list of "The 50 Most Controversial Album Covers of All Time".


text: A set of fourteen redesigned Major Arcana tarot cards, based on the Rider–Waite deck, were commissioned by the singer for the album's artwork. The cards depict band members in surrealistic tableau. Each card was reinterpreted to reflect the iconography of the album's lyrical content: The Fool is stepping off a cliff, with grainy images of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and a JFK campaign poster in the background; The Emperor, with prosthetic legs, is sitting in a wheelchair clutching a rifle in front of an American flag; Justice weighs the Bible against the brain on his balance scale. The album's inner sleeve contains these three images, along with a further nine: The Magician, The High Priestess, The Hierophant, The Hermit, Death, The Devil, The Tower, The Star and The World. The cover itself represents The Hanged Man.


text: Three singles were released to promote the album, with "Disposable Teens" being released as its lead single. The band made their debut appearance on BBC One's "Top of the Pops" to perform the song. Its music video was directed by Samuel Bayer, which debuted on MTV's "Total Request Live" on October 25. The single was released in the UK on November 6, and featured several B-sides, including covers of Lennon's "Working Class Hero" and The Doors' "Five to One", as well as original tracks "Diamonds & Pollen" and "Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes". The latter had been released the previous year on the soundtrack to "Celebrity Deathmatch". The band performed "Disposable Teens" on the "MTV New Year's" Eve celebration in 2000, along with a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender". It was also performed at the 2001 "American Music Awards".


text: From November 1, the UK division of Interscope held a contest to promote the album. The contest invited fans to log onto the band's website daily to pick up a series of coded clues which led to a hidden message. Fans who solved the riddle received an exclusive download, and were entered into a drawing for a one-week trip for two to meet the band in Hollywood. On November 14, the band took a break from the Guns, God and Government Tour to celebrate the album's US release date with a brief, invitation-only acoustic set at the Saci nightclub in New York City. Tickets for the show were given out via their website, in radio contests, and to the first 100 album buyers at Tower Records on Broadway in New York. The set consisted of four songs, including their cover "Suicide Is Painless" – the theme of the film (and TV series) "M*A*S*H" – which they had recently contributed to the of "". The following day, the vocalist appeared on "Total Request Live" in a segment entitled "Mothers Against Marilyn Manson".


text: "The Fight Song" was released as the album's second single on February 19, 2001, in the UK. A remix of the song by Joey Jordison of Slipknot appeared as its B-side. Its music video was directed by Manson and W.I.Z. and sparked controversy for its violent depiction of an American football game between jocks and goths, with "NME" accusing it of being exploitative of the Columbine tragedy. Manson dismissed the claims as hype, and said: "I'm trying to show that sports as well as music can be seen as violent, so I chose a traditional black vs white, good vs evil theme for the video." Manson appeared on an April 2001 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor", where he once again denied that the band's music was responsible for Columbine. Bill O'Reilly argued that "disturbed kids" without direction from responsible parents could misinterpret the message of his music as endorsing the belief that "when I'm dead [then] everybody's going to know me." Manson responded:


text: In mid-2001, Universal Music Group was criticized for airing commercials promoting the album during episodes of "Total Request Live". Manson suspected that former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman played a role in the criticism. Lieberman and Hillary Clinton had recently introduced the Media Marketing Accountability Act of 2001 before the 107th United States Congress. This legislation proposed to ban the entertainment-industry from marketing suspected violent or explicit material to minors.


text: Manson announced prior to the release of "The Fight Song" that "The Nobodies" would be issued as the album's third single, whilst indicating a desire to film its video in Russia because "the atmosphere, the desolation, the coldness and the architecture would really suit the song." Another early plan was to incorporate the MTV series "Jackass", as the song was included in the show's soundtrack. The idea was later abandoned, however, when the show drew the ire of Lieberman. The music video was directed by Paul Fedor and premiered on MTV in June, and the single was released in the UK on September 3. Its release was timed to coincide with the band's appearance at the Reading Festival, and was accompanied by another competition on the band's website—the winner was awarded two full-weekend passes to the festival, as well as unrestricted backstage access and a private sleeping area. A remix of the song later appeared in the 2001 Johnny Depp film "From Hell".


text: The album was promoted by the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour, which began in North America in 3–6,000-capacity venues on October 27, 2000, at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. Typically for the band, the concerts were highly theatrical. The tour's imagery was mainly derived from the concept and themes found on the album; its logo was a rifle, with handguns arranged to resemble the Christian cross. Sets were designed with communist, religious and "celebritarian" imagery. Manson had a number of costume changes during each show: a bishop's dalmatic and mitre (often confused with papal regalia); a costume made from animals (including epaulettes made from a horse's tail and a shirt made from skinned goat heads and ostrich spines); his signature black leather corset, g-string and garter stockings; an elaborate Roman legionary-style imperial galea; an Allgemeine SS-style peaked police cap; a black-and-white fur coat, and a large conical skirt which lifted him in the air.


text: The Ozzfest leg of the tour marked the band's first performance in Denver, Colorado (on June 22, 2001, at Mile High Stadium) after the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton. After initially canceling due to a scheduling conflict, the band changed their plans to play the Denver date. The group's decision met resistance from conservative groups; Manson received death threats and demands to cancel the band's performance. A group of church leaders, businesses and families related to Columbine formed an ad hoc organization opposing the show. Citizens for Peace and Respect, which was supported by Colorado governor Bill Owens and representative Tom Tancredo, claimed on their website that the band "promotes hate, violence, death, suicide, drug use, and the attitudes and actions of the Columbine killers". In response, Manson issued a statement:


text: Two films of the concert tour were made. The "Guns, God and Government" DVD was released on October 29, 2002, by Eagle Rock Entertainment, and featured live footage taken from several different performances in Los Angeles, Russia, Japan, and throughout Europe. It also included a 30-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, "The Death Parade", with guest appearances from Ozzy Osbourne and Eminem. This was followed seven years later by a Blu-ray titled "Guns, God and Government – Live in L.A." Released by Eagle Rock on November 17, 2009, it depicts the band's entire sixteen-song set from their January 13, 2001, performance at the Grand Olympic Auditorium—the final headlining show of the North American leg of the tour.


text: "Holy Wood" received generally positive reviews from music critics at the time of its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 72 based on 14 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews", and is the 88th best-reviewed album of the year. The record was praised by several publications as being the band's finest work: Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described it as their definitive record; a writer for "Entertainment Weekly" called it their "most potent effort yet", and April Long of "NME" said it was "by far the best thing Manson has ever set his warped mind to, [it] ultimately inspires something far more potent than fear or hatred—respect."


text: The band received acclaim for the quality of their songwriting. Daniel Durchholz of Wall of Sound called "Holy Wood" their most ambitious and musically accomplished record to date. "LA Weekly" said that "almost all [of the songs] contain a double-take chord change or a textural overdose or a mind-blowing bridge, and they'll be terroristic in concert." "Hot Press" praised the band for their inventive musical arrangements, and said that ""Holy Wood" is a far better record than many would have dared to expect." Drowned in Sound rated the album 10 out of 10 and praised the band's performance, saying that they "play tighter than [ever] before (looking at the credits show it to be much more of a team effort) ... and, musically, it has a lot more variation and scope than the Limp Bizkits of the world." The band's vocalist was also applauded for his lyricism; Barry Walters of "Rolling Stone" commended him for "addressing real-life issues with a theatrical verve and genuine vitriol that no other mainstream act can match." "Billboard" magazine was similarly impressed, calling Manson one of the most skilled lyricists of his generation. "Revolver" editor Christopher Scapelliti compared his lyrics to those of John Lennon's, writing: "What comes across loudest on the album is not the music, but the sense of injury expressed in Manson's lyrics. Like "Plastic Ono Band", "Holy Wood" screams with a primal fury that's evident even in its quietest moments."


text: The album also received some mixed reviews. Several publications criticized its length, as well as the band for abandoning the glam rock-influenced production of "Mechanical Animals". PopMatters argued that the album was too long, and claimed it would have been a more consistent record if subject matter was addressed literally, instead of through a 'concept album' format. Joshua Klein of "The A.V. Club" rated "Holy Wood" a B−, but was overall critical of the lack of glam rock-influenced songs on the album. Robert Hilburn, in a review for the "Los Angeles Times", was also disappointed that the album did not live up to "the promise of "Mechanical Animals"". He viewed the musical cross-pollination of "Antichrist Superstar" and "Mechanical Animals" as confusion on the band's part as to which of the two albums appealed most to casual listeners.


text: The album appeared in numerous publication's lists of best albums of 2000. It appeared at number nine on "Kerrang!"s list of albums of the year, and went on to rate it the 11th best album of the 2000–2009 decade, while "NME" ranked it at number 34 in their critic's pick of the 50 best albums of 2000 in their "Decade in Music" series. German magazine "Musik Express/Sounds" listed the album at number 30 in their critics' top 50, and at number nine in the popular poll of their "Albums of 2000" list. The French edition of British magazine "Rock Sound" ranked "Holy Wood" 15th in their "Le choix de la rédaction" (editors choice) and 5th in "Le choix des lecteurs" (readers choice) of their 2000 "Albums de l'année" (albums of the year). "Record Collector" also included it on their "Best of 2000" list. It went on to win the "Best Album" accolade at the 2001 "Kerrang!" Awards.


text: Retrospective commentary on the album has been highly positive. In November 2010, "Kerrang!" published a tenth-anniversary commemorative issue dedicated to "Holy Wood" titled "Screaming For Vengeance", calling it "Manson's finest hour". In 2014, "Metal Hammer" identified the album as a modern classic, calling it the band's "creative zenith"; later, in 2020, the magazine named it one of the 20 best metal albums of 2000. Manson said in a June 2015 Reddit AMA that he considered the record to be his best work, and, that same month, "NME" referred to it as the band's best album. A 2016 feature in "Houston Press" called "Holy Wood" "the album that really cemented the band as more than just shock-rockers, but true musical mavericks with an intelligent perspective on social issues." "Metal Hammer" referred to the record as "perfect", saying: "Manson has yet to better "Holy Wood" and that's fine—nobody's really bettered it. The flow of the record, the delivery of its concept, the clarity with which it strikes its opponents. A gargantuan artistic feat that will go down in history as Manson's defining statement."


text: Prior to the record's release, several critics and retailers openly questioned whether the band still had significant commercial appeal with mainstream consumers, with rap rock emerging as the predominant rock genre of the early 2000s. Furthermore, according to "Metal Hammer", "By the turn of the century, Manson was no longer America's demon dog. White trash superstar Eminem had clocked his position and supplanted him." A clean version of the album was never manufactured. This resulted in "Holy Wood" being banned from sale at major retailers such as Walmart and Kmart, who enforce a strict policy on not stocking albums labeled with a Parental Advisory sticker. Best Buy's sales projections estimated its first-week sales at about 150,000 units nationally, significantly less than the 223,000 copies sold by "Mechanical Animals" during its first week.


text: "Holy Wood" debuted and peaked at number 13 on the "Billboard" 200 with first-week sales of 117,279—an initial commercial disappointment. It spent 13 consecutive weeks on the chart before dropping off – far short of the 52 and 33 weeks "Antichrist Superstar" and "Mechanical Animals" spent on the chart, respectively – making it the shortest-charting full-length LP by the band until "The High End of Low" (2009). It took over two years to be certified gold by the RIAA (in March 2003), denoting shipments in excess of 500,000 units. The album sold over 573,000 copies in the US by 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Manson attributed its lack of commercial appeal to the musical climate of the time, and argued that, at the height of the band's popularity, their US album sales peaked between one and two million units, so "it's not such a disaster as if we were coming down from seven or eight million records." He also said that the drop in US sales was off-set by increasing international success.


text: The record reached the top 20 of numerous international markets, including Canada, where it peaked at number 13 and was certified gold by the CRIA for shipments of over 50,000 units. The record was more successful in continental Europe than preceding albums, peaking at number nine on "Billboard"s Eurochart. It entered the top 10 of the national charts in Austria, Italy, and Sweden, and the top 20 in a further six countries: France, Norway, Poland, and Spain. It debuted at number 11 on the German Albums Chart and spent over five months on the chart—their second-longest chart run there, behind "The Golden Age of Grotesque" (2003). It also reached the top 20 in Switzerland, where it was certified gold by the IFPI almost five years after its release for shipments in excess of 25,000 units. Similarly, despite peaking at number 23 and spending just four weeks on the UK Albums Chart, it would be certified gold by the BPI in July 2013 for sales in excess of 100,000 copies.


text: In Australasia, "Holy Wood" peaked at number eight on the Australian Albums Chart, and reached the top twenty in New Zealand, peaking at number 18. The album also peaked at number 13 on the Japanese Oricon chart, where it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for shipments of over 100,000 units.


text: Credits adapted from the liner notes of the vinyl edition of "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)".


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (PanNETs, PETs, or PNETs), often referred to as "islet cell tumours", or "pancreatic endocrine tumours" are neuroendocrine neoplasms that arise from cells of the endocrine (hormonal) and nervous system within the pancreas.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: PanNETs are a type of neuroendocrine tumor, representing about one-third of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs). Many PanNETs are benign, while some are malignant. Aggressive PanNET tumors have traditionally been termed "islet cell carcinoma".


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: PanNETs are quite distinct from the usual form of pancreatic cancer, the majority of which are adenocarcinomas, which arises in the exocrine pancreas. Only 1 or 2% of clinically significant pancreas neoplasms are PanNETs.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: The majority of PanNETs are benign, while some are malignant. The World Health Organization (WHO) classification scheme places neuroendocrine tumors into three main categories, which emphasize the tumor grade rather than the anatomical origin. In practice, those tumors termed well or intermediately differentiated PanNETs in the WHO scheme are sometimes called "islet cell tumors". The high-grade subtype termed neuroendocrine cancer (NEC) in the WHO scheme, is synonymous with "islet cell carcinoma".


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Some PanNETs do not cause any symptoms, in which case they may be discovered incidentally on a CT scan performed for a different purpose. Symptoms such as abdominal or back pain or pressure, diarrhea, indigestion, or yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes can arise from the effects of a larger PanNET tumor, either locally or at a metastasis. About 40% of PanNETS have symptoms related to excessive secretion of hormones or active polypeptides and are accordingly labeled as "functional"; the symptoms reflect the type of hormone secreted, as discussed below. Up to 60% of PanNETs are nonsecretory or nonfunctional, in which there is no secretion, or the quantity or type of products, such as pancreatic polypeptide (PPoma), chromogranin A, and neurotensin, do not cause a clinical syndrome although blood levels may be elevated. In total, 85% of PanNETs have an elevated blood marker.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: In these various types of functional tumors, the frequency of malignancy and the survival prognosis have been estimated dissimilarly, but a pertinent accessible summary is available.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Measurement of hormones including pancreatic polypeptide, gastrin, proinsulin, insulin, glucagon, and vasoactive intestinal peptide can determine if a tumor is causing hypersecretion.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Multiphase CT and MRI are the primary modalities for morphologic imaging of PNETs. While MRI is superior to CT for imaging, both of the primary tumor and evaluation of metastases, CT is more readily available. Notably, while many malignant lesions are hypodense in contrast-enhanced studies, the liver metastases of PNETs are hypervascular and readily visualized in the late arterial phase of the post-contrast CT study. However, morphological imaging alone is not sufficient for a definite diagnosis


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: On biopsy, immunohistochemistry is generally positive for chromogranin and synaptophysin. Genetic testing thereof typically shows altered MEN1 and DAXX/ATRX.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: The 2010 WHO classification of tumors of the digestive system grades all the neuroendocrine tumors into three categories, based on their degree of cellular differentiation (from well-differentiated "NET G1" through to poorly-differentiated "NET G3"). The NCCN recommends the use of the same AJCC-UICC staging system as pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Using this scheme, the stage by stage outcomes for PanNETs are dissimilar to pancreatic exocrine cancers. A different TNM system for PanNETs has been proposed by The European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: In general, treatment for PanNET encompasses the same array of options as other neuroendocrine tumors, as discussed in that main article. However, there are some specific differences, which are discussed here.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: In functioning PanNETs, octreotide is usually recommended prior to biopsy or surgery but is generally avoided in insulinomas to avoid profound hypoglycemia.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: PanNETs in Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 are often multiple, and thus require different treatment and surveillance strategies.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Some PanNETs are more responsive to chemotherapy than are gastroenteric carcinoid tumors. Several agents have shown activity. In well differentiated PanNETs, chemotherapy is generally reserved for when there are no other treatment options. Combinations of several medicines have been used, such as doxorubicin with streptozocin and fluorouracil (5-FU) and capecitabine with temozolomide. Although marginally effective in well-differentiated PETs, cisplatin with etoposide has some activity in poorly differentiated neuroendocrine cancers (PDNECs), particularly if the PDNEC has an extremely high Ki-67 score of over 50%.


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Several targeted therapy agents have been approved in PanNETs by the FDA based on improved progression-free survival (PFS):


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors may arise in the context of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, Von Hippel–Lindau disease, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF-1) or tuberose sclerosis (TSC)


title: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

text: Analysis of somatic DNA mutations in well-differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors identified four important findings:


title: History of Chile

text: The territory of Chile has been populated since at least 3000 BC. By the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to colonize the region of present-day Chile, and the territory was a colony between 1540 and 1818, when it gained independence from Spain. The country's economic development was successively marked by the export of first agricultural produce, then saltpeter and later copper. The wealth of raw materials led to an economic upturn, but also led to dependency, and even wars with neighboring states. Chile was governed during most of its first 150 years of independence by different forms of restricted government, where the electorate was carefully vetted and controlled by an elite.


title: History of Chile

text: Failure to address the economic and social increases and increasing political awareness of the less-affluent population, as well as indirect intervention and economic funding to the main political groups by the CIA, as part of the Cold War, led to a political polarization under Socialist President Salvador Allende. This in turn resulted in the 1973 coup d'état and the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, whose subsequent 17-year regime was responsible for many human rights violations and deep market-oriented economic reforms. In 1990, Chile made a peaceful transition to democracy and initiate a succession of democratic governments.


title: History of Chile

text: About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in the fertile valleys and coastal areas of what is present-day Chile. Pre-Hispanic Chile was home to over a dozen different Amerindian societies. The current prevalent theories are that the initial arrival of humans to the continent took place either along the Pacific coast southwards in a rather rapid expansion long preceding the Clovis culture, or even trans-Pacific migration. These theories are backed by findings in the Monte Verde archaeological site, which predates the Clovis site by thousands of years. Specific early human settlement sites from the very early human habitation in Chile include the Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Crater's lava tube.


title: History of Chile

text: Despite such diversity, it is possible to classify the indigenous people into three major cultural groups: the northern people, who developed rich handicrafts and were influenced by pre-Incan cultures; the Araucanian culture, who inhabited the area between the river Choapa and the island of Chiloé, and lived primarily off agriculture; and the Patagonian culture composed of various nomadic tribes, who supported themselves through fishing and hunting (and who in Pacific/Pacific Coast immigration scenario would be descended partly from the most ancient settlers).


title: History of Chile

text: The Araucanians, a fragmented society of hunters, gatherers, and farmers, constituted the largest Native American group in Chile. Mobile people who engaged in trade and warfare with other indigenous groups lived in scattered family clusters and small villages. Although the Araucanians had no written language, they did use a common tongue. Those in what became central Chile were more settled and more likely to use irrigation. Those in the south combined slash-and-burn agriculture with hunting. Of the three Araucanian groups, the one that mounted the fiercest resistance to the attempts at seizure of their territory were the Mapuche, meaning "people of the land."


title: History of Chile

text: The Inca Empire briefly extended their empire into what is now northern Chile, where they collected tribute from small groups of fishermen and oasis farmers but were not able to establish a strong cultural presence in the area. As the Spaniards would after them, the Incas encountered fierce resistance and so were unable to exert control in the south. During their attempts at conquest in 1460 and again in 1491, the Incas established forts in the Central Valley of Chile, but they could not colonize the region. The Mapuche fought against the Sapa Tupac Inca Yupanqui (c. 1471–1493) and his army. The result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river, which subsequently became the boundary between the Incan empire and the Mapuche lands until the arrival of the Spaniards.


title: History of Chile

text: Scholars speculate that the total Araucanian population may have numbered 1.5 million at most when the Spaniards arrived in the 1530s; a century of European conquest and disease reduced that number by at least half. During the conquest, the Araucanians quickly added horses and European weaponry to their arsenal of clubs and bows and arrows. They became adept at raiding Spanish settlements and, albeit in declining numbers, managed to hold off the Spaniards and their descendants until the late 19th century. The Araucanians' valor inspired the Chileans to mythologize them as the nation's first national heroes, a status that did nothing, however, to elevate the wretched living standard of their descendants.


title: History of Chile

text: The Chilean Patagonia located south of the Calle-Calle River in Valdivia was composed of many tribes, mainly Tehuelches, who were considered giants by Spaniards during Magellan's voyage of 1520.


title: History of Chile

text: The name Patagonia comes from the word "patagón" used by Magellan to describe the native people whom his expedition thought to be giants. It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 1.80 m (~5′11″) compared to the 1.55 m (~5′1″) average for Spaniards of the time.


title: History of Chile

text: The Argentine portion of Patagonia includes the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, as well as the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego archipelago. The Argentine politico-economic Patagonic Region includes the Province of La Pampa.


title: History of Chile

text: The Chilean part of Patagonia embraces the southern part of Valdivia, Los Lagos in Lake Llanquihue, Chiloé, Puerto Montt and the Archaeological site of Monte Verde, also the fiords and islands south to the regions of Aisén and Magallanes, including the west side of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.


title: History of Chile

text: The first European to sight Chilean territory was Ferdinand Magellan, who crossed the Strait of Magellan on November 1, 1520. However, the title of discoverer of Chile is usually assigned to Diego de Almagro. Almagro was Francisco Pizarro's partner, and he received the Southern area ("Nueva Toledo"). He organized an expedition that brought him to central Chile in 1537, but he found little of value to compare with the gold and silver of the Incas in Peru. Left with the impression that the inhabitants of the area were poor, he returned to Peru, later to be garotted following defeat by Hernando Pizarro in a Civil War.


title: History of Chile

text: After this initial excursion there was little interest from colonial authorities in further exploring modern-day Chile. However, Pedro de Valdivia, captain of the army, realizing the potential for expanding the Spanish empire southward, asked Pizarro's permission to invade and conquer the southern lands. With a couple of hundred men, he subdued the local inhabitants and founded the city of Santiago de Nueva Extremadura, now Santiago de Chile, on February 12, 1541.


title: History of Chile

text: Although Valdivia found little gold in Chile he could see the agricultural richness of the land. He continued his explorations of the region west of the Andes and founded over a dozen towns and established the first "encomiendas". The greatest resistance to Spanish rule came from the Mapuche people, who opposed European conquest and colonization until the 1880s; this resistance is known as the Arauco War. Valdivia died at the Battle of Tucapel, defeated by Lautaro, a young Mapuche "toqui" (war chief), but the European conquest was well underway.


title: History of Chile

text: The Spaniards never subjugated the Mapuche territories; various attempts at conquest, both by military and peaceful means, failed. The Great Uprising of 1598 swept all Spanish presence south of the Bío-Bío River except Chiloé (and Valdivia which was decades later reestablished as a fort), and the great river became the frontier line between Mapuche lands and the Spanish realm.


title: History of Chile

text: North of that line cities grew up slowly, and Chilean lands eventually became an important source of food for the Viceroyalty of Peru.


title: History of Chile

text: Valdivia became the first governor of the Captaincy General of Chile. In that post, he obeyed the viceroy of Peru and, through him, the King of Spain and his bureaucracy. Responsible to the governor, town councils known as "Cabildo" administered local municipalities, the most important of which was Santiago, which was the seat of a Royal Appeals Court ("Real Audiencia") from 1609 until the end of colonial rule.


title: History of Chile

text: Chile was the least wealthy realm of the Spanish Crown for most of its colonial history. Only in the 18th century did a steady economic and demographic growth begin, an effect of the reforms by Spain's Bourbon dynasty and a more stable situation along the frontier.


title: History of Chile

text: The drive for independence from Spain was precipitated by the usurpation of the Spanish throne by Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte. The Chilean War of Independence was part of the larger Spanish American independence movement, and it was far from having unanimous support among Chileans, who became divided between independentists and royalists. What started as an elitist political movement against their colonial master, finally ended as a full-fledged civil war between pro-Independence Criollos who sought political and economic independence from Spain and royalist Criollos, who supported the continued allegiance to and permanence within the Spanish Empire of the Captaincy General of Chile. The struggle for independence was a war within the upper class, although the majority of troops on both sides consisted of conscripted mestizos and Native Americans.


title: History of Chile

text: The beginning of the Independence movement is traditionally dated as of September 18, 1810, when a national junta was established to govern Chile in the name of the deposed king Ferdinand VII. Depending on what terms one uses to define the end, the movement extended until 1821 (when the Spanish were expelled from mainland Chile) or 1826 (when the last Spanish troops surrendered and Chiloé was incorporated into the Chilean republic). The independence process is normally divided into three stages: "Patria Vieja", "Reconquista", and "Patria Nueva".


title: History of Chile

text: Chile's first experiment with self-government, the "Patria Vieja" ("old fatherland", 1810–1814), was led by José Miguel Carrera, an aristocrat then in his mid-twenties. The military-educated Carrera was a heavy-handed ruler who aroused widespread opposition. Another of the earliest advocates of full independence, Bernardo O'Higgins, captained a rival faction that plunged the Criollos into civil war. For him and certain other members of the Chilean elite, the initiative for temporary self-rule quickly escalated into a campaign for permanent independence, although other Criollos remained loyal to Spain.


title: History of Chile

text: Among those favouring independence, conservatives fought with liberals over the degree to which French revolutionary ideas would be incorporated into the movement. After several efforts, Spanish troops from Peru took advantage of the internecine strife to reconquer Chile in 1814, when they reasserted control by the Battle of Rancagua on October 12. O'Higgins, Carrera and many of the Chilean rebels escaped to Argentina.


title: History of Chile

text: The second period was characterized by the Spanish attempts to reimpose arbitrary rule during the period known as the "Reconquista" of 1814–1817 ("Reconquest": the term echoes the "Reconquista" in which the Christian kingdoms retook Iberia from the Muslims). During this period, the harsh rule of the Spanish loyalists, who punished suspected rebels, drove more and more Chileans into the insurrectionary camp. More members of the Chilean elite were becoming convinced of the necessity of full independence, regardless of who sat on the throne of Spain. As the leader of guerrilla raids against the Spaniards, Manuel Rodríguez became a national symbol of resistance.


title: History of Chile

text: In exile in Argentina, O'Higgins joined forces with José de San Martín. Their combined army freed Chile with a daring assault over the Andes in 1817, defeating the Spaniards at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12 and marking the beginning of the "Patria Nueva". San Martín considered the liberation of Chile a strategic stepping-stone to the emancipation of Peru, which he saw as the key to hemispheric victory over the Spanish.


title: History of Chile

text: Chile won its formal independence when San Martín defeated the last large Spanish force on Chilean soil at the Battle of Maipú on April 5, 1818. San Martín then led his Argentine and Chilean followers north to liberate Peru; and fighting continued in Chile's southern provinces, the bastion of the royalists, until 1826.


title: History of Chile

text: A declaration of independence was officially issued by Chile on February 12, 1818, and formally recognized by Spain in 1840, when full diplomatic relations were established.


title: History of Chile

text: From 1817 to 1823, Bernardo O'Higgins ruled Chile as supreme director. He won plaudits for defeating royalists and founding schools, but civil strife continued. O'Higgins alienated liberals and provincials with his authoritarianism, conservatives and the church with his anticlericalism, and landowners with his proposed reforms of the land tenure system. His attempt to devise a constitution in 1818 that would legitimize his government failed, as did his effort to generate stable funding for the new administration. O'Higgins's dictatorial behavior aroused resistance in the provinces. This growing discontent was reflected in the continuing opposition of partisans of Carrera, who was executed by the Argentine regime in Mendoza in 1821, like his two brothers were three years earlier.


title: History of Chile

text: Although opposed by many liberals, O'Higgins angered the Roman Catholic Church with his liberal beliefs. He maintained Catholicism's status as the official state religion but tried to curb the church's political powers and to encourage religious tolerance as a means of attracting Protestant immigrants and traders. Like the church, the landed aristocracy felt threatened by O'Higgins, resenting his attempts to eliminate noble titles and, more important, to eliminate entailed estates.


title: History of Chile

text: O'Higgins's opponents also disapproved of his diversion of Chilean resources to aid San Martín's liberation of Peru. O'Higgins insisted on supporting that campaign because he realized that Chilean independence would not be secure until the Spaniards were routed from the Andean core of the empire. However, amid mounting discontent, troops from the northern and southern provinces forced O'Higgins to resign. Embittered, O'Higgins departed for Peru, where he died in 1842.


title: History of Chile

text: After O'Higgins went into exile in 1823, civil conflict continued, focusing mainly on the issues of anticlericalism and regionalism. Presidents and constitutions rose and fell quickly in the 1820s. The civil struggle's harmful effects on the economy, and particularly on exports, prompted conservatives to seize national control in 1830.


title: History of Chile

text: In the minds of most members of the Chilean elite, the bloodshed and chaos of the late 1820s were attributable to the shortcomings of liberalism and federalism, which had been dominant over conservatism for most of the period. The political camp became divided by supporters of O'Higgins, Carrera, liberal Pipiolos and conservative Pelucones, being the two last the main movements that prevailed and absorbed the rest. The abolition of slavery in 1823—long before most other countries in the Americas—was considered one of the Pipiolos' few lasting achievements. One Pipiolo leader from the south, Ramón Freire, rode in and out of the presidency several times (1823–1827, 1828, 1829, 1830) but could not sustain his authority. From May 1827 to September 1831, with the exception of brief interventions by Freire, the presidency was occupied by Francisco Antonio Pinto, Freire's former vice president.


title: History of Chile

text: In August 1828, Pinto's first year in office, Chile abandoned its short-lived federalist system for a unitary form of government, with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. By adopting a moderately liberal constitution in 1828, Pinto alienated both the federalists and the liberal factions. He also angered the old aristocracy by abolishing estates inherited by primogeniture (mayorazgo) and caused a public uproar with his anticlericalism. After the defeat of his liberal army at the Battle of Lircay on April 17, 1830, Freire, like O'Higgins, went into exile in Peru.


title: History of Chile

text: Although never president, Diego Portales dominated Chilean politics from the cabinet and behind the scenes from 1830 to 1837. He installed the "autocratic republic", which centralized authority in the national government. His political program enjoyed support from merchants, large landowners, foreign capitalists, the church, and the military. Political and economic stability reinforced each other, as Portales encouraged economic growth through free trade and put government finances in order. Portales was an agnostic who said that he believed in the clergy but not in God. He realized the importance of the Roman Catholic Church as a bastion of loyalty, legitimacy, social control and stability, as had been the case in the colonial period. He repealed Liberal reforms that had threatened church privileges and properties.


title: History of Chile

text: The "Portalian State" was institutionalized by the Chilean Constitution of 1833. One of the most durable charters ever devised in Latin America, the Portalian constitution lasted until 1925. The constitution concentrated authority in the national government, more precisely, in the hands of the president, who was elected by a tiny minority. The chief executive could serve two consecutive five-year terms and then pick a successor. Although the Congress had significant budgetary powers, it was overshadowed by the president, who appointed provincial officials. The constitution also created an independent judiciary, guaranteed inheritance of estates by primogeniture, and installed Catholicism as the state religion. In short, it established an autocratic system under a republican veneer.


title: History of Chile

text: Portales also achieved his objectives by wielding dictatorial powers, censoring the press, and manipulating elections. For the next forty years, Chile's armed forces would be distracted from meddling in politics by skirmishes and defensive operations on the southern frontier, although some units got embroiled in domestic conflicts in 1851 and 1859.


title: History of Chile

text: The Portalian president was General Joaquín Prieto, who served two terms (1831–1836, 1836–1841). President Prieto had four main accomplishments: implementation of the 1833 constitution, stabilization of government finances, defeat of provincial challenges to central authority, and victory over the Peru-Bolivia Confederation. During the presidencies of Prieto and his two successors, Chile modernized through the construction of ports, railroads, and telegraph lines, some built by United States entrepreneur William Wheelwright. These innovations facilitated the export-import trade as well as domestic commerce.


title: History of Chile

text: Prieto and his adviser, Portales, feared the efforts of Bolivian general Andrés de Santa Cruz to unite with Peru against Chile. These qualms exacerbated animosities toward Peru dating from the colonial period, now intensified by disputes over customs duties and loans. Chile also wanted to become the dominant South American military and commercial power along the Pacific. Santa Cruz united Peru and Bolivia in the Peru–Bolivian Confederation in 1836 with a desire to expand control over Argentina and Chile. Portales got Congress to declare war on the Confederation. Portales was killed by traitors in 1837. The general Manuel Bulnes defeated the Confederation in the Battle of Yungay in 1839.


title: History of Chile

text: After his success Bulnes was elected president in 1841. He served two terms (1841–1846, 1846–1851). His administration concentrated on the occupation of the territory, especially the Strait of Magellan and the Araucanía. The Venezuelan Andres Bello make in this period important intellectual advances, specially the creation of the University of Santiago. But political tensions, including a liberal rebellion, led to the Chilean Civil War of 1851. Finally the conservatives defeated the liberals.


title: History of Chile

text: The last conservative president was Manuel Montt, who also served two terms (1851–1856, 1856–1861), but his bad administration led to the liberal rebellion in 1859. Liberals triumphed in 1861 with the election of Jose Joaquin Perez as president.


title: History of Chile

text: The political revolt brought little social change, however, and 19th century Chilean society preserved the essence of the stratified colonial social structure, which was greatly influenced by family politics and the Roman Catholic Church. A strong presidency eventually emerged, but wealthy landowners remained powerful.


title: History of Chile

text: Toward the end of the 19th century, the government in Santiago consolidated its position in the south by persistently suppressing the Mapuche during the Occupation of the Araucanía. In 1881, it signed the Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina confirming Chilean sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan, but conceding all of oriental Patagonia, and a considerable fraction of the territory it had during colonial times. As a result of the War of the Pacific with Peru and Bolivia (1879–1883), Chile expanded its territory northward by almost one-third and acquired valuable nitrate deposits, the exploitation of which led to an era of national affluence.


title: History of Chile

text: In the 1870s, the church influence started to diminish slightly with the passing of several laws that took some old roles of the church into the State's hands such as the registry of births and marriages.


title: History of Chile

text: In 1886, José Manuel Balmaceda was elected president. His economic policies visibly changed the existing liberal policies. He began to violate the constitution and slowly began to establish a dictatorship. Congress decided to depose Balmaceda, who refused to step down. Jorge Montt, among others, directed an armed conflict against Balmaceda, which soon extended into the 1891 Chilean Civil War. Defeated, Balmaceda fled to Argentina's embassy, where he committed suicide. Jorge Montt became the new president.


title: History of Chile

text: The so-called Parliamentary Republic was not a true parliamentary system, in which the chief executive is elected by the legislature. It was, however, an unusual regime in presidentialist Latin America, for Congress really did overshadow the rather ceremonial office of the president and exerted authority over the chief executive's cabinet appointees. In turn, Congress was dominated by the landed elites. This was the heyday of classic political and economic liberalism.


title: History of Chile

text: For many decades thereafter, historians derided the Parliamentary Republic as a quarrel-prone system that merely distributed spoils and clung to its laissez-faire policy while national problems mounted. The characterization is epitomized by an observation made by President Ramón Barros Luco (1910–1915), reputedly made in reference to labor unrest: "There are only two kinds of problems: those that solve themselves and those that can't be solved."


title: History of Chile

text: At the mercy of Congress, cabinets came and went frequently, although there was more stability and continuity in public administration than some historians have suggested. Chile also temporarily resolved its border disputes with Argentina with the Puna de Atacama Lawsuit of 1899, the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina and the 1902 General Treaty of Arbitration, though not without engaging in an expensive naval arms race beforehand.


title: History of Chile

text: Political authority ran from local electoral bosses in the provinces through the congressional and executive branches, which reciprocated with payoffs from taxes on nitrate sales. Congressmen often won election by bribing voters in this clientelistic and corrupt system. Many politicians relied on intimidated or loyal peasant voters in the countryside, even though the population was becoming increasingly urban. The lackluster presidents and ineffectual administrations of the period did little to respond to the country's dependence on volatile nitrate exports, spiraling inflation, and massive urbanization.


title: History of Chile

text: In recent years, however, particularly when the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet is taken into consideration, some scholars have reevaluated the Parliamentary Republic of 1891–1925. Without denying its shortcomings, they have lauded its democratic stability. They have also hailed its control of the armed forces, its respect for civil liberties, its expansion of suffrage and participation, and its gradual admission of new contenders, especially reformers, to the political arena. In particular, two young parties grew in importance – the Democrat Party, with roots among artisans and urban workers, and the Radical Party, representing urban middle sectors and provincial elites.


title: History of Chile

text: By the early 20th century, both parties were winning increasing numbers of seats in Congress. The more leftist members of the Democrat Party became involved in the leadership of labor unions and broke off to launch the Socialist Workers' Party ( – POS) in 1912. The founder of the POS and its best-known leader, Luis Emilio Recabarren, also founded the Communist Party of Chile ( – PCCh) in 1922.


title: History of Chile

text: By the 1920s, the emerging middle and working classes were powerful enough to elect a reformist president, Arturo Alessandri Palma. Alessandri appealed to those who believed the social question should be addressed, to those worried by the decline in nitrate exports during World War I, and to those weary of presidents dominated by Congress. Promising "evolution to avoid revolution", he pioneered a new campaign style of appealing directly to the masses with florid oratory and charisma. After winning a seat in the Senate representing the mining north in 1915, he earned the sobriquet "Lion of Tarapacá."


title: History of Chile

text: As a dissident Liberal running for the presidency, Alessandri attracted support from the more reformist Radicals and Democrats and formed the so-called Liberal Alliance. He received strong backing from the middle and working classes as well as from the provincial elites. Students and intellectuals also rallied to his banner. At the same time, he reassured the landowners that social reforms would be limited to the cities.


title: History of Chile

text: Alessandri soon discovered that his efforts to lead would be blocked by the conservative Congress. Like Balmaceda, he infuriated the legislators by going over their heads to appeal to the voters in the congressional elections of 1924. His reform legislation was finally rammed through Congress under pressure from younger military officers, who were sick of the neglect of the armed forces, political infighting, social unrest, and galloping inflation, whose program was frustrated by a conservative congress.


title: History of Chile

text: A double military coup set off a period of great political instability that lasted until 1932. First military right-wingers opposing Alessandri seized power in September 1924, and then reformers in favor of the ousted president took charge in January 1925. The "Saber noise" (ruido de sables) incident of September 1924, provoked by discontent of young officers, mostly lieutenants from middle and working classes, lead to the establishment of the September Junta led by General Luis Altamirano and the exile of Alessandri.


title: History of Chile

text: However, fears of a conservative restoration in progressive sectors of the army led to another coup in January, which ended with the establishment of the January Junta as interim government while waiting for Alessandri's return. The latter group was led by two colonels, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo and Marmaduke Grove. They returned Alessandri to the presidency that March and enacted his promised reforms by decree. The latter re-assumed power in March, and a new Constitution encapsulating his proposed reforms was ratified in a plebiscite in September 1925.


title: History of Chile

text: The new constitution gave increased powers to the presidency. Alessandri broke with the classical liberalism's policies of "laissez-faire" by creating a Central Bank and imposing a revenue tax. However, social discontents were also crushed, leading to the Marusia massacre in March 1925 followed by the La Coruña massacre.


title: History of Chile

text: The longest lasting of the ten governments between 1924 and 1932 was that of General Carlos Ibáñez, who briefly held power in 1925 and then again between 1927 and 1931 in what was a "de facto" dictatorship. When constitutional rule was restored in 1932, a strong middle-class party, the Radicals, emerged. It became the key force in coalition governments for the next 20 years.


title: History of Chile

text: The Seguro Obrero Massacre took place on September 5, 1938, in the midst of a heated three-way election campaign between the ultraconservative Gustavo Ross Santa María, the radical Popular Front's Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and the newly formed Popular Alliance candidate, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. The National Socialist Movement of Chile supported Ibáñez's candidacy, which had been announced on September 4. In order to preempt Ross's victory, the National Socialists mounted a coup d'état that was intended to take down the rightwing government of Arturo Alessandri Palma and place Ibáñez in power.


title: History of Chile

text: During the period of Radical Party dominance (1932–1952), the state increased its role in the economy. In 1952, voters returned Ibáñez to office for another 6 years. Jorge Alessandri succeeded Ibáñez in 1958.


title: History of Chile

text: The 1964 presidential election of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva by an absolute majority initiated a period of major reform. Under the slogan "Revolution in Liberty", the Frei administration embarked on far-reaching social and economic programs, particularly in education, housing, and agrarian reform, including rural unionization of agricultural workers. By 1967, however, Frei encountered increasing opposition from leftists, who charged that his reforms were inadequate, and from conservatives, who found them excessive. At the end of his term, Frei had accomplished many noteworthy objectives, but he had not fully achieved his party's ambitious goals.


title: History of Chile

text: In the 1970 presidential election, Senator Salvador Allende Gossens won a plurality of votes in a three-way contest. He was a Marxist physician and member of Chile's Socialist Party, who headed the "Popular Unity" (UP or "Unidad Popular") coalition of the Socialist, Communist, Radical, and Social-Democratic Parties, along with dissident Christian Democrats, the Popular Unitary Action Movement (MAPU), and the Independent Popular Action.


title: History of Chile

text: Allende had two main competitors in the election — Radomiro Tomic, representing the incumbent Christian Democratic party, who ran a left-wing campaign with much the same theme as Allende's, and the right-wing former president Jorge Alessandri. In the end, Allende received a plurality of the votes cast, getting 36% of the vote against Alessandri's 35% and Tomic's 28%.


title: History of Chile

text: Despite pressure from the government of the United States, the Chilean Congress, keeping with tradition, conducted a runoff vote between the leading candidates, Allende and former president Jorge Alessandri. This procedure had previously been a near-formality, yet became quite fraught in 1970. After assurances of legality on Allende's part, the murder of the Army Commander-in-Chief, General René Schneider and Frei's refusal to form an alliance with Alessandri to oppose Allende – on the grounds that the Christian Democrats were a workers' party and could not make common cause with the oligarchs – Allende was chosen by a vote of 153 to 35.


title: History of Chile

text: The Popular Unity platform included the nationalization of U.S. interests in Chile's major copper mines, the advancement of workers' rights, deepening of the Chilean land reform, reorganization of the national economy into socialized, mixed, and private sectors, a foreign policy of "international solidarity" and national independence and a new institutional order (the "people's state" or "poder popular"), including the institution of a unicameral congress. Immediately after the election, the United States expressed its disapproval and raised a number of economic sanctions against Chile.


title: History of Chile

text: In addition, the CIA's website reports that the agency aided three different Chilean opposition groups during that time period and "sought to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office". The action plans to prevent Allende from coming to power were known as Track I and Track II.


title: History of Chile

text: In the first year of Allende's term, the short-term economic results of Economics Minister Pedro Vuskovic's expansive monetary policy were unambiguously favorable: 12% industrial growth and an 8.6% increase in GDP, accompanied by major declines in inflation (down from 34.9% to 22.1%) and unemployment (down to 3.8%). Allende adopted measures including price freezes, wage increases, and tax reforms, which had the effect of increasing consumer spending and redistributing income downward. Joint public-private public works projects helped reduce unemployment. Much of the banking sector was nationalized. Many enterprises within the copper, coal, iron, nitrate, and steel industries were expropriated, nationalized, or subjected to state intervention. Industrial output increased sharply and unemployment fell during the administration's first year. However, these results were not sustainable and in 1972 the Chilean "escudo" had runaway inflation of 140%. An economic depression that had begun in 1967 peaked in 1972, exacerbated by capital flight, plummeting private investment, and withdrawal of bank deposits in response to Allende's socialist program. Production fell and unemployment rose. The combination of inflation and government-mandated price-fixing led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour, and a "disappearance" of such basic commodities from supermarket shelves.


title: History of Chile

text: Recognizing that U.S. intelligence forces were trying to destabilize his presidency through a variety of methods, the KGB offered financial assistance to the first democratically elected Marxist president. However, the reason behind the U.S. covert actions against Allende concerned not the spread of Marxism but fear over losing control of its investments. "By 1968, 20 percent of total U.S. foreign investment was tied up in Latin America...Mining companies had invested $1 billion over the previous fifty years in Chile's copper mining industry – the largest in the world – but they had sent $7.2 billion home." Part of the CIA's program involved a propaganda campaign that portrayed Allende as a would-be Soviet dictator. In fact, however, "the U.S.'s own intelligence reports showed that Allende posed no threat to democracy." Nevertheless, the Richard Nixon administration organized and inserted secret operatives in Chile, in order to quickly destabilize Allende's government.


title: History of Chile

text: In addition, Nixon gave instructions to make the Chilean economy scream, and international financial pressure restricted economic credit to Chile. Simultaneously, the CIA funded opposition media, politicians, and organizations, helping to accelerate a campaign of domestic destabilization. By 1972, the economic progress of Allende's first year had been reversed, and the economy was in crisis. Political polarization increased, and large mobilizations of both pro- and anti-government groups became frequent, often leading to clashes.


title: History of Chile

text: By 1973, Chilean society had grown highly polarized, between strong opponents and equally strong supporters of Salvador Allende and his government. Military actions and movements, separate from the civilian authority, began to manifest in the countryside. The Tanquetazo was a failed military coup d'état attempted against Allende in June 1973.


title: History of Chile

text: In its "", on August 22, 1973, the Chamber of Deputies of Chile asserted that Chilean democracy had broken down and called for "redirecting government activity", to restore constitutional rule. Less than a month later, on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military deposed Allende, who shot himself in the head to avoid capture as the Presidential Palace was surrounded and bombed. Subsequently, rather than restore governmental authority to the civilian legislature, Augusto Pinochet exploited his role as Commander of the Army to seize total power and to establish himself at the head of a junta.


title: History of Chile

text: CIA involvement in the coup is documented. As early as the Church Committee Report (1975), publicly available documents have indicated that the CIA attempted to prevent Allende from taking office after he was elected in 1970; the CIA itself released documents in 2000 acknowledging this and that Pinochet was one of their favored alternatives to take power.


title: History of Chile

text: According to the Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew, the KGB and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate launched a campaign known as Operation TOUCAN. For instance, in 1976, the New York Times published 66 articles on alleged human rights abuses in Chile and only 4 on Cambodia, where the communist Khmer Rouge killed some 1.5 million people of 7.5 million people in the country.


title: History of Chile

text: By early 1973, inflation had risen 600% under Allende's presidency."" The crippled economy was further battered by prolonged and sometimes simultaneous strikes by physicians, teachers, students, truck owners, copper workers, and the small business class. A military coup overthrew Allende on September 11, 1973. As the armed forces bombarded the presidential palace (Palacio de La Moneda), Allende committed suicide. A military government, led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, took over control of the country.


title: History of Chile

text: The first years of the regime were marked by human rights violations. The junta jailed, tortured, and executed thousands of Chileans. In October 1973, at least 72 people were murdered by the Caravan of Death. At least a thousand people were executed during the first six months of Pinochet in office, and at least two thousand more were killed during the next sixteen years, as reported by the Rettig Report. At least 29,000 were imprisoned and tortured. According to the Latin American Institute on Mental Health and Human Rights (ILAS), "situations of extreme trauma" affected about 200,000 persons.; this figure includes individuals killed, tortured or exiled, and their immediate families. About 30,000 left the country.


title: History of Chile

text: The four-man junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet abolished civil liberties, dissolved the national congress, banned union activities, prohibited strikes and collective bargaining, and erased the Allende administration's agrarian and economic reforms.


title: History of Chile

text: The junta embarked on a radical program of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, slashing tariffs as well as government welfare programs and deficits. Economic reforms were drafted by a group of technocrats who became known as the Chicago Boys because many of them had been trained or influenced by University of Chicago professors. Under these new policies, the rate of inflation dropped:


title: History of Chile

text: A new constitution was approved by plebiscite characterized by the absence of registration lists, on September 11, 1980, and General Pinochet became president of the republic for an 8-year term.


title: History of Chile

text: In 1982–1983 Chile witnessed a severe economic crisis with a surge in unemployment and a meltdown of the financial sector. 16 out of 50 financial institutions faced bankruptcy. In 1982 the two biggest banks were nationalized to prevent an even worse credit crunch. In 1983 another five banks were nationalized and two banks had to be put under government supervision. The central bank took over foreign debts. Critics ridiculed the economic policy of the Chicago Boys as "Chicago way to socialism“.


title: History of Chile

text: After the economic crisis, Hernán Büchi became Minister of Finance from 1985 to 1989, introducing a more pragmatic economic policy. He allowed the peso to float and reinstated restrictions on the movement of capital in and out of the country. He introduced Bank regulations, simplified and reduced the corporate tax. Chile went ahead with privatizations, including public utilities plus the re-privatization of companies that had returned to the government during the 1982–1983 crisis. From 1984 to 1990, Chile's gross domestic product grew by an annual average of 5.9%, the fastest on the continent. Chile developed a good export economy, including the export of fruits and vegetables to the northern hemisphere when they were out of season, and commanded high prices.


title: History of Chile

text: The military junta began to change during the late 1970s. Due to problems with Pinochet, Leigh was expelled from the junta in 1978 and replaced by General Fernando Matthei. In the late 1980s, the government gradually permitted greater freedom of assembly, speech, and association, to include trade union and political activity. Due to the Caso Degollados ("slit throats case"), in which three Communist party members were assassinated, César Mendoza, member of the junta since 1973 and representants of the carabineros, resigned in 1985 and was replaced by Rodolfo Stange. The next year, Carmen Gloria Quintana was burnt alive in what became known as the Caso Quemado ("Burnt Alive case").


title: History of Chile

text: Chile's constitution established that in 1988 there would be another plebiscite in which the voters would accept or reject a single candidate proposed by the Military Junta. Pinochet was, as expected, the candidate proposed, but was denied a second 8-year term by 54.5% of the vote.


title: History of Chile

text: Chileans elected a new president and the majority of members of a two-chamber congress on December 14, 1989. Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, the candidate of a coalition of 17 political parties called the "Concertación", received an absolute majority of votes (55%). President Aylwin served from 1990 to 1994, in what was considered a transition period. In February 1991 Aylwin created the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which released in February 1991 the Rettig Report on human rights violations committed during the military rule.


title: History of Chile

text: This report counted 2,279 cases of "disappearances" which could be proved and registered. Of course, the very nature of "disappearances" made such investigations very difficult. The same problem arose, several years later, with the Valech Report, released in 2004 and which counted almost 30,000 victims of torture, among testimonies from 35,000 persons.


title: History of Chile

text: In December 1993, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, the son of previous president Eduardo Frei Montalva, led the Concertación coalition to victory with an absolute majority of votes (58%). Frei Ruiz-Tagle was succeeded in 2000 by Socialist Ricardo Lagos, who won the presidency in an unprecedented runoff election against Joaquín Lavín of the rightist Alliance for Chile, by a very tight score of less than 200,000 votes (51,32%).


title: History of Chile

text: In 1998, Pinochet traveled to London for back surgery. But under orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, he was arrested there, attracting worldwide attention, not only because of the history of Chile and South America, but also because this was one of the first arrests of a former president based on the universal jurisdiction principle. Pinochet tried to defend himself by referring to the State Immunity Act of 1978, an argument rejected by the British justice. However, UK Home Secretary Jack Straw took the responsibility to release him on medical grounds, and refused to extradite him to Spain. Thereafter, Pinochet returned to Chile in March 2000. Upon descending the plane on his wheelchair, he stood up and saluted the cheering crowd of supporters, including an army band playing his favorite military march tunes, which was awaiting him at the airport in Santiago. President Ricardo Lagos later commented that the retired general's televised arrival had damaged the image of Chile, while thousands demonstrated against him.


title: History of Chile

text: The "Concertación" coalition has continued to dominate Chilean politics for last two decades. In January 2006 Chileans elected their first female president, Michelle Bachelet, of the Socialist Party. She was sworn in on March 11, 2006, extending the "Concertación" coalition governance for another four years.


title: History of Chile

text: In 2002 Chile signed an association agreement with the European Union (comprising a free trade agreement and political and cultural agreements), in 2003, an extensive free trade agreement with the United States, and in 2004 with South Korea, expecting a boom in import and export of local produce and becoming a regional trade-hub. Continuing the coalition's free trade strategy, in August 2006 President Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with China (signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos), the first Chinese free trade agreement with a Latin American nation; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007. In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4), also signed under Lagos' presidency. Regionally, she has signed bilateral free trade agreements with Panama, Peru and Colombia.


title: History of Chile

text: After 20 years, Chile went in a new direction with the win of center-right Sebastián Piñera, in the Chilean presidential election of 2009–2010, defeating former President Eduardo Frei in the runoff.


title: History of Chile

text: On 27 February 2010, Chile was struck by an 8.8 M earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded at the time. More than 500 people died (most from the ensuing tsunami) and over a million people lost their homes. The earthquake was also followed by multiple aftershocks. Initial damage estimates were in the range of US$15–30 billion, around 10 to 15 percent of Chile's real gross domestic product.


title: History of Chile

text: Chile achieved global recognition for the successful rescue of 33 trapped miners in 2010. On 5 August 2010, the access tunnel collapsed at the San José copper and gold mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó in northern Chile, trapping 33 men below ground. A rescue effort organized by the Chilean government located the miners 17 days later. All 33 men were brought to the surface two months later on 13 October 2010 over a period of almost 24 hours, an effort that was carried on live television around the world.


title: History of Chile

text: Despite good macroeconomic indicators, there was increased social dissatisfaction, focused on demands for better and fairer education, culminating in massive protests demanding more democratic and equitable institutions. Approval of Piñera's administration fell irrevocably.


title: History of Chile

text: In 2013, Bachelet, a Social Democrat, was elected again as president, seeking to make the structural changes claimed in recent years by the society relative to education reform, tributary reform, same sex civil union, and definitely end the Binomial System, looking to further equality and the end of what remains of the dictatorship. In 2015 a series of corruption scandals (most notably Penta case and Caval case) became public, threatening the credibility of the political and business class.


title: History of Chile

text: On 17 December 2017, Sebastián Piñera was elected president of Chile for a second term. He received 36% of the votes, the highest percentage among all 8 candidates. In the second round, Piñera faced Alejandro Guillier, a television news anchor who represented Bachelet's New Majority (Nueva Mayoría) coalition. Piñera won the elections with 54% of the votes.


title: History of Chile

text: In October 2019 there were violent protests about costs of living and inequality, resulting in Piñera declaring a state of emergency. On 15 November, most of the political parties represented in the National Congress signed an agreement to call a national referendum in April 2020 regarding the creation of a new Constitution. But the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the date of the elections, while Chile was one of the hardest hit nations in the Americas as of May 2020. On October 25, 2020, Chileans voted 78.28 per cent in favor of a new constitution, while 21.72 per cent rejected the change. Voter turnout was 51 per cent. A second vote was held on April 11, 2021, to select 155 Chileans who form the convention which will draft the new constitution.


title: History of Chile

text: On 19 December 2021, leftist candidate, the 35-year-old former student protest leader, Gabriel Boric, won Chile's presidential election to become the country's youngest ever leader, after the most polarizing election since democracy was restored, defeating right wing pinochetist and leader of the Chilean Republican Party José Antonio Kast. The center-left and center-right political conglomerates alternating power during the last 32 years (ex-Concertación and Chile Vamos) ended up in fourth and fifth place of the Presidential election.


title: History of Chile

text: On 11 March 2022, Gabriel Boric was sworn in as president to succeed outgoing President Sebastian Pinera. Out of 24 members of Gabriel Boric's female-majority Cabinet, 14 are women.