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Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in South America occupying a long coastal strip between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It borders Argentina to the east, Bolivia to the northeast, Peru to the north, and the Cape Horn to the south.
Chile is divided into 15 regions , each of which is headed by an intendente appointed by the President. Every region is further divided into provinces with a Gobernador Provincial, also appointed by the President. Finally each province is divided into communes
(comunas). which are administered bymunicipalities, each with its own mayor, and councilors, known as concejales elected by their inhabitants. Because the communes and the municipalities usually share the same name, the terms are popularly used interchangeably, even though in strict legal terms they are distinct.
Each region is designated by a name and a Roman numeral, assigned from north to south until the congress added two new regions in 2006. In general, the Roman numeral is used, rather than the name. The only exception is the region where Santiago is situated, which is designated RM, that stands for Región Metropolitana, Metropolitan Region. In 2006, the Chilean congress created two new regions, one in the north, around the city of Arica, called Región XV de Arica y Parinacota (Arica-Parinacota Region), and one in the south centered around Valdivia, named Región XIV de los Ríos (Los Ríos Region).
A long and narrow coastal Southern Cone country on the west side of the Andes Mountains, Chile stretches over 4,630 kilometers (2,880 mi) north to south, but only 430 kilometers (265 mi) at its widest point east to west. This encompasses a remarkable variety of landscapes.
Chile controls Easter Island and Sala y Gómez Island, the easternmost islands of Polynesia, which it incorporated to its territory in 1888, and Robinson Crusoe Island, more than 600 kilometers (375 mi) from the mainland, in the Juan Fernández archipelago. Easter Island is nowadays a province of Chile. Also controlled but uninhabited are the small islands of Sala y Gómez, San Ambrosio and San Felix, these islands are notable because they extend Chile's claim to territorial waters out from its coast into the Pacific.
