Chile is a long, thin country in South America. It sits between the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Andes mountains on the other, like a ribbon down the edge of the continent. The capital is Santiago. In the north is the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth; in the south the land gets cold and wild. People there speak Spanish. From 1973 until about 1990 Chile was under a hard military government led by General Pinochet; after that, people voted for their leaders again. The English name comes from Spanish Chile, and that name probably comes from a Quechua word chiri, meaning 'cold'.