Chileans

Having lived in Santiago for the best part of a year now I've gotten to know the people of Chile quite well. For the majority of the year many of them came across as very friendly, with a glowing proudness knowing they're a Chilean citizen. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a country fuelled with so much pride and nationalism. So nationalistic they find themselves superior to their ancestors - the Mapuche.
On many occasions I've asked a Chilean about their heritage but when I ask if they have relations to the Mapuches they always immediately deny to have any Mapuche blood at all.
I have also found when I speak of neighbouring countries (Peru, Bolivia and Argentina), the replies are mainly full of negative comments. However, if I turn the conversation around and talk of Chile, they will only talk of how great a country it is.
After a while my view of thinking Chile had a friendly proudness, turned into more of a stubborn and angered proudness.

Today, me and James experienced discrimination against us. While James was having a discussion about continents in class about how S. America and N. America are two different continents and the whole class and teacher disagreed with him. This led on to a history teacher coming into the class and addressing that (to his knowledge) America is all one continent whereas N. America and S. America are just sub continents. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I respect that but I do not respect what happened in the process of this. As a pupil went into the staffroom to get the History teacher, one other teacher said "maybe they should go back to their own continent.". I found this comment unbelievably unprofessional and highly offensive as we had done nothing wrong, and also the fact he/she said this in-front of young students. I don't know his/her motivation towards this comment but I doubt the strong and stubborn nationalism of Chile helped.

*I would like to add that I'm not stereotyping every person in this country into one person, just like any nation there are good/bad people. I have met many genuinely lovely people here and made some great friends. I'm simply referring to the vast amount of people I have encountered here. Sadly, discrimination and prejudice happens in every corner of the world, it can be just the same (if not worse) back home in the UK.