Argentina vs Chile

Why people mix them up

Argentina and Chile share one of the longest land borders in the world, running along the Andes from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego. Both are Spanish-speaking, both reach far south towards Antarctica, and both share the island of Tierra del Fuego. They are also friendly rivals in football and wine, so people often compare them, and many are unsure which one lies on which side of the mountains.

How to tell them apart

• Chile is the long, thin strip on the Pacific side of the Andes; Argentina is the broad country on the Atlantic side.
• Argentina is much larger, about 2.8 million km², nearly four times the size of Chile.
• Argentina's flag has light blue and white horizontal stripes with a golden Sun of May; Chile's is white over red with a blue square and a white star in the upper corner.
• The capitals are Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Santiago (Chile). Buenos Aires lies on the Río de la Plata estuary.
• Chile borders Peru and Bolivia; Argentina borders Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay.
• Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, is in Argentina, close to the Chilean border.

Memory hook

Chile is like a chili pepper: long, thin and hot along the Pacific edge. Argentina is the wide country behind it, facing the Atlantic.

On the map

Find the southern half of South America. The narrow ribbon running down the entire western coast, over 4,000 km long but rarely more than about 350 km wide, is Chile. The large wedge-shaped country to its east, narrowing to Tierra del Fuego in the south and touching the Atlantic, is Argentina. If the country you are tapping has a Pacific coast, it is Chile.