Here are some brief excerpts from Baha'i sources about Baha'is in Chile:
The Bahá’í Faith was first mentioned the
Chile in Bahá’í sources as early as 1916, with
Bahá’ís visiting as early as 1919 but the community wasn't founded in Chile until 1940 with the beginning of the arrival of coordinated
pioneers from the
United States finding national Chilean converts and achieved an independent national community in 1963. In 2002 this community was picked for the establishment of the first
Bahá’í Temple of South America which the community is still prosecuting.
[1] There are currently an estimated 6000 Bahá’ís in Chile....
The permanent Chilean Bahá’í community dates from the arrival of Marcia Stewart Atwater, born in 1904 in Pasadena, California, who arrived in Chile on December 7, 1940 when her ship docked at Arica (though written materials of the Bahá’í Faith are known to have been present in Chile though the Theosophical Society previous none had become Bahá’í.).
[8] The first Chilean to accept the Bahá’í Faith was 12 year old Paul Bravo, which was followed by his family becoming Bahá’ís. Then in 1943, Chile's first Bahá’í Local Spiritual Assembly was elected. Following this election Atwater went to Punta Arenas, the southern most city of the world.
In 1943 during the annual Bahá’í convention of the United States, Shoghi Effendi announced a Northern- and Southern- international convention which would include representative from each state and province from the United States and Canada and each republic of Latin America. During this convention, Esteban Canales was the Chilean delegate.
Artemus Lamb, the second Bahá’í pioneer in Chile arrived on October 2, 1944 in Punta Arenas, and thus relieving Atwater from her outpost.
[8] In that city, Lina Smithson (known as Lina Gianotti in Chile) became it's first Chilean believer in 1945; in 1945 Bahá’ís moved from Punta Arenas area to Santiago, Valparaíso and Valdivia.
[9]
In late 2002, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Chile and the
Universal House of Justice, the international governing body of the Bahá’ís, announced a competition for the design of the first
Bahá’í House of Worship of South America, to be built near
Santiago though the general decision to have the first temple of South America was set since 1953.
[18] The selected design was designed by
Siamak Hariri of Toronto, Canada,
[19] and construction began in 2007.
[20] Its sides will be composed of translucent panels of
alabaster and cast glass. The interior structure will be a lattice structure of steel supporting the inside of the upper dome.
A website exists which publishes photographs of the ongoing stages of construction of the building.
https://bahaikipedia.org/Chile
