Araucanía (Chile)

This is a flag that I done some time ago, but waited to publish because I was doing too many posts about Chile. But I think it's a good time to publish what I consider one of my best flags.

Araucanía is an administrative region right on the center of Chile, with a strong relation with native culture. This is Araucanía current flag:

This flag is a blue-white-red tricolor; I really don't know what these colors mean. The shield, however, is interesting: it consists of a black and a red partition, with six white rhombuses, symbols very used in Mapuche art, and a white tapalacucha, a Mapuche neck jewel. The coat of arms is ornamented by a copihue (native flower), a snowy mountains and two araucarias, a common tree in the southern South America and very abundant in the region.

A small change in the flag would be changing the stripes colors by the flag of the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia, a government-in-exile ruled by a French monarch and a council of Mapuche tribal chiefs, but it could generate controversy over non-indigene Chileans.

My proposals is simpler and more effective:

The first and third stripes are taken from region's coat of arms. In central stripe, a stylized araucaria, a symbol with strong local identity. I think it would fly well in Araucanian skies.

Your comment is very welcome!
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Antofagasta Region (Chile)

Antofagasta is the only Chilean region without its own flag. About a month ago, the region's intendant (the term is equivalent to "manager" or "steward") released a competition to choose a new flag (see a news link here). Apparently, only region's inhabitants can post a proposal, but I created my own anyway.

Currently, as there isn't an official flag, they use the intendant's flag:

That flag is a blue field with a seal consisting of Chilean national coat of arms and a inscription "Intendencia II Región - Antofagasta", that I freely translate as "Administration of Region II - Antofagasta". It's ugly and indistinguishable.

Historically, the Antofagasta constituted the Litoral Department, of Bolivia (Chile gained sovereignty over the area during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883). In this time, they used the flag below, that I discarded:

I was making some prototypes with arrows before, and I found here a perfect opportunity to use them:

I tried to use the Litoral department colors, but it increased too much flag's complexity and decreased the flag's visual impact. Blue is for the ocean: the capital city, Antofagasta, is a great port. The first arrow, pointing to the ocean (see Chile map), represents mining, the biggest economic activity of region. The orange color represents copper, more important and commonly found ore in region. The second arrow represents second biggest economic activity: the tourism, oriented mainly to pre-Columbian archaeology sites and the salares (salt pans). Salt also represent an important role in native ancient inhabitants' life, so it also represents them.

Thank you for reading. Your comment is very appreciated.
There might be two posts in next week. Hope I can...

Los Lagos (Chile)

Last days I'm searching something about flags of all South American nations. Some of those that most bothered me was the Chilean ones. Three or four of them are good, but they use to hold a seal over a plain white or blue background - not a creative design choice. I'm still thinking about create flag series about these regions all over the continent that haven't a good one, but however I'm present today my proposal to Los Lagos region, in Chile. Firstly, look at their current flag:

The seal is not this bad, because it shows the two main landmarks that's supposed to be found in there: the mountains (Chile is an Andean country) and a lake ("Los Lagos" means, verbatim, "The Lakes"). But the writing ruins the idea: a flag is intended to be a graphic representation, not a written one! Being, in some point, conservative, I created this design:

I put the lake in a color different of mountain, increasing the contrast. It looks good for me.

What's your opinion my proposed flag? Please let me know through comments.

I want to know one more thing, please: Do you like the idea of more South American flag on blogs? They are a little unknown, but I'd like to share the best and worst about them.