**Click above to hear a Chilean folk song dedicated to noble exploits of the Carrera Family.

The Carrera family originates from the Basque Country in Spain with their origins in Chile beginning in the middle of the 17th century.

The siblings Jose Miguel, Francisca Javiera, Juan Jose and Luis Carrera played a pivotal role in Chile’s war for Independence against the Spanish crown from 1810 to 1819.  The Carrera Family used the infrastructure and resources of their large agricultural estates, just 30 miles southwest of Santiago, to smuggle arms as well as hide and feed Chilean soldiers.  As the war was really taking hold, with her brother General Jose Miguel leading the Revolutionary army, Javiera designed and sewed the first Independent flag of Chile, known as the flag of La Patria Vieja (the Old Fatherland or Motherland).  The top blue bar represents the blue sky in the Chilean central valley.  The middle white bar is the snow-capped Andes mountain range, which provided the seemingly endless supply of water for drinking and growing crops.  The bottom yellow bar represents the fields of wheat and corn, which helped sustain this otherwise poor governorship of Spain.   The flag was first raised in El Monte, Chile on July 4th, 1812 in honor of the Carrera’s special dinner guest that evening, Joel Roberts Poinsett, the US Consul General to Chile and to show that the Carrera’s vision for Chile was like that of the United States, a free democratic republic with no connection to a European monarchy or the aristocratic structure they represented. 

Luckily many of the Carrera estate houses, or casonas, have survived until today.  The Casona Carrera is the only one that remains in the family.  The current owners are the direct descendants of Doña Francisca Javiera Carrera, one of the most important heroines of Chile’s Independence.  The family invites you to come and stay and experience the beauty, the history and the culture of the countryside where the Republic of Chile was born.