II Región de Antofagasta/Region II Antofagasta or simply Antofagasta is one of Chile's fifteen first-order administrative divisions. It comprises three provinces, Antofagasta, El Loaand Tocopilla. It is bordered to the north by Tarapacá and by Atacama to the south and is the second-largest region of Chile.The capital of the region is the port city of Antofagasta. It currently does not have an official flag the same way other regions do. However the flag of the region's intendant (the term is equivalent to "manager" or "steward") is often used as a regional flag although it is not the official flag of the region:
This is a situation that I can personally relate too as it kinda reminds me of the same situation here in Northern Ireland. Here the flag of the old government is used as the NI flag often in sport, but officially it has no legal status and has not since 1973. The Intendant of Antofagasta launched a competition to design a flag for the region. Now I think only people from or living in the region can enter but I designed a couple of proposals anyway.
The above flag is a blue field with a seal consisting of Chilean national coat of arms and a inscription "Intendencia II Región - Antofagasta", that roughly translated as "Administration of Region II - Antofagasta".
Looking into the the region I discovered it was historically constituted the Litoral Department, of Bolivia. (Chile gained sovereignty of the area during the Pacific War of 1879-1883) The flag they used was this:
A little better than the first flag but the coat of arms is way too complicated for a modern flag. The first designs I had are based on this historic flag:
As you can see they are a bit of a combination of the historic flag and the intendant flag. I removed the text about administration of the region and kept it simply 'Antofagasta' although this may also be removed. Now the coat of arms in the seal is that of Chile rather then Antofagasta so I decided that another flag that was more specific to the region was needed:
As you can see still using the colours of the historic flag. I also noticed what I saw was a fortunate coincidence, which is the top two colours of the flag are the same as the colours on the Chile coat of arms. So I took the star from the arms (but simplified) and put it in the canton in the same postion that it looks like on the arms. This could symbolise the region or it's sovereignty to Chile. Still thinking that this flag represents the Chilean identity of the people of the region rather than the Antofagasta identity which is what the purpose of the flag is for I designed my final design:
This flag still has the Blue, Red and Yellow colours of the historic flag, but they also have their own meanings. Blue represents the sea as the capitol is a port. Both the Blue and Red are from the Chile coat of arms. The green represents prosperity, the orange colour represents the mining industry who's largest export is copper. The yellow is from the historic flag but can also represent Atacama Desert which hugely influences the region's climate. There are four stars in a Southern Cross. The top star represents the region or the country. The other three smaller stars represent the regions three provinces Antofagasta, El Loaand and Tocopilla.
All flags except the historic and intendant flag are my design. All comments welcome.
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