An interesting article that explains the history behind these frigging bi-annual clock changes.
Chile’s unusual custom of changing the local time twice a year by presidential decree is a political response to historic energy shortages. Rather than fixing the problem, laws were devised to circumvent it, the long-term effects of which continue to cause confusion to this day.
The summer and winter transitions are bad enough, but they could be accounted for if the changes occurred on fixed calendar days. However, the government has periodically tinkered with these to accommodate particular short-term goals, causing serious disruptions in the past.
Another peculiarity is the time zones used. Mainland Chile uses UTC-3 in summer and UTC-4 in winter. UTC-3 is also used by locations such as Fortaleza in Brazil, which is much further east than Santiago, Chile. This means that summertime solar noon occurs much later than normal here. I believe that this discrepancy between ‘body time’ and ‘official time’ affects our circadian rhythms, producing a mild but persistent form of jet lag, which may at least partially explain some local behavioural idiosyncrasies - that’s in addition to the immediate temporal dislocation caused by the cambio de horario.
La Serena, 1st April 26, Solar max at 15:00 CLST
From that BioBio article:
…astrophotographer Arturo Gómez told BioBioChile that “we are currently using the wrong time zone, where the sun, at midday, is located in the sky over the eastern regions of Brazil and Argentina. Strictly speaking, our country should geographically be in time zone -5; but it was left at -4 to accommodate the daily routines of our people.”
“We know that we cannot use daylight saving time year-round. We already experienced this with the incredible mistake of former Minister Máximo Pacheco, who decreed daylight saving time for the entire year. Schoolchildren and people in general would leave their homes at night, under starry skies, and by mid-morning, children would be asleep at their desks. This ‘experiment’ proves, for those who love daylight saving time, that it DOESN’T work,” he added.
He further explained that the Earth is slowly giving us darker days as winter approaches, and that all species are naturally adapting to this change. Along these lines, he insisted that “Chile should remain on winter time year-round, that is, time zone -4,” adding that “neurologists and the scientific community agree. Politicians, proud of their opinions and laws, are quite mistaken on this occasion.”