Why did Texas steal Chile's flag and motto? (Houston, Dallas: college, centers)

[doctorjef]

The motto of Chile is "Friendship"? Not in English, I'm sure.

[doctorjef]

According to my research, the motto of Chile is "Por la razon o la fuerza" -- "By reason or [by] force". The implications would seem rather the opposite of the Texas motto.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Heh, why do so many contries flags look similar...bars, stripes, stars....they all look about the same for many countries...I am guessing most of those people coming up with the Texas flag had no idea what the Chilean flag looked like (if they could find Chile on a map ).

Ecuador and Colombia copied from Venezuela
Venezuela copied from Russia

Russia


Venezuela


Colombia


Ecuador

[doctorjef]

There's no point in asserting some deliberate falsehood that naive persons might believe, i.e. Venezuela copying its banner from Russia. Grow up.

[blueskies49]

much ado about nothing

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

i.e. Venezuela copying its banner from Russia. Grow up.

I knew that some ignorant person was gonna make a comment like that.

Russkiy Mir Foundation :: Diaspora Communities :: Russia and Russians in Serbian History, Part 3 (http://russkiymir.org/en/diaspora/ - broken link)

Very few people know that Venezuela’s national hero, Francisco de Miranda, was the first Latin American to initiate contact with Russia. He spent a year living in Russia and received the rank of colonel from Catherine the Great.
A rumor exists which holds that de Miranda took the Russian flag as the basis for his revolutionary flag, substituting the white stripe, which he associated with Russia’s snow, with a yellow stripe to symbolize the wealth of the American continent.

[doctorjef]

Even if some Russians endorse that mythology, that would be an example of Great Russian Chauvinism, a particularly absurd example of which is that the original religion of Lithuania (a country in which I've lived) is Russian Orthodoxy, when in fact Lithuania was the last European country to be pressured into converting from its native pagan religion to Christianity by the Teutonic Knights who repeatedly harried and invaded the country. This conversion was to Roman Catholic Christianity and never to Orthodoxy. The relatively small number of Orthodox congregations in Lithuania have been established to serve Russian immigrants and have never been churches for ethnic Lithuanians. This is just one of many examples of Russian nationalists trying to claim Russian origins for all sorts of things.

[faabala]

Ecuador, Colombia,and Venezuela took thier flag from Bolivar's state of Gran Columbia.


Gran Colombia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[doctorjef]

Originally Posted by faabala

Ecuador, Colombia,and Venezuela took thier flag from Bolivar's state of Gran Columbia.


Gran Colombia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unquestionably that is the direct origin of the extremely similar flags of these three countries that were briefly parts of a single nation. I suppose one might ask about the inspiration of the original design of the flag of Gran Colombia, but I don't buy the idea of a Russian flag inspiration. The leading republican inspirations at the time of South American liberation were France (which had fallen back into monarchy) and the USA. The Russian tricolour of the day typically had a double-headed eagle device superimposed on it, being an emblem of the tsar. Miranda, BTW, was the "forerunner" of Venezuelan independence and was incarcerated by the Spanish. He did, I believe, play a small role in the American Revolution and was influenced by both the French and American revolutions. He did not live to play a direct role in the final liberation of the northern portion of S. America that was spearheaded by Simon Bolivar.

[catman]

There are only so many distinctively different colors which can be used on flags, so with as many countries as there are, some similarities are unavoidable.