Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia),
is a constitutional republic in northwestern South America. Colombia is
bordered to the east by Venezuela[9] and Brazil;[10] to the south by Ecuador
and Peru;[11] to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama;
and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia also shares maritime borders
with Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and
Costa Rica.[12] [13] With a population of over 46 million people, Colombia has
the 29th largest population in the world and the second largest in South
America, after Brazil. Colombia has the third largest population of any
Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico and Spain.

The territory of what is now "Colombia" was originally inhabited by indigenous
people including the Muisca, Quimbaya, and Tairona. The Spanish arrived in 1499
and initiated a period of conquest and colonization creating the Viceroyalty of
Peru, and to create a better management of tax in 1717 was created the
Viceroyalty of New Granada (comprising modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador,
the northwest region of Brazil and Panama) with its capital in Bogotá.[14]
Independence from Spain was won in 1819 by Simón Bolívar, but by 1830 "Gran
Colombia" had collapsed with the secession of Venezuela and Ecuador. What is
now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada. The new nation
experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858), and then
the United States of Colombia (1863), before the Republic of Colombia was
finally declared in 1886.[2] Panama seceded in 1903 under pressure to fulfill
financial responsibilities towards the United States government to build the
Panama Canal.

Colombia was the first constitutional government of South America, which was
declared in 1811 and is the only South American country that has never had a
coup. The Liberal and Conservative parties, founded in 1848 and 1849
respectively, are two of the oldest surviving political parties in the
Americas. However, tensions between the two have frequently erupted into
violence, most notably in the Thousand Days War (1899–1902) and La Violencia,
beginning in 1948. Since the 1960s, government forces, left-wing insurgents and
right-wing paramilitaries have been engaged in the continent's longest-running
armed conflict. Fuelled by the cocaine trade, this escalated dramatically in
the 1980s. Nevertheless, in the recent decade (2000s) the violence has
decreased significantly. Many paramilitary groups have demobilized as part of a
controversial peace process with the government, and the guerrillas have lost
control in many areas where they once dominated.[2] Meanwhile Colombia's
homicide rate, for many years one of the highest in the world, almost halved
between 2002 and 2006.[15] 2009 and 2010 saw an increase in the urban homicide
rate, particularly in the city of Medellín, attributed to gang warfare and
paramilitary successor groups.[16] [17] [18] According to the Maplecroft
research institute, in 2010 Colombia had the world's sixth highest risk of
terrorism.[19] [20]

Colombia is a standing middle power[21] with the fourth largest economy in
Latin America. Inequality and unequal distribution of wealth are
widespread.[22] In 1990, the ratio of income between the poorest and richest 10
per cent was 40-to-one. Following a decade of economic restructuring and a
recession, this ratio had climbed to 80-to-one in the year 2000.[23] By 2009,
Colombia had reached a Gini coefficient of 0.587, which was the highest in
Latin America.[24] According to the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, "there has been a decrease in the poverty rate
in recent years, but around half of the population continues to live under the
poverty line" as of 2008–2009.[25] Official figures for 2009 indicate that
about 46% of Colombians lived below the poverty line and some 17% in "extreme
poverty".[26] [27]

Colombia is very ethnically diverse, and the interaction between descendants of
the original native inhabitants, Spanish colonists, Africans brought as slaves
and twentieth-century immigrants from Europe and the Middle East has produced a
rich cultural heritage. Heritage which has contributed to making this country
the richest in folk rhythms (with 165 reported) and various cultural
events.[28] This has also been influenced by Colombia's varied geography. The
majority of the urban centres are located in the highlands of the Andes
mountains, but Colombian territory also encompasses Amazon rainforest, tropical
grassland and both Caribbean and Pacific coastlines.  Ecologically, Colombia is
one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries and is considered the most
megadiverse per square kilometer.[29]


Etymology

The word "Colombia" comes from Christopher Columbus (Spanish: Cristóbal
Colón). It was conceived by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda
as a reference to all the New World, but especially to those territories and
colonies under Spanish and Portuguese rule. The name was later adopted by the
Republic of Colombia of 1819, formed out of the territories of the old
Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern-day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and
Ecuador).[30]

In 1835, when Venezuela and Ecuador broke away, the Cundinamarca region that
remained became a new country – the Republic of New Granada. In 1858 New
Granada officially changed its name to the Granadine Confederation, then in
1863 the United States of Colombia, before finally adopting its present name –
the Republic of Colombia – in 1886.[30]


Geography

Colombia is bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by
Ecuador and Peru; to the north by Panama and the Caribbean Sea; and to the west
by Ecuador and the Pacific Ocean. Including its Caribbean islands, it lies
between latitudes 14°N and 5°S, and longitudes 66° and 82°W

Part of the Ring of Fire, a region of the world subject to earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions, Colombia is dominated by the Andes mountains. Beyond the
Colombian Massif (in the south-western departments of Cauca and Nariño) these
are divided into three branches known as cordilleras (mountain ranges): the
Cordillera Occidental, running adjacent to the Pacific coast and including the
city of Cali; the Cordillera Central, running between the Cauca and Magdalena
river valleys (to the west and east respectively) and including the cities of
Medellín, Manizales, Pereira and Armenia; and the Cordillera Oriental,
extending north east to the Guajira Peninsula and including Bogotá, Bucaramanga
and Cúcuta. Peaks in the Cordillera Occidental exceed 13000 ft (3962 m), and in
the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental they reach 18000 ft (5486
m).[31] At 8500 ft (2591 m), Bogotá is the highest city of its size in the
world.

East of the Andes lies the savanna of the Llanos, part of the Orinoco River
basin, and, in the far south east, the jungle of the Amazon
rainforest. Together these lowlands comprise over half Colombia's territory,
but they contain less than 3% of the population.  To the north the Caribbean
coast, home to 20% of the population and the location of the major port cities
of Barranquilla and Cartagena, generally consists of low-lying plains, but it
also contains the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range, which includes
the country's tallest peaks (Pico Cristóbal Colón and Pico Simón Bolívar), and
the Guajira Desert. By contrast the narrow and discontinuous Pacific coastal
lowlands, backed by the Serranía de Baudó mountains, are sparsely populated and
covered in dense vegetation. The principal Pacific port is Buenaventura.

Colombian territory also includes a number of Caribbean and Pacific islands.


Environmental issues

The environmental challenges faced by Colombia are caused by both natural and
human factors. Many natural hazards result from the geological instability
related to Colombia's position along the Pacific Ring of Fire. Colombia has 15
major volcanoes, the eruptions of which have on occasion resulted in
substantial loss of life, such as at Armero in 1985. Geological faults that
have caused numerous devastating earthquakes, such as the 1999 Armenia
earthquake. Heavy floods both in mountainous areas and in low-lying watersheds
and coastal regions regularly cause deaths and considerable damage to property
during the rainy seasons. Rainfall intensities vary with the El Niño-Southern
Oscillation which occurs in unpredictable cycles, at times causing especially
severe flooding.

Human induced deforestation has started to creep into the rainforests of
Amazonia and the Pacific coast and has substantially changed the Andean
landscape. Deforestation is also linked to the conversion of lowland tropical
forests to oil palm plantations. However, compared to neighbouring countries
rates of deforestation in Colombia are still relatively low.[32] In urban
areas, contamination of the local environment has been caused by human produced
waste, and the use of fossil fuels. Participants in the country's armed
conflict have also contributed to the pollution of the environment. Illegal
armed groups have deforested large areas of land to plant illegal crops, with
an estimated 99,000 hectares used for the cultivation of coca in 2007,[33]
while in response the government has fumigated these crops using hazardous
chemicals. Insurgents have also destroyed oil pipelines creating major
ecological disasters.  Demand from rapidly expanding cities has placed
increasing stress on the water supply as watersheds are affected and ground
water tables fall. Nonetheless, Colombia is the fourth country in the world by
magnitude of total freshwater supply, and still has large reserves of
freshwater.[34]


History

Pre-Colombian era

Approximately 10,000 BC, hunter-gatherer societies existed near present-day
Bogotá (at "El Abra" and "Tequendama") which traded with one another and with
cultures living in the Magdalena River Valley.[35] Beginning in the first
millennium BC, groups of Amerindians developed the political system of
"cacicazgos" with a pyramidal structure of power headed by caciques. Within
Colombia, the two cultures with the most complex cacicazgo systems were the
Tayronas in the Caribbean Region, and the Muiscas in the highlands around
Bogotá, both of which were of the Chibcha language family. The Muisca people
are considered to have had one of the most developed political systems in South
America, after the Incas.[36]

Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization

Spanish explorers made the first exploration of the Caribbean littoral in 1499
led by Rodrigo de Bastidas. Christopher Columbus navigated near the Caribbean
in 1502. In 1508, Vasco Núñez de Balboa started the conquest of the territory
through the region of Urabá. In 1513, he was the first European to discover the
Pacific Ocean, which he called Mar del Sur (or "Sea of the South") and which in
fact would bring the Spaniards to Peru and Chile.

Alonso de Lugo (who had sailed with Columbus) reached the Guajira Peninsula in
1500. Santa Marta was founded in 1525, and Cartagena in Peninsula in
1500. Santa Marta was founded in 1525, and Cartagena in 1533. Gonzalo Jiminez
de Quesada led an expedition to the interior in 1535, and founded the "New City
of Granada", the name soon changed to "Santa Fé de Bogotá." Two other notable
journeys by Spaniards to the interior took place in the same period. Sebastian
de Belalcazar, conqueror of Quito, traveled north and founded Cali in 1536 and
Popayán in 1537; Nicolas Federman crossed Llanos Orientales and went over the
Eastern Cordillera.[37]

The territory's main population was made up of hundreds of tribes of the
Chibchan and Carib, currently known as the Caribbean people, whom the Spaniards
conquered through warfare and alliances, while resulting disease such as
smallpox, and the conquest and ethnic cleansing itself caused a demographic
reduction among the indigenous people.[38] In the 16th century, Europeans began
to bring slaves from Africa.

Independence from Spain

Since the beginning of the periods of conquest and colonization, there were
several rebel movements under Spanish rule, most of them were either crushed or
remained too weak to change the overall situation. The last one which sought
outright independence from Spain sprang up around 1810, following the
independence of St. Domingue (present-day Haiti) in 1804, which provided a
non-negligible degree of support to the eventual leaders of this rebellion:
Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander.

A movement initiated by Antonio Nariño, who opposed Spanish centralism and led
the opposition against the viceroyalty, led to the independence of Cartagena in
November 1811, and the formation of two independent governments which fought a
civil war – a period known as La Patria Boba. The following year Nariño
proclaimed the United Provinces of New Granada, headed by Camilo Torres
Tenorio. Despite the successes of the rebellion, the emergence of two distinct
ideological currents among the liberators (federalism and centralism) gave rise
to an internal clash which contributed to the reconquest of territory by the
Spanish. The viceroyalty was restored under the command of Juan de Samano,
whose regime punished those who participated in the uprisings. The retribution
stoked renewed rebellion, which, combined with a weakened Spain, made possible
a successful rebellion led by the Venezuelan-born Simón Bolívar, who finally
proclaimed independence in 1819. The pro-Spanish resistance was finally
defeated in 1822 in the present territory of Colombia and in 1823 in Venezuela.

The territory of the Viceroyalty of New Granada became the Republic of Colombia
organized as a union of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela (Panama was then an
integral part of Colombia). The Congress of Cucuta in 1821 adopted a
constitution for the new Republic. Simón Bolívar became the first President of
Colombia, and Francisco de Paula Santander was made Vice President. However,
the new republic was very unstable and ended with the rupture of Venezuela in
1829, followed by Ecuador in 1830.