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The Republic of Colombia is a country in
northwestern South America. It is bordered to
the north and north-west by the Caribbean Sea,
to the east by Venezuela and Brazil, to the
south by Ecuador and Peru, and to the west by
Panama and the Pacific Ocean.
History
Main article: History of Colombia
Around 1450 BC there was cultural activity near
Bogotá, in "El Abra". In 1000 BC, groups of
Amerindians developed the political system of "cacicazgos"
(answering to a figure known as the Cacique)
with a pyramidal structure of power, especially
in the cases of the Muisca or Chibcha people.
They have been considered to have one of the
most developed political systems in South
America, after the Incas. Spanish explorers made
the first exploration of the Caribbean littoral
in 1500 led by Rodrigo de Bastidas. Christopher
Columbus navigated near the coasts of Choco in
1502. In 1508 Vasco Nuñez de Balboa started the
conquest of the territory through the region of
Urabá. In 1513, he also discovered the Pacific
Ocean which he called "The Sea of the South" and
which in fact would bring the Spaniards to Peru
and Chile. In 1525, the first European city in
the American Continent was founded, Santa María
la Antigua del Darién in what is today the Chocó
Department. The territory's main population was
made up of hundreds of tribes of the Chibchan
and "Karib", currently known as the Caribbean
people, whom the Spaniards conquered through
warfare, while resulting disease, exploitation,
and the conquest itself caused a tremendous
demographic reduction among the indigenous. In
the 16th century, Europeans began to bring
slaves from Africa.
Since the beginning of the periods of Conquest
and Colonization, there were several rebel
movements under Spanish rule, most of them
either being crushed or remaining too weak to
change the overall situation. The last one,
which sought outright independence from Spain,
sprang up around 1810. Eventually being led by
Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander,
the rebellion finally succeeded in 1819, when
the territory of the Viceroyalty of New Granada
became the Republic of Gran Colombia, as a
Confederation with Ecuador and Venezuela. Modern
day Panama, which subsequently remained a
Colombian department until 1903, was also
included in this union.
Internal political and territorial divisions led
to the secession of Venezuela and Quito (today's
Ecuador) in 1830. At this time, the so-called
"Department of Cundinamarca" adopted then the
name "Nueva Granada", which it kept until 1856
when it became the "Confederación Granadina"
(Grenadine Confederation). In 1863 the "United
States of Colombia" was created, lasting until
1886, when the country finally became known as
the Republic of Colombia. Internal divisions
remained, occasionally igniting very bloody
civil wars and, eventually, contributing to
setting the stage for the U.S.-sponsored
secession of Panama in 1903. Afterwards, the
country achieved a relative degree of political
stability, which was interrupted by a bloody
conflict which took place between the late 1940s
and the early 1950s, known as La Violencia ("The
Violence"). Its cause was mainly due to mounting
tensions between partisan groups, reignited by
the murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, and it
claimed the lives of at least 180,000 to more
than 200,000 Colombians.
To replace the previous 1886 document, a new
constitution was made in 1991, after being
drafted by the Constituent Assembly of Colombia.
The constitution included key provisions on
political, ethnic, human and gender rights,
which have been gradually put in practice,
though uneven developments, surrounding
controversies, and setbacks have persisted.
In recent decades the country has been plagued
by the effects of the influential drug trade and
by guerrilla insurgents such as FARC and illegal
counter-insurgency paramilitary groups such as
AUC, which along with other minor factions have
been engaged in a bloody internal armed
conflict. The different irregular groups often
resort to kidnapping and drug smuggling to fund
their causes, tend to operate in large areas of
the remote rural countryside and can sometimes
disrupt communications and travel between
different regions. Since the early 1980s,
attempts at reaching a negotiated settlement
between the government and the different rebel
groups have been made, either failing or only
achieving the partial demobilization of some of
the parties involved. One of the last such
attempts was made during the administration of
President Andrés Pastrana Arango, which
negotiated with the FARC between 1998 and 2002.
In the late 1990s, President Andrés Pastrana
implemented an initiative named Plan Colombia,
with the dual goal of ending the armed conflict
and promoting a strong anti-narcotic strategy.
The most controversial element of the Plan,
which also included a smaller number of funds
for institutional and alternative development,
was considered to be its anti-narcotic strategy,
consisting on an increase in aerial fumigations
to eradicate coca. This activity came under fire
from several sectors, which claimed that
fumigation also damages legal crops and has
adverse health effects upon population exposed
to the herbicides. Critics of the initiative
also claim that the plan represents a military
approach to problems that have additional roots
in the social inequalities of the country.
During the presidency of Alvaro Uribe, who was
elected on the promise to apply military
pressure on the FARC and other criminal groups,
some security indicators have improved, showing
a decrease in reported kidnappings (from 3700 in
the year 2000 to 1441 in 2004) and of more than
48% in homicides between July 2002 and May 2005.
It is argued that these improvements have
favored economic growth.
Analysts and critics inside Colombia agree that
there has been a degree of pratical improvement
in several of the mentioned fields, but the
exact reasons for the figures themselves have
sometimes been disputed, as well as their
specific accuracy. Some opposition sectors have
criticized the government's security strategy,
claiming that it is not enough to solve
Colombia's complex problems and that it has
contributed to creating a favorable environment
for the continuation of some human rights
abuses. Also, it is the home of Jorge Eduardo
Ardila, Carlos Castaño Gil, Oswaldo Fierro,
Farouk Yanine Diaz as well as Gabriel Garcia
Marquez.
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