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Colombia was one of the three
countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran
Colombia in 1830 (the others being Ecuador and Venezuela). A
40-year insurgent campaign to overthrow the Colombian Government escalated
during the 1990s, undergirded in part by funds from the drug trade.
Although the violence is deadly and large swaths of the countryside are
under guerrilla influence, the movement lacks the military strength or
popular support necessary to overthrow the government. While
Bogota continues to try to negotiate a
settlement, neighboring countries worry about the violence spilling over
their borders. Colombia is located in Northern South America, bordering
the Caribbean Sea, between Panama and Venezuela, and bordering the North
Pacific Ocean, between Ecuador and Panama
Colombia lies at the
gateway to South America and must have
been a transit point for the first inhabitants who migrated from North and
Central America. The pre-columbian cultures of Colombia have been little
investigated as almost none of them left behind spectacular monuments.
However, their art reveals a high degree of craftsmanship and their
goldwork is the best in the whole continent, both for the techniques used
and for the artistic design. Among, the most outstanding cultures were the
Tayrona, Sinú, Muisca, Quimbaya, Tolima, Calima,Tierradentro, San Agustín,
Nariño, and Tumaco. Three important archeological sites were built by some
of these cultures: San Agustín, Tierradentro and Ciudad Perdida.
Spaniards founded Santa Maria
la Antigua del Darien in 1510, the first permanent European settlement on
the American mainland. In 1538 the Spaniards established the colony of New
Granada, the area's name until 1861. After a 14-year struggle, in which
Simón Bolívar's troops won the battle of Boyacá in Colombia on Aug. 7,
1819, independence was attained in 1824. Bolívar united Colombia,
Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador in the Republic of Greater Colombia
(1810-1830), but lost Venezuela and Ecuador to separatists.
Bolívar's Vice President,
Francisco de Paula Santander, founded the Liberal Party as the Federalists
while Bolívar established the Conservatives as the Centralists.
Santander's presidency (1832-1936) re-established order, but later periods
of Liberal dominance (1849-1857 and 1861-1880), when the Liberals sought
to disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, were marked by insurrection and
even civil war. Rafael Nuñez, in a 15-year-presidency, restored the power
of the central government and the church, which led in 1899 to a bloody
civil war and the loss in 1903 of Panama over ratification of a lease to
the U.S of the canal zone.
Colombia stretches over
approximately 1,140,000 sq. km, roughly equal to the area of Portugal,
Spain, and France put together. Colombia occupies the northwestern end of
South America, and is the only country there with coasts on both the
Pacific (1350 km long), and the Atlantic (over 1600 km.) Three Andean
ranges run north and south through the western half of the country (about
45% of the total territory.) The eastern part is a vast lowland which can
be generally divided into two regions: a huge open savannah on the north,
and the amazon in the south (400,000 sq. km aprox.)
Colombia is a country of
geographical contrasts and extremes. As
well as the features mentioned, it has such curiosities as the desert of
La Guajira, the peninsula in the most norh-eastern tip of the country; the
jungle of the pacific coast which holds one of the world's rainfall
records; and finally the Serranía de la Macarena, an isolated mountain
formation about 120 km. long, rising abruptly from the eastern plains to
some 2500 meters. Colombia also has several small islands. The major ones
are the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia in the Caribbean Sea,
the Islas del Rosario and San Bernardo along the Caribeean coast, and
Gorgona and Malpelo in the Pacific Ocean.
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