Colombia
| Republic of Colombia | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||||
| Motto: "Libertad y Orden"() "Liberty and Order" |
||||||
| Anthem: ¡Oh, Gloria Inmarcesible!() O unfading glory! |
||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
Bogotá 4°39′N 74°3′W / 4.65°N °W |
|||||
| Official language(s) | Spanish1 | |||||
| Recognised regional languages | The languages and dialects of ethnic groups are also official in their territories.[1] | |||||
| Ethnic groups | 58% Mestizo 26% White 15% Afro Colombian 1% Amerindian[2] |
|||||
| Demonym | Colombian | |||||
| Government | Unitary presidential republic | |||||
| - | President | Juan Manuel Santos | ||||
| - | Vice President | Angelino Garzón | ||||
| Independence | From Spain | |||||
| - | Declared | July 20, 1810 | ||||
| - | Recognized | August 7, 1819 | ||||
| - | Current constitution | 1991 | ||||
| Area | ||||||
| - | Total | 1,141,748 km2 (26th) 440,831 sq mi |
||||
| - | Water (%) | 8.8 | ||||
| Population | ||||||
| - | August 2010 estimate | 45,586,233[3] (29th) | ||||
| - | 2005 census | 42,888,592[3] | ||||
| - | Density | 40/km2 (168th) 104/sq mi |
||||
| GDP (PPP) | 2009 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $401.966 billion[4] | ||||
| - | Per capita | $8,936[4] | ||||
| GDP (nominal) | 2009 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $228.836 billion[4] | ||||
| - | Per capita | $5,087[4] | ||||
| Gini (2006) | 52 (high) | |||||
| HDI (2010) | 0.689 [5] (high) (79th) | |||||
| Currency | Peso (COP) |
|||||
| Time zone | (UTC-52) | |||||
| Date formats | dd-mm-yyyy (CE) | |||||
| Drives on the | Right | |||||
| Internet TLD | .co | |||||
| Calling code | +57 | |||||
| 1 | Although the Colombian Constitution does not specify the Spanish as official language in all its territory, the native languages (approximately 75 dialects) are also official in their own territories. | |||||
| 2 | The official Colombian time, (horalegal.sic.gov.co) is controlled and coordinated by the state agency Superintendency of Industry and Commerce.[6] | |||||
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[7] and Brazil;[8] to the south by Ecuador and Peru;[9] 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.[10][11] With a population of over 45 million people, Colombia has the 29th largest population in the world and the second largest in South America, after Brazil. Colombia has the fourth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world after Mexico, the United States, and Spain.[12]
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 New Granada (comprising modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, the northwest region of Brazil and Panama) with its capital in Bogotá.[13] Independence from Spain was won in 1819, 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 has a long tradition of constitutional government. 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.[14] 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.[15][16][17] According to the Maplecroft research institute, in 2010 Colombia had the world's sixth highest risk of terrorism.[18][19]
Colombia is a standing middle power[20] with the fourth largest economy in Latin America. However, inequality and unequal distribution of wealth are still widespread.[21] 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.[22] By 2009, Colombia had reached a Gini coefficient of 0.587, which was the highest in Latin America.[23] 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.[24] Official figures for 2009 indicate that about 46% of Colombians lived below the poverty line and some 17% in "extreme poverty".[25][26]
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. 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 (the most biodiverse per unit area).[27]
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).[28]
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 Grenadine Confederation, then in 1863 the United States of Colombia, before finally adopting its present name — the Republic of Colombia — in 1886.[28]
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.
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 , and in the Cordillera Central and Cordillera Oriental they reach .[29] At , 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 covered in dense vegetation and sparsely populated. 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 hazards. Many natural hazards result from Colombia's position along the Pacific Ring of Fire and the consequent geological instability. Colombia has 15 major volcanoes, the eruptions of which have on occasion resulted in substantial loss of life, such as at Armero in 1985, and 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 substantially changed the Andean landscape and has started to creep into the rainforests of Amazonia and the Pacific coast. 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.[30] In urban areas, the use of fossil fuels, and other human produced waste have contaminated the local environment. Demand from rapidly expanding cities has placed increasing stress on the water supply as watersheds are affected and ground water tables fall. Nonetheless, Colombia has large reserves of freshwater and is the fourth country in the world by magnitude of total freshwater supply.[31]
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,[32] while in response the government has fumigated these crops using hazardous chemicals. Insurgents have also destroyed oil pipelines creating major ecological disasters.