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Colombia

Country in South America, bounded north by the Caribbean Sea, west by the Pacific Ocean, northwestern corner by Panama, east and northeast by Venezuela, southeast by Brazil, and southwest by Peru and Ecuador.

Government

Colombia is a presidential democratic republic. The 1991 constitution, with 397 articles, and one of the longest in the world, provides for a president, elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term, and a two-chamber congress, or legislature. The president, who is head of both state and government, appoints a cabinet and presides over it. The president can be re-elected for one consecutive term. The congress comprises a 102-member senate, elected by a nationwide ballot, and a 161-member house of representatives, elected by universal suffrage in multi-member constituencies within the country's 32 departments and one capital district. Both senators and deputies serve four-year terms. Although it does not have a fully federal system, Colombia's departments and national district have considerable autonomy, with governors appointed by the president and locally elected legislatures.

History

Until it was conquered by Spain in the 16th century, the area was inhabited by the Chibcha Indians. From 1538 Colombia formed part of a colony known as New Granada, comprising Colombia, Panama, and most of Venezuela. In 1819 the area included Ecuador and became independent as Gran Colombia, a state set up by Simón Bolívar.

The founding president of Colombia, General Francisco de Paula Santander, imposed strong central control over the disparate regions of the new state. Regional rebellions, such as the revolt of the supremos (1839-42), were put down by later rulers. In 1886, President Rafael Núñez imposed a centralist and authoritarian constitution and the country became known as the Republic of Colombia.

There was a violent civil war 1899-1902, which led to the separation of the Department of Panama as a separate nation. Not until 1930 was there a peaceful change of the party in power, when Enrique Oleya won the presidency. However, there was relative political stability until the 1940s.

‘La Violencia’

In 1948 the Liberal Presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a former mayor of Bogotá, was assassinated, provoking riots in Bogotá which spread. There followed a decade of near civil war, ‘La Violencia’, during which it is thought that around 200,000 people died. Left-wing guerrilla activity continued. In 1957, in an effort to halt the violence, the Partido Conservador Colombiano (PCC; Columbian Conservative Party) and the Partido Liberal Colombiano (PLC; Columbian Liberal Party) formed a National Front, agreeing to govern jointly and alternate the presidency between them.

The National Front administrations introduced social and economic reforms and had some success in reducing the level of violence. However, large inequalities remained and extreme left-wing guerrilla groups continued to operate. In 1964 the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the military wing of the Colombian Community Party, and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, or ELN), a Marxist guerrilla group, were formed.

The National Front was challenged in 1970 by the populist socialist Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO; National People's Alliance), of former military dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, which appealed to the working classes. ANAPO was denied victory in the April 1970 elections and its supporters claimed fraud and some went on to form the April 19th movement (ADM-19) guerrilla movement.

Antidrug campaign

From the late 1970s, violent drug cartels emerged in Colombia, producing cocaine for export. The two main cartels were the Medellin Cartel (controlled by Pablo Escobar) and the Cali cartel. The drug cartels financed illegal armed groups, leading to a worsening in violence.

In 1982, Dr Belisario Betancur of the PCC became president. He sought a truce with the left-wing guerrillas by granting them an amnesty and freeing political prisoners. When the minister of justice, who had been using harsh measures to curb drug dealing, was assassinated 1984, Betancur reacted by strengthening his antidrug campaign.

In the 1986 elections Liberal Virgilio Barco Vargas (1921-97) won the presidency by a record margin. Three months after taking office, he announced the end of the National Front accord, despite a provision in the constitution by which the opposition party could participate in government if it so wished. Vargas declared a new campaign against cocaine traffickers following the assassination in August of Luis Carlos Galan, the leading candidate for the 1990 presidential elections. A bombing campaign was undertaken by the cartels in retaliation for confiscation of property and extradition to the USA of leading cartel members, but the Colombian security forces scored a major victory in December 1989 when drug lord José Rodriguez Gacha was killed in a shoot-out with police.

New constitution of 1991

The Liberal Cesar Gaviria Trujillo won the 1990 presidential elections and his party scored a narrow congressional victory over the April 19th movement (ADM-19), which had demobilized its guerrillas and transformed itself into a political party.

A new constitution, adopted July 1991, prohibited the extradition of Colombians for trial in other countries. As a result, several leading drug traffickers surrendered or were arrested, including Pablo Escobar, but in July 1992 Escobar escaped from prison. Following a wave of violence by drug traffickers, President Gaviria declared a state of emergency. Escobar was shot while trying to evade arrest December 1993.

Ernesto Samper Pizano, a Liberal, narrowly won the 1994 presidential elections. In 1995, following allegations that Samper's presidential campaign had received at least US$6 million in ‘dirty money’ from the Cali drug cartel, there were calls for the president to resign and for an investigation by a congressional committee. Samper responded by declaring a state of emergency.

Rebel violence and peace talks

The June 1998 presidential election was won by Andres Pastrana, nominee of a Conservative alliance fighting the election under the banner ‘Grand Alliance for Change’, who got 50.4% of the vote. Pastrana introduced unpopular austerity measures in an attempt to stabilize the economy and embarked on a new strategy of negotiations with guerrillas between 1998-2002.

The strategy involved the government agreeing controversially to allow FARC and ELN to have ‘safe havens’, in the south and north of the country respectively. In May 1999 President Pastrana began talks with FARC leaders, but there was little progress. In July 1999 Pastrana's popularity plunged, as FARC launched a new offensive and, with the economy worsening, the government had to devalue the peso by 10%.

Fresh government talks were held with FARC in the rebel-held mountain town of Uribe in October 1999. However, in December 1999 FARC guerrillas killed 45 marines at a naval base close to Colombia's border with Panama and attacked three towns in southern Colombia in January 2000. Casualties in the guerrilla war continued to mount, with 35,000 lives, mostly civilian, lost since 1990.

Pastrana suspended talks with FARC in late 2000, after it was blamed for the death of Diego Turbay, the head of the peace commission of Colombia's Congress, and five others. He suspended peace talks with ELN in August 2001, accusing them of being unwilling to compromise. Pastrana's popularity plummeted with every concession to the rebels, who continued to kill and kidnap and also resort to car bombings in the country's cities.

In February 2002, Pastrana ordered the army to retake the FARC-controlled ‘demilitarized zone’ in the south of the country, and around 13,000 ground troops assisted by ten US-supplied Black Hawk helicopters were deployed. FARC responded by kidnapping and killing the PLC senator, Martha Catalina Daniels, and in March 2002, Isaias Duarte Cancino, the archbishop of Cali, who had criticized the rebel guerrillas for their attacks and kidnappings, was shot dead by armed assailants.

Pastrana's campaign to eradicate coca

President Pastrana implemented an initiative to stamp out coca growing, which provided the supply for the illegal cocaine trade. This ‘Plan Colombia’ was backed by the USA, which sought to curb imports of cocaine. In 2000, US President Bill Clinton announced US$1.3 billion in aid, mainly to the Colombian army and police, to help it fight drugs trafficking.

An element of the Plan was aerial fumigation to destroy coca crops. This was controversial because it also damaged legal crops and hit at the livelihood of poor farmers. The Plan had some success in reducing coca production and continued under Pastrana's successor as president.

Uribe's crackdown against the FARC

The May 2002 presidential elections were won by Alvaro Uribe a right-of-centre dissident member of the PLC, who won 53% of the vote. He campaigned as an independent candidate, promising law and order and, through military pressure, to suppress the FARC and ELN, and other criminal groups. The official PLC candidate, Horacio Serpa, won only 32% of the vote.

Uribe had some success in improving order, with reported kidnappings declining from 3,700 in 2000 to 800 in 2005 and the murder rate halving. This helped improve the economy, with tourism increasing. In 2005, the constitution was amended to allow Uribe to stand for a second term as president and he was successful, winning the May 2006 election, 62% of the vote.

Natural disasters

A powerful earthquake, registering 5.8 on the Richter scale, struck western Colombia on 25 January 1999, killing over 900 people, injuring over 4,100, and totally or partially damaging 35,000 homes. The area affected was in the coffee-growing region of the Andean mountains, about 160 km/100 mi west of the capital, Bogotá, and had a total population of three million people. Armenia, the capital of Quindio province, was the worst hit, but the disaster area extended across five provinces, and included 20 towns.

Association of Caribbean States Bolívar, Simón

Latin American Integration Association Magdalena (river)

Popayán Putumayo (river)

Risaralda Santa Marta

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Valle del Cauca