Colombia History

Colombia had already been settled by indigenous tribes including the Muisca and Tairona Indians.  The Spaniards arrived in the region in 1499, established a colony, embarked on a campaign to subdue the native population and eventually established the Viceroyalty of New Granada to rule the area covered by present-day Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, with the capital in Bogota.  In 1808, the Spain was overrun by the Napoleon army.  This event, together with social discontent in Colombia and other Spanish South American colonies led to a drive for independence under the leadership of Simon Bolivar.  When the Spanish king tried to reimpose Spanish rule over the colonies after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, war broke out between the royalists and the nationalists in the colonies.  In 1819, the royalists were defeated and the former New Granda became Gran Colombia under nationalist rule, with the four future independent countries of Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela being the constituent provinces.  Gran Colmbia did not last too long as the provinces either declared independence or forme different groupings.  Colombia left Gran Colombia in 1830 and finally in 1886 declared itself Republic of Colombia.

From the start, independent Colombia already had deep-seated internal differences between the Conservative and the Liberal parties.  The two camps differed in their view of extent of centralization versus decentralization of the central government, the role of the Roman Catholic Church, and the role of government in society and economy.  The entrenched views led to periodic armed conflicts, dictatorships, assassinations and coups.  There were also two civil wars, the first was from 1899 to 1903 and the second was from 1946 to 1957 resulting in more than 400,000 deaths in total.   

To add to the turmoil, the 1970s saw the emergence of guerilla movements both left-wing and right-wing against the government, as well as armed drug cartels and various paramilitary groups who were either aligned to the drug traffickers or to the military.  The consequence was kidnappings, more deaths, loss of government authority over one-third of the country’s territory and total chaos.  Since 2002, the situation has improved somewhat with the election of a more hard-line government which was prepared to implement stricter security measures.  However, more work still needs to be done so that the country will be at peace with itself.