This being my twenty-first day in Colombia I thought it proper to write about this wonderful country.
The Republic of Colombia is located in the northwest of the continent of South America. It has borders with Panama on the northwest, Venezuela on the east, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil on the South. The national language of Colombia is Spanis, although in the islands of San Andres, Catalina, and Providencia English, Spanish, and Creole is spoken.
Colombia was colonized by the Spanish in 1499, before then Colombia was an area inhabited by indigenous tribes known as the Kogi, the Tairona, and Muisca. Colombia won its independence from Spain in 1819, but it’s new government was not very effective and it lost two important territories, what is presently known as Venezuela and Ecuador. In 1903 it lost what is present day Panama. The Republic of Colombia has a president that is elected by the people, the current president is Juan Manuel Santos. The presidential palace is located in the capital of Colombia, known as Bogota. Colombia has 32 departments (or what we would call states) and each department has a governor and an assembly.
Present day Colombia has a population of approximately 48,000,000 people. The population is very diverse 86% consider themselves Mestizos (a mix of Europen and Indian) 10.6% black, and 3.4% Amerindian. When the Spaniards colonized Colombia, the indigenous people suffered and many died. Those that survived are the Tairona, the Kogi, the Wayuu, and the Muisca.
The geography of Colombia is as diverse as its people. Colombia has six natural regions: the Amazon rainforest, the Pacific and Coastal mountain ranges, the desert area of La Guajira, and insular areas consisting of islands in the Pacific and Caribbean. Moreover, Colombia has areas that are considered that are considered so geographically diverse that UNESCO has declared them World Heritage sites. One of these is the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia is one of the most symbolic landscapes of all Colombia The Coffee Cultural Landscape includes parts of the departments of Quindío, Risaralda, Caldas and Valle del Cauca. The islands of Providence, San Andres and Santa Catalina are a protected marine biosphere due to the variety of marine life found nowhere else on earth.
Colombia has a high biodiversity, with the highest rate of species by area unit worldwide and it has the largest number of endemisms (species that are not found naturally anywhere else) of any country. About 10% of the species of the Earth live in Colombia, including over 1,900 species of bird, more than in Europe and North America combined, Colombia has 10% of the world’s mammals species, 14% of the amphibian species and 18% of the bird species of the world.
While all of these are very positive facts about Colombia, it continues to have a bad image around the world. Unfortunately, due to the high demand for cocaine by countries such as the United States and the European countries, Colombia was once the largest cocaine producing country in the world. This lead to severe violence and an estimated 6,000,000 people displaced or lost their homes. Colombia has come a very long way from its dark past, it still has problems with some factions of the paramilitaries, however, the government and the paramilitaries are engaged in peace talks with a hopeful resolution of peace once and for all.
The Shining Stars of Classroom 15 