Colombia packs the densest biodiversity per square mile
Colombia straddles South America with Caribbean and Pacific coasts, Amazon forest, Andes highlands, grasslands, and deserts—one of seventeen megadiverse nations and first worldwide for biodiversity per square mile. Spanish colonization from 1499 built New Granada; independence movements later coined a Columbus-derived name for the republic.
The mainland touches the Caribbean to the north and the Pacific to the west, with Panama to the north-west, Venezuela to the east, Brazil to the south-east and Ecuador and Peru to the south. Some island territory actually lies in North America. Roughly 52 million people live across 1,141,748 square kilometres, split into 32 departments. Bogotá, a separate capital district, is the biggest city and the financial and cultural centre, while Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla and Cartagena lead a long list of other cities.
People have lived here since at least 12,000 BCE. Spanish ships reached La Guajira in 1499, and within about fifty years most of the territory belonged to the New Kingdom of Granada. Independence was proclaimed in 1810 as the United Provinces of New Granada, lost to a Spanish reconquest, and won for good in 1819, launching Gran Colombia, which included today's Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador and part of north-western Brazil.
After Venezuela and Ecuador broke away, the remaining core called itself the Republic of New Granada. It became the Granadine Confederation in 1858, the United States of Colombia in 1863 and a centralised Republic of Colombia in 1886. Panama split off in 1903 with American and French support, fixing the modern borders. Since the 1960s the country has endured a low-intensity armed conflict and political violence.
Today the economy is South America's third-largest. The World Health Organization has ranked Colombian healthcare best in the Americas and 22nd worldwide. Same-sex marriage and adoption, abortion and euthanasia are legal. Colombia belongs to the UN, WTO, OECD, OAS, Pacific Alliance and Andean Community, and Washington counts it as a major ally outside NATO, which in turn lists it as a global partner.
Source: Colombia
