Invest in Colombia

Geography

In the northwest of South America, bordered by Venezuela and Brazil to the east, and by Ecuador and Peru to the south, Colombia is the only country in South America to border both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Colombia's territorial diversity has been its blessing and curse. It boasts a vast tropical plain in the north, the snowcapped Andes mountains and the humid Amazon River basin. Colombia is the second most-populated nation in South America after Brazil, and has the largest Spanish speaking population of any South American nation. The population is unevenly distributed with most Colombians living in the mountainous west, as well as the northern coast, in or near the capital, Bogota. The southern and eastern portions of the country are populated by much smaller farming communities.

History

Colombia declared independence from Spain in 1810. Following Simon Bolivar's victory at the battle of Boyoca in 1819, the Spanish surrendered and Colombia became a republic. While Bolivar dreamed of a unified South American state to equal the power of the U.S., a lack of economic cohesion among the member states and rivalry among the political leaders caused the federation to dissolve. The federation's members became the independent nations of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia.

In the 20th century, intense regional and factional disputes instigated more than fifty armed conflicts between the Colombian Liberal Party (PL) and the Colombian Conservative Party (PC), as well as countless paramilitary organizations. The One Thousand Day War, for example, left 100,000 dead. A period aptly dubbed "La Violencia," beginning when a charismatic leftist candidate for president was assassinated, claimed 300,000 lives from 1946-58.

In 1935-58 the military struggled to restore order. The PL and PC worked through their difficulties and recovered power from the military. They agreed to share power between them by alternating candidates for the presidency and sharing strategic political posts.

There were several factors that contributed to the rise of guerilla warfare in Colombia in the 1960s. The exclusion of political movements outside the PL and PC was a contributing factor, as well as marginalization of the poor and the rise of radical socialist ideology among Colombia's large, ethnic underclass. By the 1990s these leftist guerrilla units had coalesced into two paramilitary coalitions, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejercito Liberacion Nacional (ELN). A more nimble and ruthless right-wing paramilitary organization was also formed in the 1990's, defending the property of businessmen whose businesses could not function in Colombia's violent climate. It is known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).

As American-backed campaigns worked to stem coca cultivation in Bolivia and and Peru the mid 1990s, coca cultivation and cocaine manufacture skyrocketed in Colombia. The forbidding Andes mountains and impossible geography of Colombia made the department of Putumayo and its 35,000 farmers the world's largest single source of cocaine. The enormous wealth amassed by the cartels involved in drug trade undermined the country's social and political foundations and violence and corruption escalated. The synthesis of Pablo Escobar, a colossally wealthy socialist drug lord, and socialist paramilitary groups gave rise to two de-factor civil wars in Colombia - the first of which Escobar won. (After Escobar was killed in 1993, the second war ended, and the man most instrumental in killing him went on to found the AUC.)

In the late 1990s Colombia was beginning to look like a failed state. Guerillas numbered in the tens of thousands, funded by drugs, kidnapping and extortion, and protected by Colombia's impossible geography. After three years of negotiation FARC had shown no interest in peace. Alvaro Uribe, the governor of Antioqia province, promised the extinction of the more violent paramilitaries (mostly FARC) with the quiet support and cooperation of many AUC commanders. He has succeeded, for the most part. Security forces expanded by a third with an addition of 60,000 soldiers and 30,000 police officers. Permanent police detachments were placed in municipalities. Six new mountain battalions occupied the Andean massifs. The military became an offensive force with nine new brigades. In short, Mr. Uribe began the process of taking back the country. The FARC were driven out of central Colombia. It is almost safe for Colombians to drive between the cities of Bogota, Medellin, and Cali without serious risk of kidnapping. The economy has experienced a rebound with businesses from manufacturing to oil drawing new investors.

Mr. Uribe's firm stand against guerilla warfare has led some paramilitary groups and drug trafficking leaders to disarm, but most of the AUC backed out of potential disarmament; the AUC's leader, Carlos Castano, was killed for his advocacy of disarmament. As U.S. and other funding is conditional upon Colombia stemming its coca production, officials have pulled the voluntary eradication policy in which farmers received government aid for not planting coca. Under Plan Cololmbia this tide will be stemmed as America provided Mr. Uribe with funding to unleash a massive aerial-spraying campaign to eradicate the plant by spraying coca fields with herbicide. While this has cut coca production in Colombia it has increased elsewhere in the Andes.

Since Uribe's successful suppression of FARC, murders, kidnappings, and other violent crime have plummeted by over fifty percent in Colombia. The markets have soared, corruption has somewhat ameliorated, and Alvaro Uribe boasts approval ratings well over 60 percent, despite having been linked to several brutal AUC commanders. With communists to his left in Ecuador and communists to his right in Venezuela busy expropriating whatever property they can get their hands on, and the communists in front of him rendered impotent, Alvaro Uribe has turned Colombia into a rare investment magnet in a continent that has otherwise frightened away foreign capital.