Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, occupies the northwest of South America with coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific, the fourth country of Latin America by area, thirty-two departments gathered round the Capital District of Bogotá, with Medellín, Cali and Cartagena as the other great cities. Indigenous peoples lived here from twelve thousand years before the common era before Spain landed in La Guajira in 1499 and raised the New Kingdom of Granada. The cry of 20 July 1810 began the wars that first built Gran Colombia and then, through its breakup, the states that followed: New Granada, the United States of Colombia, and the centralist Republic proclaimed in 1886. The Thousand Days' War of 1899 to 1902 bled the young republic white and cost it Panama in 1903. Coffee, then oil and emeralds, paid for railways, cities and a lively press, while liberals and conservatives took turns ruling and fighting. Neutral at first in the Second World War, Colombia declared against the Axis in 1943 and entered 1945 as the most populous Spanish-speaking republic of the southern continent after Argentina.