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Colombia: People
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About 60% of Colombia's population are mestizos, and some one fifth are of European descent. Indigenous peoples, who account for only about 1% of today's population, live on the edge of some of the major cities and in remote areas. About 15% of the people are of mixed African and European descent. The small (less than 5%) black population is concentrated along the coasts and in the Magdalena and Cauca valleys. Spanish is the official language. The population is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.
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Colombia is particularly extreme. Its stock market has an aggregate capitalization of just $59 billion. In this parallel investing universe, price-earnings ratios take a backseat to fuzzy measures such as confianza, which translates into confidence and trust but is more accurately described as the general sense that people can safely transact business and get through everyday life unharmed. The handful of Wall Street analysts who cover Colombia supply their clients with charts of murder rates and kidnappings.
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The Constitutional Court of Colombia has issued three decisions which establish important protections of the human rights of intersex people and restrict the authority of parents and physicians to authorize medically unnecessary genital plastic surgery. Read an English summary of the decisions, or the complete decisions in Spanish, online.
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Notwithstanding the country's commitment to democratic institutions Colombia's history has been characterized by periods of widespread violent conflict. Two civil wars resulted from bitter rivalry between the Conservative and Liberal parties. The War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902) cost an estimated 100 000 lives and up to 300 000 people perished during "La Violencia" (The Violence) of the late 1940s and 1950s.
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Colombia's narcotic industry employs around 200,000 people and generates between $2.2 and $5 billion annually, roughly three percent of the country's gross domestic product. Most of this money returns to Colombia through complicated money laundering schemes.
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During the pre-Colombian period the area now known as Colombia was inhabited by indigenous people who were primitive hunters or nomadic farmers. The Chibchas who lived in the Bogota region dominated the various Indian groups.
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