* The Progressive Metal band from Barranquilla, Colombia, Absalom has his name.

Regionally, she has signed bilateral free-trade agreements with Panama, Peru and Colombia.

Colombia has a free market economy with major commercial and investment ties to the United States.

Colombia's international reserves have remained stable at around $ 8. 35 billion, and Colombia has successfully remained in international capital markets.

As a result of increasing competition, Colombia has a relatively modern telecommunications infrastructure that primarily serves larger towns and cities.

Colombia has about 60 television stations, including seven low-power stations.

Nevertheless, Colombia has one of the lowest ratios of paved roads per inhabitant in Latin America.

Colombia has of rail lines, of which are gauge and of which are gauge.

Colombia also has seven ships registered in other countries ( Antigua and Barbuda, two ; Panama, five ).

Colombia has well-developed air routes and an estimated total of 984 airports, 100 of which have paved runways, plus two heliports.

Colombia has 4, 350 kilometers of gas pipelines, 6, 134 kilometers of oil pipelines, and 3, 140 kilometers of refined-products pipelines.

The military has seized power three times in Colombia's history: in 1830, after the dissolution of Great Colombia ; again in 1854 ( by General José María Melo ); and from 1953 to 1957 ( under General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla ).

While early initiatives in the Colombian peace process gave reason for optimism, the Pastrana administration also has had to combat high unemployment and other economic problems, such as the fiscal deficit and the impact of global financial instability on Colombia.

Additionally, the growing severity of countrywide guerrilla attacks by the FARC and ELN, and smaller movements, as well as the growth of drug production, corruption and the spread of even more violent paramilitary groups such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia ( AUC ) has made it difficult to solve the country's problems.

, two years after its implementation began, the security situation of inside Colombia has shown some measure of an improvement and the economy, while still fragile, has also shown some positive signs according to observers, but relatively little has yet to have been accomplished in structurally solving most of the country's other grave problems, possibly in part due to legislative and political conflicts between the administration and the Colombian Congress ( including those over the controversial project to eventually re-elect Uribe ), and a relative lack of freely allocated funds and credits.

For example, Ecuador has closed its main border crossing with Colombia every night since August 2002, when evidence emerged that Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries were asserting control over Ecuador's border communities.

Colombia has traditionally played an active role in the United Nations and the Organization of American States and in their subsidiary agencies.

Colombia has signed free-trade agreements with Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Colombia has also signed and ratified 105 international treaties or agreements relating to the environment.

Colombia also has signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Tlatelolco Treaty.

In recent years, Craven Cottage has hosted several International Friendly matches, including the Republic of Ireland national football team who played Colombia and Nigeria there in May 2008 and May 2009 respectively and Oman in 2012.

It has 2010 km of land boundaries, with Colombia in the north ( 590 km border ) and Peru in the east and south ( 1, 420 km border ).

Colombia is by far the worlds largest producer of emeralds, constituting 50-95 % of the world production, with the number depending on the year, source and emeralds grade .< ref > Emerald production in Colombia has increased drastically in the last decade, increasing by 78 % in 2010 compared to production in 2000.

* April 20 – Air France Flight 422, a Boeing 727, crashes into a mountain near Bogotá, Colombia, in foggy weather shortly after takeoff from El Dorado International Airport, killing all 53 people on board.

Germans came to South America in the world wars I and II, settling first in Colombia because it was the only country in the South American to have the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, gold, emeralds, coal, oil, textiles, tobacco, flowers and the best weather conditions for agriculture.

He sailed for Peru, but was forced by bad weather to land at Buenaventura ( Colombia ).

Costa Rica's distance from the capital in Guatemala, its legal prohibition under Spanish law to trade with its southern neighbors in Panama, then part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada ( i. e., Colombia ), and the lack of resources such as gold and silver, made Costa Rica into a poor, isolated, and sparsely inhabited region within the Spanish Empire.

That year, the Congress of Angostura established the Republic of Gran Colombia, which included all territories under jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada.

Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule.

Colombia is also a member of the International Criminal Court with a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of protection for the United States-military ( as covered under Article 98 ).

After a campaign that included the near destruction of Guayaquil, the forces of Gran Colombia, under the leadership of Sucre and Venezuelan General Juan José Flores, proved victorious.

With the independence both countries united under the Gran Colombia along with New Granada ( then Colombia and Panama ).

The archipelago has been under Colombian control since 1931 when a treaty was signed during US occupation of Nicaragua, giving Colombia control over the islands.

Bolivar, well aware of geographical obstacles but also of the unique qualities and critical role in trade throughout history and under Spanish tutelage, had hesitated to include Panama in his Gran Colombia project.

Nevertheless in 1821, convinced that under Bolivar's leadership the nation's destiny would move in the most progressive direction, the Isthmus joined Venezuela, New Granada ( present day Colombia ) and latter Ecuador, in 1822.

In September 1830, under the guidance of General José Domingo Espinar, the local military commander who rebelled against the nation's central government in response to his being transferred to another command, Panama separated from the Republic of Colombia and requested that general Simón Bolívar take direct command of the Isthmus Department.

In the end, the union between Panama and the Republic of New Granada ( under its various names United States of Colombia 1863 – 1886 and the Republic of Colombia since 1886 ) was made possible by the active participation of U. S. A. under the 1846 Bidlack Mallarino treaty until 1903.

A 1992 Central Intelligence Agency report " acknowledged that the FARC had become increasingly involved in drugs through their ' taxing ' of the trade in areas under their geographical control and that in some cases the insurgents protected trafficking infrastructure to further fund their insurgency ," but also described the relationship between the FARC and the drug traffickers as one " characterized by both cooperation and friction " and concluded that " we do not believe that the drug industry Colombia would be substantially disrupted in the short term by attacks against guerrillas.

Human Rights Watch estimates that the FARC-EP has the majority of child combatants in Colombia, and that approximately one quarter of its guerrillas are under 18.

Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule.

They are sold under the name of Kinder Joy in Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Germany, Greece, India, Croatia, Indonesia, Israel, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Hong Kong, Portugal, Colombia, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Argentina, Ukraine, Cameroon, the Middle East, Venezuela and various Latin American countries.

The largest action of the war was a major amphibious attack launched by the British under Admiral Edward Vernon in March, 1741 against Cartagena de Indias, one of Spain's principal gold-trading ports in their colony of New Granada ( today Colombia ).

In 1813 he was given a military command in Tunja, New Granada ( modern day Colombia ), under the direction of the Congress of United Provinces of New Granada, which had formed out of the juntas established in 1810.

Bolivia ’ s most lucrative agricultural product continues to be coca, of which Bolivia is currently the world ’ s third largest cultivator ( after Colombia and Peru ), with an estimated 29, 500 hectares under cultivation in 2007, increased slightly when compared to 2006.

Bolivia is the world's third-largest cultivator of coca ( after Peru and Colombia ) with an estimated 218 km² under cultivation in 1999, a 45 % decrease in overall cultivation of coca from 1998 levels ; intermediate coca products and cocaine exported to or through Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to the United States and other international drug markets ; alternative crop program aims to reduce illicit coca cultivation.