COLOMBIA TIMELINE

By juanpimi
  • Jan 1, 1525

    1525, Colombia became a colonial holding of the Spanish empire.

  • In 1829, Venezuela and Ecuador separated from the republic, leaving Colombia and Panama under a new state, known as Nueva Granada.

  • the Thousand Days War from 1899–1903

  • Period: to

    the Thousand Days War from 1899–1903

  • Panama separated from Colombia in 1903 following a disagreement over allowing the U.S. to construct a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Eleven years later, the Panama Canal opened

  • In 1819, Simón Bolivar, a leader within Latin America’s independence movement, defeated the Spanish, forming the Republic of Gran Colombia, consisting of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.

  • La Violencia from 1946 to 1958 Colombia’s two main political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, were among the oldest surviving political groups in the Americas, and they dominated Colombian politics throughout the 20th century

  • From 1950 to 1967, Colombia followed an import substitution policy, under which the government adopted quotas and tariffs to promote the substitution of local products for imports.

  • key component of the export-promotion strategy was the maintenance of a competitive exchange rate by the central bank. The central bank was nationalized in 1963, although it did not achieve independence until 1991

  • Banned from formal political representation and inspired by the success of the Cuban Revolution, leftist guerrilla movements, including FARC and the Leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) formed in the mid-1960s

  • After 1967, the government switched to export promotion.

  • To alleviate domestic inflation and maintain the competitiveness of exports, the bank adopted a crawling peg to the U.S. dollar in 1967

  • La Violencia ended in a power-sharing agreement, known as the National Front. Under the system, the two parties agreed to alternatively hold the presidency for four terms until 1974

    and equally share the number of positions in Congress, the cabinet, and the court system.

  • In the late 1970s, drug cartels began to take over the production of marijuana and later cocaine to benefit from growing demand in the United States and Europe.

    Guerrillas began supplementing their income by cultivating their own coca crops and setting up cocaine laboratories

  • Until the 1980s, the two factions operated as irregular groups whose military activity was limited to a few municipalities. But in the 1980s, the leftist factions expanded geographically and engaged in kidnappings, extortions, and civilian attacks

  • To combat the rise of guerrilla terrorism, a counterinsurgency of right-wing paramilitary groups emerged. Drug traffickers and wealthy landowners began forming their own militias, and the paramilitary groups evolved into a violent federation of gangs

    responsible for committing many of the same crimes (killing, rape, torture, and drug trafficking) perpetrated by the leftist guerrillas

  • In the 1980s, drug cartels, such as the Medellín Cartel, frequently cooperated with guerrillas in exchange for protection

  • substantial policy reforms and positive economic growth of 4% from 1981 to 2014

  • Since the 1980s, falling total factor productivity, which was only partially offset by inputs of human and physical capital, resulted in slow productivity growth overall for Colombia

  • Since the mid-1980s, Colombia had exported oil.

  • Beginning in 1986, the government announced that 50% of revenue from the value-added tax (VAT) would be transferred to municipalities, up from 30.5%.

    In the late 1980s, Colombia began decentralization under the leadership of President Belisario Betancur Cuartas. Traditionally, local governments had a low fiscal base and little political maneuverability, limiting their ability to address social indicators. The goal of the 1980s reforms was to strengthen municipal democracy and transfer responsibility for basic services, such as water supply, roads, health, education, and welfare assistance, to local municipalities.

  • Under the National Front, all other parties were banned. While the formal agreement ended in 1974, the power-sharing arrangement remained largely intact until the 1990s.

  • Aided by political stability, between 1950 and 1990, the public-sector deficit did not exceed 4% of GDP. Compared with other Latin American nations, Colombia achieved strong GDP growth, moderate inflation, and a stable exchange rate.

  • In the mid-1990s, market reforms slowed as the Gaviria administration was met with opposition from trade unions and agricultural interest groups, which had been harmed by the lifting of trade protections. In 1994

  • During the 1990s, drug-trafficking groups began to grow more sophisticated and fragmented; to discourage detection, groups became smaller, with more compartmentalized activities

  • In 1991, a National Constituent Assembly was elected, including a representative from the former leftist group M-19, to create a new constitution.

  • the telecommunications sector was liberalized in 1991, competition remained conspicuously absent. Since 2012, Colombia had a 100% mobile penetration rate, but one carrier, América Móvil’s Claro, held 60% of market share

  • During the early 1990s, a lack of public investment also caused a rapid deterioration in the railway system, leaving only 200 kilometers (km) of the network operable

  • bancoldex was created

  • the government introduced mandatory universal health insurance and a fully funded pension system in 1993

  • Santos government launched a series of reforms in 2010 to accelerate development via public-private partnerships (PPP). In 1993, Colombia was the first country in the region to introduce such partnerships

  • To improve Colombia’s competitiveness, the government first targeted trade liberalization. Trade barriers were removed, and average tariff rates fell from 42.7% in 1989 to 11.7% in 1992.17 In 1994, Colombia signed a free trade agreement with its neighborS

  • In late 1998, Pastrana initiated peace talks with the FARC, whom he offered a demilitarized area the size of Switzerland. The peace talks continued in a stop-go fashion until 2002, when the FARC hijacked a commercial aircraft.

  • The bank changed to a free-floating currency and a full-fledged inflation-targeting mandate in 1999.

  • When the economy contracted in 1999, Colombia entered an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure access to affordable foreign financing

  • In 1999, the Pastrana administration unveiled Plan Colombia, a broad proposal seeking international support to promote peace, combat narcotics, revive the Colombian economy, and improve human rights

    The plan was narrowed to a war against drug trafficking, and the U.S. became the biggest supplier of weapons and external funding, providing a total of nearly $5 billion from 2000 to 2005. From 1998 to 2002, the number of Colombian troops fighting drugs rose from 48,000 to 128,000.

  • The Colombian government also made strong progress in curtailing cocaine production, largely through the adoption of aircraft to spread weed killers. In 2000, Colombia produced three-quarters of the world’s coca leaves, dropping to 42% by 2011

  • Álvaro Uribe was elected president in 2002 on the promise to restore law and order, manage macroeconomic policy responsibly, and decrease the size of the government. His father had been murdered by the FARC, He vowed to crack down on the guerrilla groups

  • In 2002, Uribe managed to enact a onetime wealth tax earmarked for security spending and introduced an income tax surcharge

  • corruption was the biggest challenge to conducting business in Colombia

    According to the World Economic Forum, businessmen reported that corruption was the biggest challenge to conducting business in Colombia.60 In 2014, Colombia ranked 94 out of 177 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index, a significant relapse from its rank of 52 in 2002.

  • In 2004, the government introduced the Fiscal Responsibility Law, which required all levels of government to justify their spending

  • Uribe also successfully negotiated a peace settlement with the paramilitaries. In 2005, Congress passed the Justice and Peace Law, which offered reduced sentences of no more than eight years to paramilitary personnel who had committed atrociticities

  • In late 2006, the Colombian paramilitary scandal erupted, exposing close links between prominent political leaders and right-wing paramilitary groups

    . Enquiries revealed that a number of politicians had accepted funds from paramilitaries and helped the right-wing military groups evade justice

  • In 2007, the government released dozens of FARC prisoners in the hope that the guerrilla group would reciprocate by releasing hostages. The FARC rejected the move, causing hundreds of thousands to protest in Bogotá.

  • In 2007, Ecopetrol was partially privatized, selling 20% of its shares to private investors

  • Colombia escaped largely unscathed from the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, and by the end of Uribe’s tenure, the government deficit had fallen to 3.9% of GDP; public debt stood at 31.9%

  • The crisis of 2008 and 2009 barely touched us. . . . We have a very strong financial sector and strong banks, but too little competition. I am trying to promote it by bringing in more foreign banks

  • In 2010, Juan Manuel Santos was elected the president of Colombia

  • In 2010, the government targeted innovation as a driver of future economic growth and social development

  • The commodity boom threatened the competitiveness of non-mining sectors by causing the exchange rate to appreciate. From 2008–2011, positive productivity growth was only seen in the mining and personal services sectors

  • From 2000 to 2013, manufacturing fell from 15% to 12% in terms of share of GDP

  • In 2013, the oil sector received $5.1 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI), over 34% of total FDI inflow into Colombia

  • In 2014, Colombia still exhibited positive macroeconomic conditions. On the World Competitiveness Ranking, Colombia ranked 66 out of 144 countries