Colombia

The potential production of opium in 1997 - 66 metric tons, a 5% increase over 1996. The world's largest processor of coca derivatives into cocaine, a supplier of cocaine to the US and other international drug markets, and an important supplier of heroin to the US market.
             For generations each Colombian City was the center of a region that was cut off from the rest of the country. At times Colombia was a loose confederation of city-states. Today the Republic of Colombia has a strong central government, operating under the constitution of 1886, which has been amended a number of times. The president is elected for a 4-year term and cannot serve two terms in succession; the president appoints a cabinet to help run the government. The legislature has two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Members are elected for 4-year terms at a time.
             Colombia's location made it a natural migration funnel, through which waves of migrants from the north came in the early settling of South America. Because these people built with wood rather than stone in an area of high rainfall, the remains of their ancient cultures are few. But at San Agustin, in the uppermost part of the Magdalena Valley, and at the recently discovered lost city of Tairona on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, huge stone monoliths and urban structures suggest there were impressive pre-Colombian civilizations in what is now Colombia.
             The early Spanish explorers found several groups of Indians in Colombia. Most of them were nomadic farmers. But one group, the Chibchas, who lived on the plateau of Bogota, were town dwellers. They made fine pottery and cloth, and gold and emerald jewelry.
             The first permanent European settlement in what is now Colombia was at Santa Marta, on the Caribbean coast, in 1525. The Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada journeyed up the Magdalena River and subdued the Chibcha Indians.