In this congress, Bolívar is declared president and Francisco de Paula Santander, who had also fought in the wars of independence, is appointed vice president.

Simón Bolívar, born in Caracas in 1783, was a military and political leader who played a crucial role in the independence of South America. Coming from a wealthy family, he was educated in Europe, where he became steeped in the ideas of the Enlightenment. Upon his return, he joined the Venezuelan independence movement and, after several initial failures, led a successful military campaign in 1813 that temporarily liberated Venezuela. Eventually, he sought support in Haiti. He returned with renewed forces and, in 1819, achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Boyacá, which made possible the creation of Gran Colombia.

Francisco de Paula Santander, born in Cúcuta in 1792, was a prominent military and political leader during and after the wars of independence of South America. Trained in law, he joined the independence cause in 1810 and soon proved to be a skilled strategist and administrator. Santander played a crucial role in the independence campaign of New Granada and was appointed vice president of Gran Colombia in 1819, serving under the leadership of Simón Bolívar. Known as the "Man of Laws," Santander was a staunch advocate of republican government and legal institutions, leaving a significant legacy in the formation of the modern Colombian state.

However, in practice, Santander would be the real president, as Bolívar would march to liberate other lands, such as Guayaquil, Peru, and Upper Peru, which would later be called Bolivia.

Bolívar could have stayed to ensure the prosperity of the already liberated territory, but he was a rather ambitious man, and that was part of the problem.

As the independent territory was quite large and difficult to govern, frictions began to arise between various leaders, including Santander and Bolívar themselves, who until then had been very good friends, but whom the circumstances of government led to the deepest enmity. Bolívar was constantly asking Santander for money to finance his military campaigns. And, as it has always been said in this country, there's no money, money was what there wasn't. And it was true. The independence wars had left non-existent public finances that they were trying to accommodate with loans from English banks.

Thanks to imperialism and industrialization, the United Kingdom became the world's leading exporter of capital in the 19th century. These exports were carried out through investments and loans to various countries.

Not only was it intended to govern an immense territory under the centralist model, but also an immense territory that was unknown. Although today we can sarcastically say the same thing, back then the presidents had no idea what the country they governed was like.

That is why Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, a military man and statesman who was president four times, gathered around 1850 a group of scholars under the leadership of the Italian engineer and military man Agustín Codazzi to map Colombia and study it.

This was called the Chorographic Commission, and its objective was to discover what was particular about Colombia, just as in past decades the Botanical Expedition commanded by José Celestino Mutis had set out to do the same in its field, managing to identify 20,000 plant species and 7,000 animal species.

The commission began in 1850 and ended in 1862 with several vicissitudes. The experts had to traverse Colombia's difficult geography, go from province to province, face changes in government, two civil wars, and economic problems due to instability in funding.

The Chorographic Commission also produced several beautiful watercolor illustrations that are now among the few things we have to visually look at the past.

Codazzi even dies in 1859 from fevers contracted during the journey. And the cartographic and investigative results of the Commission are published irregularly over the years, and not all that was investigated comes to light.

But that was the Commission. The effort to find what was particular in Colombia.

Let's return to the present. It remains difficult to point out what is particular about Colombia, due to how varied and extensive it is. Not only is it the fifth largest Latin American country in terms of territorial extension, but it also has more than 52 million inhabitants, making it the second country in the world with the most native Spanish speakers. Even more than Spain.

But Colombia has something else particular in this, because despite its extension it is not federal, but centralist. From 1863 to 1886 it was federal and was called the United States of Colombia, one of the many names the country has received, and was made up of nine sovereign states, which were Antioquia, Bolívar, Boyacá, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Panama, Santander and Tolima.

But the annoyances of the conservatives and the church with liberal radicalism led between 1876 and 1877 to a new civil war that today is called the War of the Schools. It was not named so because it was a war between educational institutions—Colombia is not an American college film—nor because it developed inside them. Its name is due to the fact that it broke out because of a liberal reform that made part of education secular, created new schools, and brought a German mission to train teachers.

After the War of the Schools came the Regeneration movement, supported by the conservatives, which undid the liberal reforms and made the country centralist again. After the Regeneration, by the way, the Thousand Days' War (1899 - 1902) exploded due to the changes implemented by conservatism.

Today if we look at the figures we will notice that Bogotá has more than 7 million inhabitants, which makes it larger and with more GDP than other Latin American countries, such as Costa Rica —5 million inhabitants—, Panama —4.4 million—, Uruguay —3.4 million—, among others. Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, is larger than other Latin American countries!

It is often said that Colombia is a country of regions and of several countries within one, and that is true. Accents are the simplest demonstration of how separate they have become.

Let's look at the six natural regions of the country. They are called natural because their classification responds to the climatic and soil conditions of each one. These are: the Caribbean Region, Pacific, Andean, Orinoco, Amazon, and Insular. Although this classification is neither political nor administrative, it allows tracing economic and sociocultural differences.

For example, the Andean region is crossed by the Andes mountain range, a mountain chain that is born at the lowest end of South America and also crosses Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and western Venezuela.

The passage of the Andes mountain range through Colombia has three branches known as the Western, Central, and Eastern mountain range. These, in addition to colder climates, created regions inaccessible from the point of view of the other, which made transit through the country difficult, both for José Celestino Mutis and his team, as for the scholars of the Chorographic Commission, as for everyone.

Returning to the division of the country by its geography, the region that best exemplifies this is the Pacific, which was separated from the Andean region and the rest of the country due to the Western cordillera, which contributed to the economic lag of its departments.

Likewise, the Pacific is characterized by being the region of Colombia with the most Afro-descendant population —with about 94%— and for being one of the rainiest places in the world, with annual rainfall ranging between 4,000 mm and 15,000 mm depending on the locality.

And here is another peculiarity of Colombia: while in other countries demographic homogeneity is quite marked, in Colombia it varies from region to region.

This course is an effort to explain Colombia to both Colombians and foreigners. It seeks to unravel its particularities, quirks, virtues, and flaws, and to give them meaning. Colombia is a country that can be understood and, if its violence and insecurity are brought under control, and if its citizens choose to act responsibly and make good use of their resources, it can also be transformed and thrive.