Colombia
Political: Colombia has a long tradition of constitutional government, and the Liberal
and Conservative parties, founded in 1848 and 1849 respectively, are two of the oldest surviving
political parties in the Americas. Colombia's homicide rate, for many years the highest in the
world, has almost halved since 2002 making many of colombias major cities safer than Washington
DC today.
Colombia's economy grew steadily in the latter part of the
twentieth century, with gross domestic product (GDP) increasing at an average rate of over 4% per
year between 1970 and 1998.