Colombia Diversity

Stilts offer a different view of the streets of Bogotá, Colombia.

Succulent, stimulating, and sometimes slightly strange fruits are my overriding sensory memory of Colombia. The fruits are wildly diverse and unlike anything else on this planet. Then there are the musical beats. And did I mention magical realism?

Colombia is the birthplace of this literary genre, which inserts the surreal and the fantastical into normal circumstances. Its most famous author, Gabriel García Márquez, is considered the pioneer and the preeminent master of the art. His classic work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was described by one reviewer as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.”

It is no accident that an author such as García Márquez should have emerged from a nation like Colombia, which can feel like an adjacent, elevated reality of its own: one defined by the vibrancy and diversity of the colors, flavors, climate, and nature. Spending time here is an immersive, almost overwhelming experience; as if the entire world of geography, living organisms, and food and drink has been compressed into this one country. It is a place that delivers constant sensory overload, and it does so through its extraordinary diversity.

To understand Colombia you also need to understand its unique location and geography, with coasts on both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, a nation of marshlands and mountain ranges, coastlines and rainforests, huge cities and vast, uninhabited open plains. Caribbean beaches, the Amazon rainforest, the Andes mountains: all these sit within the endless diversity that is Colombia’s geography: one country that contains many different lands. In fact there is no single Colombia, but six regions all with their own very distinct geographies, culture, and traditions. This makes it one of the most biodiverse nations on Earth, ranking second behind Brazil though it is only a fraction of the size. It is home to 56,343 registered species, of which over 9,000 are found nowhere else. A tenth of all the plant and animal species in the world can be found in Colombia. “If Earth’s biodiversity were a country, it could be called Colombia,” National Geographic has written.

The biodiversity may be almost unmatched, but it is also under threat. Colombia is home to extensive mining activity, while approximately 2,700 of its species are threatened, and deforestation is occurring at speed, with more than 2,300 square kilometers of forest destroyed each year.

Because Colombia values its biodiversity so much, it is taking radical measures to ward off these threats. Juan Manuel Santos, president from 2010 to 2018 and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has said that “it’s so evident that we are destroying Mother Earth.” His measures to counteract climate destruction included adding thousands of square kilometers to the nation’s protected nature reserves, which took Colombia’s total number of national parks to sixty. Santos also canceled plans for a major new highway that had been planned to connect Venezuela with Ecuador through Colombia, because of the impact on protected areas in the Amazon, and dozens of species threatened with extinction.

The preservation of Colombia’s diversity has also gone hand in hand with attempts to heal a divided nation, where a half-century civil war came to a temporary end in 2016. Members of the main antigovernment group FARC have since been drafted into the battle against deforestation, with over one thousand trained in sustainable farming and methods to track and combat illegal logging.

Colombian diversity extends far beyond the natural environment in which it is rooted. You also see it in the food, the music, and the culture. Eating your way across Colombia is a banquet of culinary traditions—from the spicy fish and rice of the Caribbean coast to the Brazilian and Peruvian flavors found in the Amazonas region and a diverse set of influences inland that range from the European to the Incan. Music is the same story, with the sounds of Colombia’s six regions reflecting traditions that range from African dance to European big band and South American salsa.

It is impossible to spend time in Colombia and not feel both enriched and uplifted by the experience. The diversity of people, of flora and fauna, of sounds and flavors creates an experience that is as immersive as it is joyful. No surprise that Colombia has frequently been ranked as one of the world’s happiest and most optimistic countries. Because that is what diversity achieves: it opens up the mind and the heart to new influences and experiences, it sparks creativity and aids common understanding. Without diversity we are limited and restricted, holding the world at bay rather than inviting it in. With it we discover, explore, and develop. And most importantly, we have fun, we relish the unknown, and we learn how to truly live.