a mini history lesson

i'm kind of ashamed to admit that i don't actually know very much about colombia. apart from a paper i did on the interactions between the Colombian civil war and the war on drugs, a few lectures on international policy, illicit trade, and human rights, and some general stuff about history and international development in south america, i barely covered it in college. and of course nada in grade school. that and news stories on drug trafficking. and shakira.

it's odd, because before i went to uganda, i knew buckets and buckets about it. i could discuss the intricacies of Gulu politics, linguistic variations in different regions, various development initiatives, international politics and trade relations with neighboring countries, and could recite a history of the country that went on for hours. i knew local politicians, military leaders, and journalists by name and even had some of their cell numbers.

but i'm reading up more on it, and finding out some interesting things:

• what do shakira, juanez, and gabriel garcía márquez all have in common? they're all colombian, of course!
• by some accounts, the first inhabitants of colombia arrived there 70,000 years ago. that's 68,000bc, for those of you keeping score at home. that's... a long long time ago.
• i'm very intrigued by this mysterious lost city of the Muisca people "deep in the jungle" and abandoned long ago. probably romanticized, but still.
• when the spanish arrived in ~1500, they were crazy about the supposed wealth of the indigenous people--specifically, the abundant gold religious offerings. that's what gave rise to the myth of "el dorado" (hence the title here) and the fountain of youth.

and in that vein, here's a rather darkly tongue-in-cheek video from everyone's favorite exploradora: