Colombian culture
Colombia's culture is the result of a mixture of Europeans or whites, especially those who came from Spain, the native indigenous peoples, and Africans brought by the whites. Many aspects of Colombian culture originate in the 16th century with the arrival of the Spanish and their interaction with native civilizations, some like the Muiscas from the center and the Taironas to the north. Upon their arrival, the Spanish expanded Catholicism, the encomienda system, and a caste system led by European-born whites and their descendants. It is related to the customs of the Spanish-American countries.
After the crisis of the 19th century in Spain, the pro-independence movement began in America, led by the criollos, who fought to establish a republican political system independent of the Crown. Subsequently, the country's politics were divided between liberal and conservative ideals. The conservatives supported the union between the Catholic Church and the State, and its intervention in all aspects of society, and protectionism. While the liberals defended that both powers be presented separately, in addition to advocating free trade.
The mixture of the different racial groups of the country had formed new ethnic groups, generally known as mestizo, mulatto, moreno and zambo. The union of these cultures can also be seen in some of the carnivals that are celebrated in the country, such as the Carnival of Blacks and Whites. Although there is still a white and mestizo numerical superiority in most of the country's regions, the introduction of human rights and the abolition of slavery in 1851 reduced tensions between the different ethnic groups that are part of Colombia. Colombia did not stand out for being a country of immigration and most of its customs and traditions come from the same Hispanic ethnocultural miscegenation.
The constant conflict between both political parties characterized the rest of the century until the end of the century with the War of a Thousand Days, after this, in the 20th century began a small resurgence and a period of peace that ended with the period known as La Violencia (1948-1958), all this produced a slow development in the country and the subsequent armed conflict.
Languages
Being a multicultural country, the way of using the Spanish language varies in each of the country's geographic regions. The main dialects in which Colombian Spanish is usually classified are:
Lowland:
- Coastal Spanish
- Chocoano Spanish (category)
- English plain
From highlands:
- Spanish bogotano (rolo or cachaco)
- Spanish country
- Spanish vallecaucano
- Cundiboyacense
- English
- Andean Spanish (or pastuse)
- Tolimense-huilense (opita)
- Amazonian Spanish
In Colombia, you can also find more than 60 aboriginal languages, from the Amazonian languages in the south of the country, to the Arawak languages in the north. On the islands of San Andrés and Providencia, English is also considered the official language; Arabic is also official in the municipality of Maicao, and it is widely spoken in cities such as Barranquilla, Cartagena, San Andrés, it enjoys a certain level of amplitude in cities such as Magangué, Montería, Sincelejo and to a lesser extent in the other populations of the Colombian Caribbean, especially the banks of the Magdalena, Sinú, San Jorge and Cauca rivers.
Crafts
In Colombia, the handicrafts produced by ethnic groups stand out, both by locals and by tourists. The Guajiro people make backpacks, belts and manually woven nets. Among the main craft centers are:
Tuchín (Córdoba): vuetiao hat.
Galapa (Atlantic): masks and carnival figures.
Ráquira (Boyacá): ceramics (Ráquira horses, pots, chorotes, jugs, piggy banks, etc.).
Mompós (Bolívar): filigree.
San Jacinto (Bolivar). hammocks, basketry textiles.
Carmen de Viboral (Antioquia): fine earthenware based on gray clay, quartz, feldspar and kaolin.
Pitalito (Huila): clay utensils.
San Sebastián de Urabá (Córdoba): clay utensils.
Momil (Córdoba): clay utensils.
La Chamba (Tolima): clay utensils.
Tenza (Boyacá): baskets, for which they use chin or cane from Castilla.
Guacamayas (Boyacá): basketry with fique and mountain straw.
Iza and Nobsa (Boyacá): textiles (ruanas, sheep wool-based blankets).
Sandoná (Nariño): hats.
Architecture
Colombian architecture shows influences from Spanish art, which manifested themselves mainly during the time of Spanish colonization between the 16th century and XVII. Colombian architecture is divided into periods of indigenous, colonial (religious and military) architecture from the XIX century, republican (1880- 1930), transition (1930-1960), modernist (1970-2015) and current (2015-2020).
Plastic arts
In colonial times, Colombian painting was marked by the work of the Figueroa family, authentic pioneers of this art: Baltasar de Figueroa, the elder; Gaspar de Figueroa, his son, and Baltasar Vargas de Figueroa, the young man. Gaspar was the teacher of important artists, including notably Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos. José María Espinosa Prieto, painter, engraver and miniaturist, is also noted for his portraits, landscapes and caricatures. Epifanio Garay is also widely referenced, especially as a portraitist, despite the fact that much of his work was developed in Panama.
For its part, the sculpture of the viceroyalty gave rise to important artists such as the Lugo family, among whom Pedro de Lugo Albarracín stood out, author of Christs of strong drama and already in the century XVIII, to Pedro Laboria in which expressiveness meets rococo grace.
After the independence from Spain, in 1819, Colombian art has little representation and is still highly dependent on the figurative. There are those who explain this delay in the evolution of Colombian artistic styles by means of the country's own mountainous geography, which did not allow continuous contact and dialogue between the various creative tendencies that developed there.
In the decades from 1920 to 1940, Marco Tobón Mejía, José Horacio Betancourt, Pedro Nel Gómez, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo Santiago Martínez Delgado and Alipio Jaramillo managed to create some dynamism with the elaboration of murals, influenced, in style, by the Mexican art, although with neoclassical and Art Nouveau characteristics. At the beginning of the 1940s, due to a growing international lack of interest in Colombian art, works that had not been tested there began to appear, such as post-impressionism and the French academic style. The landscaper Ricardo Gómez Campuzano is an example of this (Calle de Cartagena de Indias).
Many art historians consider, however, that Colombian art only began to have its own character from the mid-20th century, by recreating, from a new point of view, the traditional cultural and artistic elements, integrating the concepts developed by the art of the XX century. Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, whose work can be considered “modernist”, presented, for example in his Portrait of the Greiff brothers, what Colombian art could unite with new techniques regarding typically Colombian culture and themes. Carlos Correa, in his paradigmatic work, "Naturaleza muerta en silencio", combines geometric abstraction and cubism, inaugurating a style that is still recurrent today. Pedro Nel Gómez, who stood out in drawing, watercolor, fresco, oil painting and sculpture in wood, stone and bronze, demonstrates, for example in "Self-portrait with a hat" (1941), his familiarity with the works by Gauguin and Van Gogh, also revealing the influence of other authors such as Cézanne in his 1949 “Self-portrait” or José Clemente Orozco, in his series on the Barequeras (women who were engaged in gold prospecting). Alejandro Obregón, considered by many to be the "father of Colombian art" (due to its originality, inaugurating an art considered Colombian at its roots), due to his paintings of national landscapes characterized by violent brushstrokes and the symbolic and expressionist use of animals (especially birds, such as the condor), he has been widely acclaimed for critics and the general public, and was undoubtedly the most influential artist of this period. The influences of Picasso and Graham Sutherland are notorious. Currently, the contribution to painting made by artists such as Fernando Botero, David Manzur and Omar Rayo is internationally renowned.
Literature
As for literature during the colonial era, Juan de Castellanos and the mystical mother Inés del Castillo stood out in poetry, and in narrative, Juan Rodríguez Freyle. In the XIX century, poets Gregorio Gutiérrez González, Luis Vargas Tejada, José Eusebio Caro and Rafael Pombo stood out. Among the modernists, José Asunción Silva and, later, Guillermo Valencia, Julio Flórez and Porfirio Barba Jacob distinguished themselves. Costumbrista prose had notable representatives in Eugenio Díaz and José Manuel Marroquín.
The great novelistic constructions appeared with Jorge Isaacs and Tomás Carrasquilla. In the first third of the XX century, the work of a novelist who achieved great public, though not critical, success prevailed. in America and Spain: José Manuel Vargas Vila (Ibis, Flor de fango). José Eustasio Rivera, with La vorágine (1928), was the founder of what could be called the Colombian political and imaginative novel. Within the contemporary novel, Eduardo Caballero Calderón ("The Good Savage"), Manuel Mejía Vallejo ("El día señalado"), Álvaro Mutis ("The Snow of the Admiral" 34;), Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal ("Condores don't bury every day") and, above all, Gabriel García Márquez ("The colonel has no one to write to him", " One Hundred Years of Solitude", "The General in His Labyrinth", etc.), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, perhaps the most important award won by a Colombian in this field.
Among the representative contemporary poets are Jorge Zalamea, León de Greiff, Luis Carlos López, Rafael Maya and Luis Vidales. Eduardo Carranza belongs to the generation of "Piedra y Cielo", which marks the transition to a later avant-garde, which includes Jorge Gaitán Durán and Eduardo Cote Lamus. At the same time, the iconoclastic Nadaist movement arose with Gonzalo Arango and Jotamario Arbeláez. The most important literary magazines are El Malpensante, Arcadia, Número and Puesto de Combate.
Music
In the field of music, there is hardly any data on pre-Colombian music, and there are few preserved instruments (rattles, rattles, flutes, ocarinas, fotutos, etc.). The first known musician was the Jesuit J. Dadey (1574-1660), considered the precursor of Colombian music. During the time of the viceroyalty, different musicians with a clear Spanish influence stood out. Popular music combines indigenous, Hispanic and black influences.
Colombian traditional music derives from a mixture of indigenous rhythms, African, European (especially Spanish) influences, modern American and Caribbean musical forms. Some popular rhythms are cumbia and vallenato in the Caribbean zone, bambuco and pasillo in the Andean zone, joropo in the Llanera zone and currulao in the Pacific zone. Salsa has also been recognized as one of the country's predominant rhythms, with artists such as Joe Arroyo.
Cumbia results from a mixture of indigenous and African influences. In the 19th century, the abolition of slavery increased the mutual influence between the various ethnic groups. The XX century was the golden age of bambuco, porro, cumbia and vallenato. When the waltz became popular in the same century, Colombians produced its variant, the pasillo.
In the field of so-called classical music, we can refer, for example, to Luis Antonio Calvo, Luis Antonio Escobar or Guillermo Uribe Holguín. Since the 1980s, rock has gained great strength as national music. The Rock al Parque Festival, which takes place every October in Bogotá, is considered the most important in Latin America. An example of the "boom" of the genre "Latin Pop" in Colombia are internationally renowned artists such as singer-songwriter Juan Esteban Aristizábal (Juanes), Shakira one of the most internationally successful singers in the history of Latin music, Sara Tunes who achieved American success, and Los Aterciopelados one of the bands of Rock in Spanish most relevant on the continent and considered one of the best on the planet by Time magazine made up of Andrea Echeverri and Héctor Buitrago.
Photography
Colombia has had outstanding masters of photography internationally, such as Leo Matiz Espinoza, whose work was widely recognized in Mexico, the United States (he worked for The New York Times), Italy and Venezuela. His photograph, & # 34; Peacock of the sea & # 34;, is considered one of the most important photographs in the country. Other masters of Colombian photography are Ervin Kraus, Melitón Rodríguez, Saúl Ordúz, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Abdú Eljaiek, Gabriel Carvajal and Sady González, who are the classics of photography in Colombia and whose works record the history of the country since the middle of the century. XIX or contributed their talents to other nations.
Sports
Soccer and cycling are the national sports par excellence, as in the vast majority of Latin American countries. Watching football matches on television is one of the national pastimes and one of the most popular activities. National team victories are exuberantly celebrated. However, it is considered a masculine occupation: many men and boys dedicate their free time to these sports.
Another traditional game is tejo, which consists of throwing small metal discs towards a gunpowder detonator. The winner is the one who manages to cause the greatest number of explosions, relative to the number of launches.
Cinema and Television
Colombia has produced soap operas, series and miniseries that have been exported as I am Betty La Fea and Café, Con Aroma De Mujer.
Gastronomy
The Colombian people attach special importance to lunch, which is usually eaten between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. (12:00 - 1:00 p.m.). The serving generally consists of soup, followed by a dish called "dry" (without broth) or "tray" and a soda or juice.
Among alcoholic beverages, brandy, beer and rum are popular. Coffee is highly regarded, so much so that it is considered the national drink, especially in the form of the "tinto" (cup of strong coffee). Among the hot drinks, chocolate is also popular, traditional in Bogotá (santafereño chocolate), served with cheese and bread (usually the cheese is broken into pieces and dipped into the chocolate). Colombia is one of the main soft drink markets in Latin America; There are national soft drinks such as Kola Román from Cartagena de Indias, Kola Hipinto from Bucaramanga, and Kola Sol from the Dorada-Mariquita-Girardot area.
In Colombia, many varieties of native fruits are consumed, totally unknown in Europe and North America, such as guava, sapote, lulo, curuba, mamoncillo, corozo, cape gooseberry, feijoa, granadilla, the mamey, the borojó, the mango, the chontaduro, the tamarind, the tree tomato, the soursop, the badea, and the pitahaya. Some are only consumed in some regions, and therefore their consumption is not widespread.
Banana leaves are common in traditional cooking, for example in quesillos (cheese wrapped in these leaves) and in tamales.
The "manjar blanco" (dulce de leche served in natural bowls made from a fruit called mate), the Buenaventura shrimp ceviche, the "pandebonos" (starch rolls with cheese) and Andalusian jellies (jelly beans derived from cooking beef legs), among others. Guarapo (cold-extracted sugarcane juice) is widely dispersed in this region due to intensive sugarcane cultivation.
For the paisas, the bandeja paisa, the beans and the corn arepas are the typical food of the department of Antioquia and its surroundings.
The indigenous communities of the Amazon and the Orinoco basin attach great importance to the processing of cassava and the consumption of its derivatives such as fariña and casabe. There are peasant drinks such as chicha (fermented corn drink) and guarapo (sugar cane juice).
In Cundinamarca and Boyacá the mute santafereño, the mazamorra chiquita and the tamales are typical.
Bogotá has a gastronomic offer in which typical dishes such as ajiaco, chocolate with cheese and mogolla, changua, sobrebarriga, strawberries with cream, rice pudding, figs with arequipe and almojábanas stand out.
On the Caribbean Coast, in the department of Atlántico, pigeon pea soup with salty meat, cassava bun, smooth rice, sausage, and egg arepa are typical, as well as products of Arab origin such as Kibbeh, sesame paste, eggplant, atollabuey whey, lentil fritters, kebab and kafta-based meat skewers, boronia or alboronia and the use of a diversity of spices in food, such as basil, oregano, peppermint, thyme, and cumin, which are used all the time, and are based on a condiment called zataar. In other areas, seafood, fish, rice with coconut, arepas, caribañolas, patacón, triphasic sancocho (with beef, chicken and pork), fried food and sweets stand out. The friche is a typical dish from La Guajira.
In the Pacific Region, tapao (sea fish with green plantain), borojó and chontaduro, together with plantain and seafood, are their significant gastronomic contribution.
In Santanderes, the Santanderean mute, tamales, kid, trout with garlic, fried ants (hormiga culona) and the bocadillo veleño are some of the well-known regional dishes, in addition to the famous &# 34;wafer"(typical of Floridablanca, consisting of two thin cookies, usually with arequipe in the middle, plus something else you want to add), and the yellow arepa or as it is known, corn arepa "pelao", other typical dishes are pepitoria (rice with pieces of meat) and potato broth (similar to changua, only with potato) with arepa, the traditional Santanderean breakfast, also meat &# 34;oreada" or dry. Fried arepas are characteristic of Norte de Santander, and in the páramos, generally located between the municipalities and corregimientos of Berlín, La Laguna and Silos, you can find criolla potatoes with salt on the Bucaramanga-Cúcuta highway.
In Tolima and Huila, the typical dishes are the suckling pig from Tolimense, the tamale from Tolimense and the fish widower.
In Nariño, guinea pigs and ullucos are highly appreciated.
In the Eastern Plains, meat a la llanera accompanied by cassava, plantain, potato and chili or guacamole. As a drink, beer, cola and pola are usually taken, commonly called refajo in Colombia.
In Cauca, the salpicón, the carantanta soup, the pipián tamales, among others.
Religion
Most of the Colombian population is Catholic, and there are minority groups that follow other beliefs. Given the historical course, Catholicism was the official religion of Colombia until 1991, when the Constitution of that same year consecrated the Colombian State as a secular State, offering guarantees to the freedom of religion. In any case, the Catholic Church has continued to retain privileges over other religions, which created some tensions. To mitigate the spirits, in 2016, July 4 was decreed as National Day of Religious Freedom and Cults. The rest of the inhabitants are part of religious communities such as evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews.
Something common in Colombian culture is the existence of legends since colonial times, which have been transmitted through generations, such as the single soul, the footlight, the carrao, the crybaby, the single leg, the silbón the hat etc.