Colombia

With a population of approximately 43,500,000 people, the South American country of Colombia is home to a broad range of languages, religions, and cultural traditions. Colombian society is the result of complex historical processes that have combined native cultures with cultures from Europe, Africa, and Asia.

As a former Spanish colony, Colombia is preeminently a Catholic country. Most of its native traditions were destroyed by Christians through evangelization, carried out as a Westernization process. Spanish Christianity suppressed indigenous languages and religions in such a way that by the beginning of the 18th century, most of them had already disappeared. Some native groups survived; now, they represent just a little more than 3% of the population.

The tragedy of the rapid and massive destruction of the native population, forced to work under [Page 237]hard conditions, led the Spaniards to introduce African people to work as slaves in gold mines and on sugarcane plantations. African religions mixed with Christianity, generating syncretic practices that were condemned and persecuted by the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church. In modern times, Blacks represent 10% of the population; most of them are Christian. They are located mainly in the Pacific and Caribbean regions.

During colonial times, some Jews arrived as newly converted Christians, but they were the object of cultural assimilation. At the end of the 19th century, some Sephardic Jews migrated to the Caribbean coast, forming the basis of the Jewish colony there. During the first decades of the 20th century, many European Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews settled in Barranquilla, Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali. In 1939, the Colombian government introduced a law to halt the migration of Jewish people from Germany. Today, the Jewish population of Colombia is perhaps fewer than 6,000, of whom only some participate in religious practices.

As a result of Arabic migration at the end of the 19th century and the arrival of the people who left the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century, the Muslim population is important in the Caribbean region, especially in the city of Maicao, where the mosque of Omar Ibn Al-Jattab was built in 1997. Even as the size of the Jewish community is reducing, the Muslim presence is increasing daily in Colombia. Estimates of the number of Muslims in the country vary; some reports indicate that the population of Muslims is 10,000, whereas others indicate a larger population.

Nowadays, Catholics represent 80% of the Colombian population, even though many do not practice their faith. Other Christian churches represent just 10%; their members are actively involved in religious practices. This phenomenon is explained by the recognition of Catholicism as the national religion in the constitution of 1886, which also oriented public education according to the Catholic tradition. The 1991 constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, recognizing the importance of Protestant, evangelical, and Pentecostal churches. A small minority in Colombia adhere to other traditions: Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, Buddhists, and Daoists, among others.