Life in Colombia

Living patterns
Income disparity

Due to widespread corruption, economic instability and high unemployment over the last century or so, Colombia has developed a huge rift between two economic classes (Low and High) with an almost nonexistent, but increasing middle class, particularly in the Bogotá and Medellin areas.

Family
The family is, as it is with nearly all of Latin America, a highly important institution to Colombians as engraved by the traditional Roman Catholic church teachings. Members of the extended family are close and children rarely move far away from their parents. There is a deep sense of familial responsibility that stretches through many generations.[citation needed]

Traditionally, men were usually the head of the household, in charge of earning most of the family's income while women were responsible for cooking, housework and raising children. However, as in most cultures around the world, the dawn of the 20th century brought forth a great empowerment for women who were given a right to vote during the 1950s rule of dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The Constitution of 1991 gave a wider opportunity for women and today the majority of families (regardless of economic class) have two working parents due to the need of an income to sustain a family.

At a child's baptism, the parents of the child will choose godparents, padrinos. A child's padrinos will play an important role in his life, giving advice, and when needed, financial support.

Divorce
Before 1974 marriage was exclusively performed by the Roman Catholic Church and other religious groups until the government of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen (1974-1978) approved the civil marriage that could only be ended after a legal divorce. It was only after the Colombian Constitution of 1991 that Colombian lawmakers admitted divorces for marriages performed by the Catholic Church.

On June 9, 2005 the Colombian congress approved the Express Divorce law in an effort to eliminate paperwork and waits. These previously took an average of 6 weeks, a judge and lawyers, with the new law the two parties had to only agree against a notary public without the need of a lawyer. According to a study by the Universidad Externado divorce in Colombia has been constantly increasing since the 1950s.


Food
There is a large variety of dishes that take into account the difference in regional climates. For example:

In the city of Medellín the typical dish is the bandeja paisa. Most people in Medellín don't eat it but people in other cities and countries eat it often. It includes beans, rice, ground meat or carne asada, chorizo, fried egg, arepa and chicharrón. It is usually accompanied by avocado, tomato and sauces.
In the city of Cali, the most traditional dish is "sancocho de gallina" - a soup composed mostly of chicken, plantain, corn, coriander, yuca root, and other seasonings.
In Bogotá and the Andean region, ajiaco is the traditional dish. It is also a type of soup made of chicken, potatoes, and flavoured with a locally grown herb called "guasca". Traditionally, cream and capers are added just before eating. Both soups are served with white rice, salads with a hint of lemon, avocado, or plantain chips, sweet or salty. For breakfast people often eat changua, a milk, scallion and egg soup.

In the Caribbean coast, spicy cooking, with fish and lobster, is practiced. Coconut rice is a common dish along the coastal cities.

In the Llanos, barbecued meat, such as the "ternera llanera" is common, and also typical river fishes like the "amarillo".

In the Amazonas, the cuisine is influenced by Brazilian and Peruvian traditions.
Inland, the dishes reflect the mix of cultures, inherited mainly from Amerindian and European cuisine, and the produce of the land mainly agriculture, cattle, river fishing and other animals' raising. Such is the case of the sancocho soup in Valledupar, the arepas (a corn based bread like patty). Local species of animals like the guaratinaja, part of the wayuu Amerindian culture.

In the Tolima region the Tamales Tolimenses are a delicacy. These tamales are made of a corn dough and feature peas, carrots, potatoes, rice, chicken, pork and various spices. They are wrapped in plantain leaves and boiled for three to four hours. Pandebono for breakfast with hot chocolate.

On the Islands of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina the main dish is rondon, a seafood dish made of coconut milk, fish, conch, cassava root (yuca), sweet potato, white yams, and pumpkin seasoned with hot peppers and herbs. They also have a crab soup which is considered a delicacy. It is made with the same ingredients as rondon, without the fish.

Sex roles
Sex roles in Colombia, specially in some segments of population, are rigidly defined. Machismo and marianismo pervade in certain cases. Few men take on housekeeping or child-rearing duties, which are reserved for women. Economic instability has increased the number of single, female-headed families, and gender discrimination in wages and hiring has lead many single mothers and their daughters to turn to prostitution. Abortion is legal in some cases, and divorce was legalized in the past decade.

Family structure
In a comprehensive 1963 study, anthropologist Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda identified four types of Colombian family structures:

Andino or American Family Structure along the Eastern and Central Cordilleras in Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Cauca, Nariño and southern parts of Santander. Religious and patriarchal, most marriages in church, patriarchy proportional with status, limited matriarchy among lower classes.

Santandereano or Neo-Hispanic Family Structure in Santander and Norte de Santander. Extremely patriarchal, high preponderance of machismo, strict class separation, anti-clericalism, preponderance of free marriage.

Negroide or Litoral-fluvio-minero Family Structure along the Caribbean coast, Magdalena River, Cauca River, and Pacific coast; encompassing Atlántico, Córdoba, Bolívar, El Cesar, La Guajira, Sucre, El Chocó, Cauca, and parts of Antioquia. Co-habitation dominant, male prestige related to number of sexual partners and number of children, diminished church presence, preponderance of free marriage.


Antioqueño or Mountain Family Structure in the regions of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, Qundío, and parts of El Valle, Tolima, and El Chocó. Intense Catholicity, large families, machismo related to entrepreneurship, church weddings, sex trade flourshes.
Women
It is common for Colombians to extol the beauty of their countrywomen. Companies, municipalities and even prisons hold over a hundred beauty contests showcasing women annually, more than any other country. Popular soap operas like Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso ("Without {tetas} There Is No Paradise") and Yo Soy Betty La Fea ("Ugly Betty") have satirized the over-emphasis placed on women's sexual attractiveness, fashion and grooming.

Film and television
The interest for the film production come late to Colombia. Vicente and Francisco Di Doménico, of Italian origin, were the pioneers in the films production. In 1912 is inaugurated the first movie theater in Colombia: the Salón Olympia, with a capacity of three thousand persons. The most outstanding directors of the film production are Sergio Cabrera, Felipe Aljure, Luís Ospina, Víctor Gaviria and Carlos Mayolo. Between the most recent proposals we find to Andy Baíz and Juan Felipe Arango, director of "Al final del espectro". The work of Dago García and Rodrigo Triana is in a commercial line.

Sports
The country's most popular sport is soccer. Baseball has become popular in recent years; it is especially popular along the coast and is strongly promoted all around the country. Edgar Rentería is an example of a famous Colombian baseball player, but soccer is still the main sport of the country. Boxing and fighting sports are also very popular amongst the male population and all of these are practiced avidly by the youth.

An ancient game called Tejo, inherited from the muisco, is also played. The object of tejo is to throw a small metal disk at a gunpowder detonator in a small circular area. The winner is calculated by the number of explosions compared to number of throws.


Music in Colombia
Modern Colombian music is a mixture of African, native Indigenous and European (Spanish) influences, as well as more modern American and Caribbean musical forms, such as Trinidadian, Cuban, and Jamaican. The national music of Colombia is said to be vallenato and cumbia.

Cumbia is a mixture of Spanish and African music, the latter brought by slaves. The style of dance is designed to recall the shackles worn around the ankles of the slaves. In the 19th century, slavery was abolished and Africans, Indians and other ethnic groups mixed more fully. Styles like bambuco, vallenato and porro were especially influential. When the waltz became popular in the 19th century, a Colombian version called pasillo was invented. International Latin, a type of pop ballad, and salsa music are best-represented by Charlie Zaa and Joe Arroyo, respectively.

Music and dancing are very popular in Colombia, with dozens of popular vibrant styles. The most popular local musical styles are Vallenato, salsa, Merengue, Cumbia and Bambuco. The latter is a very complicated dance with many differently named steps. Colombian rock developed after an influence of Rock en Español generating fusion of Rock Music with traditional Colombian music and other musical styles.

Dancing to reggaeton became also very popular in Colombia during the first decade of the 21st century.


Aboriginal influences
The various cultures of the indigenous inhabitants of Colombia were decimated by the Spanish. Today, only around one percent of Colombians live and consider themselves as indigenous. Nonetheless, many elements of indigenous culture live on in Colombia's cuisine, music, folklore, and language.

Multicultural elements
Afro-Colombians and Criollo
The essence of Colombian culture lies in the mixing of Spanish, indigenous, and African cultures. The greatest expression of the mélange is perhaps the Carnival of Barranquilla, whose rhythm is the cumbia, and which was proclaimed by UNESCO in November 2003 as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The culture of Spain is still very dominant in Colombia: the layout of towns, bull fighting, holy week processions, and the "refined" dialect of Bogotá are part of its legacy.
Afro-Colombians have historically been marginalized from society. Nonetheless, they have contributed greatly to Colombian culture, including its music, dance and folklore. Cumbia is said to be derivative of the cumbe dance of Equatorial Guinea. Small numbers of Roma or "gypsies" are scattered throughout the country.
Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews exist in several of the larger cities; Bogotá has five synagogues. Germans settled in parts of Santander, including Bucaramanga. They also brought the accordion to Valledupar, which would become a key instrument in the very popular vallenato music genre.

Geography, climate, and immigration
Most Colombians live in the Andes, high above sea level where climates range from temperate to cool (the highest parts get snow). Another important population center is the Caribbean Coast, with the cities of Santa Marta, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. The treacherousness of the terrain and sheer variety of climates made communication and travel very difficult, and helped foster intense regionalism.

The Sabana de Bogotá, a fertile high plateau in the capital district of Colombia, has a mean annual temperature of 14.0°C (57°F)SK

Between the three mountain ranges or cordilleras are two large valleys whose rivers (Magdalena River, Cauca River) link the interior to the coastal ports. These lowlands are thick with rainforests and interspersed rushing tributaries, waterfalls, and steep inclines. The Andes themselves are in parts volcanic, jagged and covered in glaciers. Other parts are more hospitable, such as the tableland of much of Cundinamarca (including Bogotá) and Boyacá (called in Spanish the Altiplano Cundiboyacense), which has a climate similar to the Argentine pampas. Medellín is in the Aburra valley, on the central mountain range, at a lower altitude than chilly Bogotá, which gives it an “eternal spring”-like climate. The Caribbean coast, Colombia’s gateway to the outside world before jet travel, is separated from the Andes by mosquito-filled, marshy wetlands, while the Pacific coast is pock-marked with its own marshes and is one of the wettest places on earth.

Colombia did not receive substantial immigration after the period of Spanish rule. An exception is the Atlantic port city of Barranquilla. Relatively small groups of Lebanese, Italian, Dutch, German, Catalan, Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian, French, and Chinese immigrants settled in the city and played a large role in its development. Shakira, a native of Barranquilla, is of Lebanese and Italian ancestry. Bogotá received some immigrants from Europe in the period following World War II; the eccentric former mayor of Bogotá and semiotics professor Antanas Mockus is the son of Lithuanian immigrants. Most Chinese in Colombia originally came from Panama, where they helped in the building of the railways of the Panama Canal, to help in building the train and road routes between the Pacific port of Buenaventura and the interior city of Cali. Today, in the surrounding area of the Cauca Valley, virtually every town has a Chinese restaurant.

A few Japanese families settled in Colombia, inspired by the bucolic description of the Cauca Valley in Jorge Isaacs' novel María. The heads-of-household of Japanese descent would be interred in prisons near Zipaquirá during World War II.

Public education
Public education in Colombia is free and compulsory for students coursing Primary Studies (Básica Primaria) consisting of five years, from first grade to fifth grade. Classes begin in February and finish in November. Students usually begin primary at age of six, and finish it at age of ten. Secondary Studies (Básica Secundaria) are not free and consists of six years, from sixth grade to eleventh grade. Classes begin in January and finish in November.During the eleventh grade students apply for the ICFES test, similar to the SAT test, which is needed to apply for superior studies.
Public schools in Colombia usually attend only half a day, since there are so many kids and so very few schools and teachers, they divide the day in two, having one set of kids attend in the morning from 7 to 12 pm and one set in the afternoon from 1 to 6 pm, like having two schools in the same facility. The government has started a night school program for those students who work during the day , though. Some teachers may work at two or three different schools during the day or at the same school during the whole day.
The students can go to classes in the morning, from 7 AM to 12 PM , in the afternoon, from 1 PM to 6 PM,or at night from 6:30 to about 10:00( some night schools hours may be shorter).
Most students of public schools are from low income families and cannot afford superior studies. Such students can choose a free course in the SENA (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje) or study in educative corporations (corporaciones educativas) which offer very few titles of universities, and technical degrees. There are only a few public universities where students can get an education for free or very little money.

Private education
Private education in Colombia is more reliable than public education, but is more expensive. In intermediate and small cities, monthly costs can range from USD 50 to USD 400. In bigger cities, costs can be USD 300 or more, however, the most expensive schools are not always the best. The classes begin in the morning (usually at 6:30) and finish in the afternoon between 1:30 and 2:30 pm.
The school year starts in January or February and finishes in November, for Calendar A schools. The school year in calendar B schools begins in August and finishes in June. Most schools expect from children to learn to read and write before beginning primary and most schools are bilingual, however, all schools, public and private must teach English as a second language.
The teaching of English is more intensive in private schools, some students are fluent before beginning middle vocational studies. Most private schools assure that all the students can apply for superior studies in a normal university.
Due that most students come from middle and upper class families, they can afford superior studies. Private universities are expensive, a semester can cost USD 1500, most private universities are in Barranquilla, Bogotá, Medellín and Cali.