What happened in history in Colombia

It must be said, though, that Bolívar protested to the Spanish authorities about the reasons why he handled Miranda, insisting that he was not lending a service to the Crown but punishing a defector. In 1813, he was given a military command in Tunja, New Granada (modern-day Colombia), under the direction of the Congress of United Provinces of New Granada, which had formed out of the juntas established in 1810.

Bolívar forces entered Bogotá in 1814 and recaptured the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca. Bolívar intended to march into Cartagena and enlist the aid of local forces in order to capture the Royalist town of Santa Marta.

The campaign for the independence of New Granada, which included the crossing of the Andes mountain range, one of history's military feats, was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819. The Battle of Boyacá (1819), was the decisive battle that ensured the success of Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada. The battle of Boyaca is considered the beginning of the independence of the North of South America, and is considered important because it led to the victories of the battle of Carabobo in Venezuela, Pichincha in Ecuador, and Junín and Ayacucho in Peru.

Bolívar returned to Angostura, when congress passed a law forming a greater Republic of Colombia on 17 December, making Bolívar president and Zea vice president, with Francisco de Paula Santander vice president on the New Granada side, and Juan Germán Roscio vice president on the Venezuela side.

Morillo was left in control of Caracas and the coastal highlands.After the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Morillo ratified two treaties with Bolívar on 25 November 1820, calling for a six-month armistice and recognizing Bolívar as president of the republic.

On 7 September 1821, Gran Colombia (a state covering much of modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) was created, with Bolívar as president and Santander as vice president.

Bolívar is thus one of the few people to have a country named after him. Bolívar returned to Caracas on 12 January 1827, and then back to Bogotá.

Bolívar had great difficulties maintaining control of the vast Gran Colombia. In 1826, internal divisions sparked dissent throughout the nation, and regional uprisings erupted in Venezuela. The new South American union had revealed its fragility and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. To preserve the union, an amnesty was declared and an arrangement was reached with the Venezuelan rebels, but this increased the political dissent in neighboring New Granada. In an attempt to keep the nation together as a single entity, Bolívar called for a constitutional convention at Ocaña in March 1828.

This move was considered controversial in New Granada and was one of the reasons for the deliberations, which met from 9 April to 10 June 1828. The convention almost ended up drafting a document which would have implemented a radically federalist form of government, which would have greatly reduced the powers of a central administration. The federalist faction was able to command a majority for the draft of a new constitution which has definite federal characteristics despite its ostensibly centralist outline. Unhappy with what would be the ensuing result, pro-Bolívar delegates withdrew from the convention, leaving it moribund.

On 20 January 1830, as his dream fell apart, Bolívar delivered his final address to the nation, announcing that he would be stepping down from the presidency of Gran Colombia. In his speech, a distraught Bolívar urged the people to maintain the union and to be wary of the intentions of those who advocated for separation.

Bolívar finally resigned the presidency on 27 April 1830, intending to leave the country for exile in Europe. He had already sent several crates containing his belongings and writings ahead of him to Europe, but he died before setting sail from Cartagena.

On 17 December 1830, at the age of 47, Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis in the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino in Santa Marta, Gran Colombia (now Colombia).

In Spanish Latin America, the Revolution of 1848 appeared in New Granada, where Colombian students, liberals, and intellectuals demanded the election of General José Hilario López.

The Salomón–Lozano Treaty was signed in July 1922 by representatives Fabio Lozano Torrijos, of Colombia and Alberto Salomón Osorio of Peru. The fourth in a succession of treaties on the Colombian-Peruvian disputes over land in the upper Amazon region, it was intended to be a comprehensive settlement of the long border dispute between the two countries.

In 1948 the assassination of populist Jorge Eliécer Gaitán radically stirred up the armed conflict. It led to the Bogotazo, an urban riot killing more than 4,000 people, and subsequently to ten years of sustained rural warfare between members of Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party, a period known as La Violencia ("The Violence"), which took the lives of more than 200,000 people throughout the countryside.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on 1 December 1949, in Rionegro, in the Antioquia Department of Colombia. He was the third of seven children of the farmer Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar Echeverri (1910–2001), with his wife Hilda de Los Dolores Gaviria Berrío, an elementary school teacher.

In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation.

Raised in the nearby city of Medellín, Escobar is thought to have begun his criminal career as a teenager, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to local smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, instead claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that he had a relative who had a monuments business. Escobar's son, Sebastián Marroquín, claims his father's foray into crime began with a successful practice of selling counterfeit high school diplomas, generally counterfeiting those awarded by the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín. Escobar studied at the University for a short period, but left without obtaining a degree.

In February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey.

In the early 1960s Colombian Army units loyal to the National Front began to attack peasant communities. This happened throughout Colombia with the Colombian army considering that these peasant communities were enclaves for bandits and Communists. It was the 1964 attack on the community of Marquetalia that motivated the later creation of FARC.

Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of contraband became too dangerous to traffic. As there were no drug cartels then, and only a few drug barons, Pablo saw it as untapped territory he wished to make his own. In Peru, Pablo would buy the cocaine paste, which would then be refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry 30 pounds (14 kg) of paste in what was noted as the first step towards building his empire. At first, he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires, and a pilot could return as much as US$500,000 per flight, dependent on the quantity smuggled.

By 1974, another challenge to the state's authority and legitimacy had come from the 19th of April Movement (M-19), leading to a new phase in the conflict. The M-19 was a mostly urban guerrilla group, founded in response to an electoral fraud during the final National Front election of Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970–1974) and the forced removal of former president Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.

In The Accountant's Story, Roberto Escobar discusses how Pablo rose from middle-class simplicity and obscurity to one of the world's wealthiest men. Beginning in 1975, Pablo started developing his cocaine operation, flying out planes several times, mainly between Colombia and Panama, along smuggling routes into the United States. When he later bought fifteen bigger airplanes, including a Learjet and six helicopters, according to his son, a dear friend of Pablo's died during the landing of an airplane, and the plane was destroyed. Pablo reconstructed the airplane from the scrap parts that were left and later hung it above the gate to his ranch at Hacienda Nápoles.

In March 1976, the 26-year-old Escobar married María Victoria Henao, who was 15. The relationship was discouraged by the Henao family, who considered Escobar socially inferior; the pair eloped. They had two children: Juan Pablo (now Sebastián Marroquín) and Manuela.

Born on 2 February 1977 in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Escobar quickly became known internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; the Medellín Cartel controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Spain. The production process was also altered, with coca from Bolivia and Peru replacing the coca from Colombia, which was beginning to be seen as substandard quality than the coca from the neighboring countries. As demand for more and better cocaine increased, Escobar began working with Roberto Suárez Goméz, helping to further the product to other countries in the Americas and Europe, as well as being rumored to reach as far as Asia.

With the enormous profits generated by this route, Escobar was soon able to purchase 7.7 square miles (20 km2) of land in Antioquia for several million dollars, on which he built the Hacienda Nápoles. The luxury house he created contained a zoo, a lake, a sculpture garden, a private bullring, and other diversions for his family and the cartel.

Guerrillas and newly wealthy drug lords had mutually uneven relations and thus numerous incidents occurred between them. Eventually the kidnapping of drug cartel family members by guerrillas led to the creation of the 1981 Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) death squad ("Death to Kidnappers").

In 1982 Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, as part of a small movement called Liberal Alternative. Earlier in the campaign, he was a candidate for the Liberal Renewal Movement but had to leave it because of the firm opposition of Luis Carlos Galán, whose presidential campaign was supported by the Liberal Renewal Movement. Escobar was the official representative of the Colombian government for the swearing-in of Felipe González in Spain.

Pressure from the U.S. government and critical sectors of Colombian society was met with further violence, as the Medellín Cartel and its hitmen, bribed or murdered numerous public officials, politicians and others who stood in its way by supporting the implementation of extradition of Colombian nationals to the U.S. Victims of cartel violence included Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, assassinated in 1984, an event which made the Betancur administration begin to directly oppose the drug lords.

The first negotiated cease-fire with the M-19 ended when the guerrillas resumed fighting in 1985, claiming that the cease-fire had not been fully respected by official security forces, saying that several of its members had suffered threats and assaults, and also questioning the government's real willingness to implement any accords.

It is alleged that Escobar backed the 1985 storming of the Colombian Supreme Court by left-wing guerrillas from the 19th of April Movement, also known as M-19. The siege, a retaliation motivated by the Supreme Court studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the U.S., resulted in the murders of half the judges on the court. M-19 was paid to break into the Palace and burn all papers and files on Los Extraditables, a group of cocaine smugglers who were under threat of being extradited to the U.S. by the Colombian government. Escobar was listed as a part of Los Extraditables. Hostages were also taken for negotiation of their release, thus helping to prevent the extradition of Los Extraditables to the U.S. for their crimes.

The Betancur administration in turn questioned the M-19's actions and its commitment to the peace process, as it continued to advance high-profile negotiations against with the FARC, which led to the creation of the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica) -UP-, a legal and non-clandestine political organization.

On November 6, 1985, the M-19 stormed the Colombian Palace of Justice and held the Supreme Court magistrates hostage, intending to put president Betancur on trial. In the ensuing crossfire that followed the military's reaction, some 120 people lost their lives, as did most of the guerrillas, including several high-ranking operatives and 12 Supreme Court Judges. Both sides blamed each other for the outcome. This marked the end of Betancur's peace process.

The Armero tragedy was one of the major consequences of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia, on November 13, 1985. The lahars picked up speed in gullies and engulfed the town of Armero, killing more than 20,000 of its almost 29,000 inhabitants. Casualties in other towns, particularly Chinchiná, brought the overall death toll to 23,000.

In June 1987, the ceasefire between FARC and the Colombian government formally collapsed after the guerrillas attacked a military unit in the jungles of Caquetá.

In October 1987, the UP's 1986 presidential candidate Jaime Pardo Leal was assassinated amid a wave of violence that would lead to the deaths of thousands of its party members at the hands of death squads. According to Pecáut, the killers included members of the military and the political class who had opposed Belisario Betancur's peace process and considered the UP to be little more than a "facade" for FARC, as well as drug traffickers and landowners who were also involved in the establishment of paramilitary groups.

When questioned about the essence of the cocaine business, Escobar replied with "the business is simple: you bribe someone here, you bribe someone there, and you pay a friendly banker to help you bring the money back." In 1989, Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be one of 227 billionaires in the world with a personal net worth of approaching US$3 billion while his Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. It is commonly believed that Escobar was the principal financier behind Medellín's Atlético Nacional, which won South America's most prestigious football tournament, the Copa Libertadores, in 1989.

During the height of its operations, the Medellín Cartel brought in more than US$70 million per day (roughly $26 billion in a year). Smuggling 15 tons of cocaine per day, worth more than half a billion dollars, into the United States, the cartel spent over US$1,000 per week purchasing rubber bands to wrap the stacks of cash, storing most of it in their warehouses. Ten percent (10%) of the cash had to be written off per year because of "spoilage", due to rats creeping in and nibbling on the bills they could reach.

Following Escobar's escape, the United States Joint Special Operations Command and Centra Spike joined the manhunt for Escobar. They trained and advised a special Colombian police task force known as the Search Bloc, which had been created to locate Escobar. Later, as the conflict between Escobar and the governments of the United States and Colombia dragged on, and as the numbers of Escobar's enemies grew, a vigilante group known as Los Pepes (Los Perseguidos for Pablo Escobar, "People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar") was formed. The group was financed by his rivals and former associates, including the Cali Cartel and right-wing paramilitaries led by Carlos Castañ, Los Pepes carried out a bloody campaign, fueled by vengeance, in which more than 300 of Escobar's associates, his lawyer and relatives were slain, and a large amount of the Medellín cartel's property was destroyed.

The Colombian cartels' continuing struggles to maintain supremacy resulted in Colombia quickly becoming the world's murder capital with 25,100 violent deaths in 1991 and 27,100 in 1992. This increased murder rate was fueled by Escobar's giving money to his hitmen as a reward for killing police officers, over 600 of whom died as a result.

The M-19 and several smaller guerrilla groups were successfully incorporated into a peace process as the 1980s ended and the '90s began, which culminated in the elections for a Constituent Assembly of Colombia that would write a new constitution, which took effect in 1991.

After the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, the administration of César Gaviria moved against Escobar and the drug cartels. Eventually, the government negotiated with Escobar and convinced him to surrender and cease all criminal activity in exchange for a reduced sentence and preferential treatment during his captivity. Declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. Before he gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens to the United States had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. This act was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar and other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly in passing the law. Escobar was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral, which featured a football pitch, giant dollhouse, bar, jacuzzi, and waterfall. Accounts of Escobar's continued criminal activities while in prison began to surface in the media, which prompted the government to attempt to move him to a more conventional jail on 22 July 1992. Escobar's influence allowed him to discover the plan in advance and make a successful escape, spending the remainder of his life evading the police.

Shakira's debut album, Magia, was recorded with Sony Music Colombia in 1990 when she was only 13 years old.The songs are a collection made by her since she was eight, mixed pop-rock ballads and disco uptempo songs with electronic accompaniment; however, it was hampered by a lack of cohesion in both its recording and the production. The album was released in June 1991 and featured "Magia" and three other singles. Though it fared well on Colombian radio and gave the young Shakira much exposure, the album did not fare well commercially, as only 1,200 copies were sold worldwide.

Shakira's second studio album, titled Peligro, was released in March, but Shakira was not pleased with the final result, mainly taking issue with the production. The album was better received than Magia had been, though it was also considered a commercial failure due to Shakira's refusal to advertise or promote it. Shakira then decided to take a hiatus from recording so that she could graduate from high school.

Sixteen months after his escape from La Catedral, Pablo Escobar died in a shootout on 2 December 1993, amid another of Escobar's attempts to elude the Search Bloc. A Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martínez, used radio trilateration technology to track his radiotelephone transmissions and found him hiding in Los Olivos, a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Álvaro de Jesús Agudelo (alias "El Limón"), ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg and torso, and a fatal gunshot through the ear.

Paramilitary activities increased, both legally and illegally. The creation of legal CONVIVIR self-defense and intelligence gathering groups was authorized by Congress and the Samper administration in 1994.

The 1994 Páez River earthquake occurred on June 6 with a moment magnitude of 6.8 at a depth of 12 km (7.5 mi). The event, which is also known as the Páez River disaster, included subsequent landslides and mudslides that destroyed the small town of Páez, located on the foothills of the Central Ranges of the Andes in Cauca in south-western Colombia. It was estimated that 1,100 people, mostly from the Páez, were killed in some 15 settlements on the Páez River basin, Cauca and Huila departments of which the eponymous town of Páez suffered 50% of the death toll.

In 1994, Shakira starred in the Colombian TV series The Oasis, loosely based on the Armero tragedy in 1985.

Soon after Escobar's death and the subsequent fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel, the cocaine market became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel until the mid-1990s when its leaders were either killed or captured by the Colombian government. The Robin Hood image that Escobar had cultivated maintained a lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor whom Escobar had aided while he was alive, mourned his death, and over 25,000 people attended his funeral. Some of them consider him a saint and pray to him for receiving divine help.

Shakira returned to recording music under Sony Music along with Columbia Records in 1995 with Luis F. Ochoa,These recordings spawned her third studio album, and her major-label debut, titled Pies Descalzos,which was released in February 1996. It only managed to reach number one-hundred-eighty on the U.S. Billboard 200 but reached number five on the U.S. Billboard Top Latin Albums chart. The album spawned six hit singles, "Estoy Aquí", which reached number two on the U.S. Latin chart, "¿Dónde Estás Corazón?" which reached number five on the U.S. Latin chart, "Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos" which reached number 11 on the U.S. Latin chart, "Un Poco de Amor" which reached number six on the U.S. Latin chart, "Antología" which reached number 15 on the U.S. Latin chart, and "Se quiere, Se Mata" which reached number eight on the U.S. Latin chart.

In mid-1996, a civic protest movement made up of an estimated 200,000 coca growers from Putumayo and part of Cauca began marching against the Colombian government to reject its drug war policies, including fumigations and the declaration of special security zones in some departments.

In Las Delicias, Caquetá, five FARC fronts (about 400 guerrillas) recognized intelligence pitfalls in a Colombian Army base and exploited them to overrun it on August 30, 1996, killing 34 soldiers, wounding 17 and taking some 60 as prisoners.

Members of CONVIVIR groups were accused of committing numerous abuses against the civilian population by several human rights organizations. The groups were left without legal support after a 1997 decision by the Colombian Constitutional Court which restricted many of their prerogatives and demanded stricter oversight.

In the past, the Colombian government laid landmines around 34 military bases to protect key infrastructure, but it renounced their use in 1997.

In April 1997, preexisting paramilitary forces and several former CONVIVIR members were joined to create the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), a large paramilitary militia closely tied to drug trafficking which carried out attacks on the FARC and ELN rebel groups as well as civilians starting with the 1997 Mapiripán Massacre.

The Samper administration reacted against FARC's attacks by contacted the guerrillas in order to negotiate the release of some or all of the hostages in FARC hands, which led to the temporary demilitarization of the municipality of Cartagena del Chairá, Caquetá in July 1997 and the unilateral liberation of 70 soldiers, a move which was opposed by the command of the Colombian military. Other contacts between the guerrillas and government, as well as with representatives of religious and economic sectors, continued throughout 1997 and 1998.

A New Significant attack took place in El Billar, Caquetá on March 2, 1998, where a Colombian Army counterinsurgency battalion was patrolling, resulting in the death of 62 soldiers and the capture of some 43.

On August 7, 1998, Andrés Pastrana Arango was sworn in as the President of Colombia. A member of the Conservative Party, Pastrana defeated Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa in a run-off election marked by high voter turn-out and little political unrest. The new president's program was based on a commitment to bring about a peaceful resolution of Colombia's longstanding civil conflict and to cooperate fully with the United States to combat the trafficking of illegal drugs.

Her fourth studio album was titled Dónde Están los Ladrones? This, produced entirely by Shakira herself and Emilio Estefan, Jr. as the executive producer, was released in September 1998. The album, inspired by an incident in an airport in which a suitcase filled with her written lyrics was stolen, became a bigger hit than Pies Descalzos. The album has reached a peak position of number 131 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and held the top spot on the U.S. Latin Albums chart for 11 weeks. It has since sold over 7 million copies worldwide and 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone, making it one of the best selling Spanish albums in the U.S. Eight singles were taken from the album including "Ciega, Sordomuda", "Moscas En La Casa", and "No Creo", which became her first single to chart on the U.S. Billboard Billboard Hot 100, "Inevitable", "Tú", "Si Te Vas", "Octavo día", and "Ojos Así". The latter two songs won Shakira one Latin Grammy each, with six of the eight singles reaching the top 40 on the U.S. Latin chart.

In July 1999, Colombian military forces attacked the town of Puerto Lleras, Colombia where FARC rebels were stationed. Using U.S. supplied aircraft and equipment, and backed with U.S. logistical support, Colombian government forces strafed and bombed the town for over 72 hours.

On January 17, 2002, right-wing paramilitaries entered the village of Chengue, and divided up the villagers into two groups. They then went from person to person in one of the groups, smashing each person's head with sledgehammers and rocks, killing 24 people, as the Colombian military sat by and watched. Two other bodies were later discovered dumped in a shallow grave. As the paramilitaries left, they set fire to the village.

Maradona had a tendency to put on weight and suffered increasingly from obesity, at one point weighing 280 lb (130 kg). He was obese from the end of his playing career until undergoing gastric bypass surgery in a clinic in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on 6 March 2005.

Colombian authorities indicated that a boy matching Emmanuel's description had been taken to a hospital in San José del Guaviare in June 2005. The child was in poor condition; one of his arms was hurt, he had severe malnutrition, and he had diseases that are commonly suffered in the jungle. Having been evidently mistreated, the boy was later sent to a foster home in Bogotá and DNA tests were announced in order to confirm his identity.

Starting in 2004 a disarmament process was begun of Colombia's paramilitary groups (especially the AUC) and was completed on April 12, 2006, when 1,700 fighters turned in their weapons in the town of Casibare.

In May 2006, the Colombian presidential election resulted in Uribe winning re-election with a historic first round vote tally of 62%, followed by leftist Carlos Gaviria with 22% and Horacio Serpa.

On June 28, 2007 the FARC suddenly reported the death of 11 of the 12 kidnapped provincial deputies from Valle del Cauca Department. The Colombian government accused the FARC of executing the hostages and stated that government forces had not made any rescue attempts. FARC claimed that the deaths occurred during a crossfire, after an attack to one of its camps by an "unidentified military group".

At the end of 2007, FARC agreed to release former senator Consuelo González, politician Clara Rojas and her son Emmanuel, born in captivity after a relationship with one of her captors. Operation Emmanuel was proposed and set up by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, with the permission of the Colombian government. The mission was approved on December 26. Although, on December 31, FARC claimed that the hostage release had been delayed because of Colombian military operations. On the same time, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe indicated that FARC had not freed the three hostages because Emmanuel may not be in their hands anymore. Two FARC gunmen were taken prisoner.

On January 4, 2008, the results of a mitochondrial DNA test, comparing the child's DNA with that of his potential grandmother Clara de Rojas, were revealed by the Colombian government. It was reported that there was a very high probability that the boy was indeed part of the Rojas family.The same day, FARC released a communique in which they admitted that Emmanuel had been taken to Bogotá and "left in the care of honest persons" for safety reasons until a humanitarian exchange took place. The group accused President Uribe of "kidnapping" the child in order to sabotage his liberation.

on January 10, 2008, FARC released Rojas and Gonzalez through a humanitarian commission headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On February 2008, FARC released four political hostages "as a gesture of goodwill" toward Chávez, who had brokered the deal and sent Venezuelan helicopters with Red Cross logos into the Colombian jungle to pick up the freed hostages.

On March 3, Iván Ríos, also a member of the FARC Central High Command was killed by his security chief "Rojas". In March 2008 alone, FARC lost 3 members of their Secretariat, including their founder.

On May 24, 2008, Colombian magazine, Revista Semana, published an interview with Colombian defense minister Juan Manuel Santos in which Santos mentions the death of Manuel Marulanda Vélez. The news was confirmed by FARC-commander 'Timochenko' on Venezuelan based television station Telesur on May 25, 2008. 'Timochenko' announced the new commander in chief is 'Alfonso Cano'.

On July 2, 2008, the Colombian armed forces launched Operation Jaque that resulted in the freedom of 15 political hostages, including former Colombian presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell, three American military contractors employed by Northrop Grumman and 11 Colombian military and police. Two FARC members were arrested. This trick to the FARC was presented by the Colombian government as a proof that the guerrilla organisation and influence is declining.

On October 26, 2008, after 8 years of captivity, the ex-congressman Óscar Tulio Lizcano escaped with the assistance of a FARC rebel he convinced to travel with him.

In February 2009, the guerrilla released 6 hostages as a humanitarian gesture.

In March, the guerrilla released Swedish hostage Erik Roland Larsson.

In April 2009, the Colombian armed forces launched Strategic Leap, an offensive in borders areas where the FARC's forces still has a strong military presence, especially in Arauca, near the Venezuelan border.

In November 2009, Nine Colombian soldiers were killed when their post was attacked by FARC guerrillas in a southwestern part of the country.

On December 22, 2009, FARC rebels raided the home of Provincial governor Luis Francisco Cuéllar, killing one police officer and wounding two. Cuellar was found dead the following day.

On January 1, 2010, Eighteen FARC rebels were killed when the Colombian Air Force bombed a jungle camp in Southern Colombia. Colombian troops of the elite Task Force Omega then stormed the camp, capturing fifteen FARC rebels, as well as 25 rifles, war materials, explosives, and information which was given to military intelligence. In Southwestern Colombia, FARC rebels ambushed an army patrol, killing a soldier. The troops then exchanged fire with the rebels. During the fighting, a teenager was killed in the crossfire.

When Juan Manuel Santos was elected president in August 2010, he promised to "continue the armed offensive" against rebel movements. In the month after his inauguration, FARC and ELN killed roughly 50 soldiers and policemen in attacks all over Colombia.

In September 2010, the FARC's second-in-command Mono Jojoy was killed. By the end of 2010, it became increasingly clear that "neo-paramilitary groups", referred to as "criminal groups" (BACRIM) by the government, had become an increasing threat to national security, with violent groups such as Los Rastrojos and Aguilas Negras taking control of large parts of the Colombian countryside.

In 2011, the Colombian Congress issued a statement claiming that the FARC has a "strong presence" in roughly one third of Colombia, while their attacks against security forces "have continued to rise" throughout 2010 and 2011.

In 2011, Slim began buying a 70 percent stake in Geoprocesados SA's Tabasco Oil Co., gaining access to the Colombian oil market as the country seeks to boost crude and natural-gas output.

In 2012, the Colombia Military launched The Espada de Honor War Plan, an aggressive counterinsurgency strategies that aims to dismantle FARC's structure, crippling them both militarily and financially. The plan targets FARC leadership and it is focused on eliminating 15 of the most powerful economic and military fronts.

On July 20, 2013, as peace talks were making progress, two rebel attacks on government positions killed 19 soldiers and an unspecified number of combatants. It was the deadliest day since peace talks began in November 2012.

On 15 December 2014, 9 FARC guerrillas were killed in the aftermath airstrikes conducted by the Colombian air force in the Meta province.

In March 2015, FARC stated that it would begin humanitarian demining in selected parts of Colombia.

On 22 May 2015, the FARC suspended a truce after 26 of its fighters were killed in a government air and ground offensive.

On 22 June 2015, a Colombian Army Black Hawk helicopter was destroyed while landing on a mine field laid by FARC: four soldiers were killed and six were wounded.

On 23 June 2016, the Colombian government and FARC agreed to a ceasefire.

A "final, full and definitive accord" was agreed to on August 24, 2016. This accord does not include ELN.

On 2 October 2016, the results of the referendum to decide whether or not to support the peace accord showed that 50.2% opposed the accord while 49.8% favoured it.

The Colombian government and the FARC on November 24 signed a revised peace deal and the revised agreement will be submitted to Congress for approval. The House of Representatives unanimously approved the plan on November 30, a day after the Senate also gave its backing.

FARC dissidents are a group formerly part of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who have refused to lay down their arms after the FARC-government peace treaty came into effect in 2016. On 15 July 2018, the Colombian and Peruvian governments launched a joint military effort known as Operation Armageddon to combat FARC dissidents. Peru issued a 60-day state of emergency in the Putumayo Province, an area bordering both Colombia and Ecuador. On the first day alone, more than 50 individuals were arrested in the operation, while four cocaine labs were dismantled. The group has attempted to recruit locals in the Putumayo Province in Peru to take up their cause.

In February 2019, Branson helped organize an international benefit concert, Venezuela Aid Live, to bring worldwide attention to the humanitarian crisis and raise funds for humanitarian aid. The concert took place on 22 February in Cúcuta, Colombia, on the Venezuelan border.