Arauca: A Novel of Colombia

We compiled a list of available hotels close to the map centre further down the page.

Being here already, you might want to pay a visit to some of the following locations: To further explore this place, just scroll down and browse the available info. Let's start with some photos from the area. Photos provided and hosted by Panoramio. Images are under the copyright of their owners.

More info shown for each image when viewed in detail. March 30, Length: May 19, Length: December 20, Length: July 06, Length: July 31, Length: February 16, Length: February 18, Length: April 12, Length: October 27, Length: June 08, Length: Videos provided by Youtube are under the copyright of their owners. Under—registration of mortality statistics is a common issue in developing countries at all regional levels, including national estimates, which is true for current Latin American data i. To over—come under—registration of mortality at a national level, several methods have been developed since the s with a large consensus on their validity in the demographic community Moultrie et al.

However, such methods do not produce accurate estimates for small area populations. The problem with most of these methodologies is the need for auxiliary data, which relies on additional micro—level data, such as household surveys or administrative records, which could also be incomplete or hard to access. In the case of Spatial Demography, auxiliary data derives from geographic information systems or extensive satellite imagery.

These limitations are precisely what motivated this proposal of a spatial model with a Bayesian approach that relies entirely on the current mortality data at hand, to both describe observed mortality patterns and to signal small areas with under—registration problems. More importantly, it would reduce the search for auxiliary data, so any country with a vital registration system, which suffers of under—registration could apply the methodology proposed here. However, the frequentist approach may lead to unstable estimations of smr, since the associated variations are related to population density and, as a result, municipalities with lower population produce over—estimated variances.

However, combining spatial demography and Bayesian estimation is rare in the literature and has proven to be useful for the study of small area differences of smrs in different contexts such as mortality patterns in Italy Divino, Egidi and Salvatore or forecast of hiv prevalence in Uganda and Tanzania Clark, Thomas and Bao In particular, Divino, Egidi and Salvatore differ from our methodological point of view, as they apply a hierarchical spatial model. This helps by pointing out geographic differences in mortality rates across small areas, despite the fact that they can be inter—related and hold persistent over—time geographic information, which influences observed rates.

Their objective is to account for such dependences that can affect other small areas SMR. While, Clark et al. Their analysis uses an extension of a mathematical model for contagion and spread in time, by using a Bayesian application with a maximum likelihood estimation method. Their results follow a mathematical model applied to observed data on population counts and hiv prevalence for small areas. The methodology proposed here accounts for random effects, an unstructured distribution and geographical effects.

The following section presents the details and limitations to the methodological construction. Each Department is fractioned in smaller sub—regions called " municipios " or municipalities, as will be called for the remainder of the paper. The number of municipalities varies with total population per square meter in an area, by Constitutional law. In fact, in , Colombia had almost 1, municipalities, but by , there were 1, official municipalities in Colombia. For this reason, we used geographic coding data for the municipalities that remained geographically consistent for all years during the entire period under study, — Data was taken from the Otlet Library 1.

This makes the Colombian case an attractive one to apply the here methodology proposed here. As mentioned before, this paper focuses on homicides, because the legal process demands an autopsy for all cases, which makes this particular cause the most consistent of all causes of death in terms of data collection Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza The reliability of causes of death has been a cause of debate over decades. Vital registration systems depend heavily on Medical Doctors who may fail to identify the leading cause of death, for several reasons. For instance, death certificates can be filled out without a treating Medical Doctor, as occurs in many developing countries.

This debate on quality of causes of death has led to the creation of "verbal autopsy" methodology WHO , as an instrument that could help identify the main cause of death by interviewing relatives, next of kin and caregivers of the deceased. Thus, using homicides avoids the distraction of missreporting cause of death, while it allows accounting for actual under—registration issues. Homicide counts from to were provided in wide age groups while data from to was given in five—years—age—groups.

• Runaway River.
• A journey to the heart of ‘La vorágine’ in Orocué, Casanare?
• Hotels and Places to Stay.
• Michael Jacobs's top 10 Colombian stories;
• Intuition, Hunches & Gut Feelings!
• Touring Arauca?

All data was homogenized to the former decade. There were three data points combination of year and municipality with missing homicide data, but such municipalities had serial years with homicide records. For those three data points, homicide counts are imputed with the mean number of homicides for neighboring municipalities for the year—municipality they were missing. Yearly population estimates by age, sex and municipality are calculated from the two latest National Census records DANE , carried out in and , by using linear extrapolation of the exponential model of population growth.

To maintain consistency in the time series, municipalities for which there was no geographical information in the Otlet library were eliminated. Both uniform age groups of homicide counts and population estimates allow the calculation of yearly homicide rates by age and sex per municipality for the entire period from to Age groups for each sex correspond to ages: Then, municipal homicide rates by age and sex were standardized by using the total Colombian population as standard population. Standardization allows eliminating population size effects and is used for the remaining calculations.

Results focus on adult mortality, between ages of 15 and 44, as child, youth mortality, and elderly mortality suffer from much higher under—registration. Those age groups also have many zero rates of homicide, which requires a different type of estimation model for instance, zero—inflated distribution. Nevertheless, all estimations are done for each of the age groups described above and combining all ages or total deaths. There is only one previous attempt at building the homicide atlas in Colombia. His results show a correlation between economics sources and the increments of violence, understanding as economic resources several agricultural and mineral resources, including cocaine plantations and access to infrastructure.

However, that attempt follows a very different methodology in several aspects from the one presented here. First, it does not account for under registration issues; second, it is not portrayed at the municipal level, only at the municipal heads level; third, it ignores demographic forces by only incorporating counts and not rates, which are not standardized, as they should be by age and sex, two of the basic variables that define mortality and homicide patterns at national and sub national level; finally, it over weights data by spreading the overall effect of departments, rather than using municipal data.

Arauca Best of Arauca, Colombia Tourism - TripAdvisor

For these reasons, the methodology presented here will produce maps useful for researchers and specialists in crime data or conflict analysts as it provides homicides behavior in small populations in Colombia over long yearly series. Besag's approach allows quantifying uncertainty and translating it into confidence intervals over the estimates. It also generates consistent estimates by adding the geographical dimension. Those two conditions enable estimating the geographic distribution of homicide risk, including municipalities, whose statistical size does not allow estimating their risks with reasonable accuracy.

The structure of the model is as follows:. All risk estimations used a Bayesian estimation method. The latter is an important subject to consider; because of this assumption, the sum to zero constraint for the spatial random effects, already implemented in the ICAR distribution in the Winbugs, works properly for this analysis 2. The estimation process used the Specialized Bayesian software Openbugs Lunn et al. To obtain the results we applied straightforward codes.

For technical aspects, the choropleth maps were built using the posterior median of the standardized homicide rates, after running a chain with 75, iterations, burning in the first 5, and keeping those resulting after a systematic sampling every 50 iterations. Convergence was checked before making the inference, which was finally made with samples of 1, mcmc iterations. Homicide Adult Mortality Rates in Colombia from to Peculiarities of the Colombian Case During the second half of the twentieth century, Colombia underwent a series of civilian conflicts that left Colombia with an excess of adult male mortality when compared to other countries in the region, mainly explained by the increase in homicides.

Homicide rates, and particularly young—adult ages 15 to 44 homicide rates, are a good proxy for the intensity of armed conflicts in the world. Homicide atlases, as the one proposed here, provide an instant graphic representation of homicide rates, as well as the escalation of violence in Colombia over time.

Moreover, homicide counts suffer much lower under—registration than other causes of death for two main reasons Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza First, all identified corpses by external causes of death suicide, accidents and homicides must follow a particular protocol that includes a compulsory autopsy. Therefore, it is very hard to hide these deaths from the vital record system, and even if their recognition is delayed i. Second, this pathological exam clearly identifies the cause of death, unlike internal causes of death that rely only on the official death certificate filled out by the medical doctor who signed it at the time of the death, who may or not be the treating doctor of the deceased.

Finally, cause attribution for internal causes of death suffer intrinsic miss—recording problems, highlighted in the literature, which is aggravated in developing countries Setel et al.

Services on Demand

The recent history of Colombia points out the first eruption of the violence of the second half of the twentieth century in the mid—, with the confrontation of the followers of the two main political parties, Liberals and Conservatives, in the period called " La Violencia " The Violence. This latter transformed into a war of bandits and continued until the late s. By the mid s, as in many other Latin American countries, socialist guerrillas erupted in rural areas into what is known as the beginning of the current "Armed Internal Conflict" —present.

This conflict has persisted for such a long time and with so many different actors that it is a very dynamic process that needs to be revisited over time. In fact, by the beginning of the s, a group of civilians supports the creation of paramilitary groups as a form of resistance to constant guerrilla attacks in places lacking State protection.

Arauca, Arauca

Finally, the war on drugs has financially fueled the conflict as both paramilitary and guerrilla groups found the financial support in this illicit, but very profitable business. The conflict, then, escalated in magnitude, as well as in number of actors and related victims. By , the overall homicide rate for Colombia reached the levels of , the peak of the La violencia period.

After , the conflict intensifies and violence levels simply escalated, which in turn reflected in persistent high homicide rates, as opposed to shorter peak periods observed in the past. This persistence lasts for almost 15 years; therefore, our interest focuses on studying this particular period from to , as shown in figure 1. The decrease in homicide rates, beginning in , is the result of a very aggressive State policy by an intense military offensive, directed by former President Uribe — In geographic terms, during the period of analysis, to , outlaw armed groups erupted in municipalities with lack of State presence and with sudden economic booms, such as those produced by the discovery and exploitation of emeralds, gold, petroleum oil, bananas, coca leaf plantations and cocaine processing Montenegro and Posada Arauca was named after the Arauca River which now separates it from Venezuela , which river in turn was named for the indigenous people the Arauca.

The area is flat and subject to frequent flooding from the river. At one point it was the capital of the New Granada Province of Casanare which was much larger than the current Department of Casanare. But increasingly, since it is the exploitation of nearby petroleum oil sands that has provided the bulk of municipal income in recent years.

Related Posts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article includes a list of references , but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. September Learn how and when to remove this template message.

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. August Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation like Deepl or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.