According to the Indigenous National Organization of Colombia (ONIC) there are 102 indigenous peoples in Colombia and only 82 of them are recognized by the Colombian government. Politics between 1986 and 1990 tried to rehabilitate the marginal zones and their integration to achieve development; specific institutions were set up to work with indigenous communities, seeing them as farmer communities which habits and forms of production had to be modernized. Approximately 50% of the indigenous peoples of Colombia live in the Some theories claim the earliest human habitation of South America to be as early as 43,000 BC, although present archaeological understanding places this around 15,000 BC at the earliest. Besides the cultural accomplishments there was an escalation of the acts of persecution and in the number of violations committed against them. A number of indigenous groups are represented through the Indigenous peoples hold title to substantial portions of Colombia, primarily in the form of Indigenous Reserves (The 1991 National Constitution of Colombia defined Territorial Entities (The indigenous people represent 2-3% of the population of the Colombian region and its levels of income as well as the indicators of human development as education and health conditions are laying behind compared to those of the rest of the Colombians.The rise of indigenous mobilization in Colombia is explained as a reaction of crisis at various levels: a crisis of representation, caused by the shortcomings of political parties with sufficient representation to shoulder all collectives' interests; a crisis of participation, that is the result of the lack of citizen's participation in state's business; and a legitimation crisis, due to the discrimination against some social groups.During their struggle for rights, indigenes abandoned the armed struggle of the 1980s and the new strategy included forms of legal liberalism, a politics of identity and the use of transnational networks putting pressure on the state to achieve recognition and respect. "Indigenous Peoples". Facts show differences between zones: those of greater influence of poverty measured with the UBN standard are Chocó, Sucre, Boyacá, Nariño and Córdoba, with numbers that exceed the 50% of the population and those of less influence are found in Bogotá and the departments of El Valle, Atlántico and the cafetero-core: Caldas, Quindío and Risaralda. The Amazon region of Colombia, though sparsely populated, is home to over 70 different indigenous ethnic groups. by Cecilia Keating July 24, 2018 According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Colombia’s indigenous population stands at around 1.45 million, or about 3.5% of the total population.Approximately one-third of the country’s land is owned by ethnic groups.. Despite the Constitution of 1991 with the introduction of the multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the Colombian nation, the contemporary relation between the state and the indigenous communities seems to be contradictory, particularly because of the presence of the demands of autonomy of the latter.
In 1986 the concept of pobreza absoluta was introduced in the nation, during a situation of crisis of governability and the escalation of the problems concerning the armed conflict. Known as pueblos indígenas in Spanish, they comprise 4.4% of the country's population and belong to 87 different tribes. The indigenous people were not seen as a part of the diversity of the nation which participation was needed for the construction of it. Though the 1990s were a decade of mobilization and in some way a victory in terms of neoliberal multiculturalism, after twenty years of the Constitution of 1991 people have realized the need of turning to other forms of mobilization, more than Currently, indigenous political participation, both in national and local elections, remains low, because of various reasons: the fragmentation of the movement due to the several groups within the Colombian indigenous communities; the loss of the vote from non-indigenous leaders and the low number of voters due to the fact that they comprise a small part of the national population and most of them live in the countryside without possibilities to vote. This hasn't always led to success and often turned into victims of the cultural project of neoliberalism.