Cali tourist information

The founder of Cali, Sebastián de Belalcázar, came to the American continent in the third voyage of Columbus in 1498. In 1532, after serving in Darién and Nicaragua, he joined Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Perú. In 1534 Belalcázar separated from Pizarro's expedition to found the city of Quito, and later in his search of El Dorado he entered the actual Colombian territory founding the cities of Pasto and Popayán.

On July 25, 1536, Belalcázar founded Santiago de Cali, first established a few miles north of the present location, near the actual towns of Vijes and Riofrio. Under the orders of Belalcázar the captain Miguel Muñoz moved the city to its present location in 1537, where the chaplain Brother Santos de Añasco celebrated a mass in the place today occupied by the Church La Merced today, and Belalcázar designated Pedro de Ayala as the first municipal authority.

During the Colonia, Santiago de Cali was part of the gobernación of Popayán, which was part of Quito's Audiencia. Although initially Cali was the capital of the Popayán's Gobernación, in 1540 Belalcázar moved this function to Popayán due to the better weather.

Until the 18th century most of the territory of what is now Cali was occupied by haciendas (ranchs), and the city was only a small town near the Cali River. In 1793, Cali had 6,548 inhabitants, 1,106 of whom were slaves. The haciendas were the property of the dominant noble class with many slaves dedicated mostly to stockbreeding and raising sugar cane crops. Many of these haciendas became neighborhoods of the present city like Cañaveralejo, Chipichape, Pasoancho, Arroyohondo, Cañasgordas, Limonar, and Meléndez.

Cali was strategically positioned for trade, central to the mining regions of Antioquia, Chocó, and Popayán. In the colonial period, the first trail for mules and horses between Cali and Buenaventura was completed.

Independence On July 3, 1810 Santiago de Cali proclaimed its independence from Popayán's Gobernación. This local uprising predates the national one in Bogotá by 17 days. Soon the independentist look for allies forming the "Ciudades Confederadas del Valle del Cauca" with Anserma, Cartago, Toro, Buga y Caloto. Immediately after the rebellion the Governor of Popayán, Miguel Tacón y Rosique, organized an army to control the uprising. The people from Cali called for help to the "Junta Suprema" in Bogota which sent a contingent under the colonel Antonio Baraya to support the independence cause. On the 28 March 1811 in the battle of Bajo Palacé the Army of Baraya with the help of Atanacio Girardot defeated the royalist army.

In the following years there were many battles between royalists and independentists. After having been released from captivity by Napoleon, King Fernando VII of Spain sent a huge army under the command of the Pacificador (peacemaker) Pablo Morillo who reclaimed power for Spain.

In 1819 after Simón Bolivar defeated the bulk of the Spaniard army in the Batalla de Boyacá, there were new uprisings in the Valle del Cauca and the Criollos took control definitively. In 1822 Bolivar arrived in Cali, the city was an important military outpost and the region contributed with many men in Bolivar's battles to liberate the nations in the south.

Recent history Until the beginning of the 20th century Cali was a small village, compared to other colombian cities, depending on Popayán politically and economically. The consolidation of the railroad between the city and the Pacific Ocean in Buenaventura, and the growing trade between this port and the interior cities, transformed Cali from a small town to the most important city in the south and west of the country.

In 1911, with 28,000 inhabitants, Cali became the capital of the new Department of Valle del Cauca, which was created in the north part of the Old Cauca Department. The whole region was by now largely cultivated, and its future as an agricultural provider seemed secure. There were, however, no real roads connecting this region to the rest of Colombia, so that until the main road to Bogota was built in the 1930's, all travel and transportation was done on horse and mule. The road over the Western Cordillera to the Pacific Ocean was only completed in 1945. This was, however, very important for the city as this route was a faster and cheaper way for imported goods to reach Colombia’s main population centers in Bogotá and Medellín, as well as for exporting coffee. Cali’s growth was thus associated with the diminished importance of Barranquilla, as it was no longer the gateway to the main Colombian cities.

By the early 1950s Cali (now with 240,000 inhabitants) had embarked on an industrialization plan, fueled mainly by foreign capital. The rural areas surrounding the city were cultivated with sugar cane and many "ingenios", or industrial plants for the extraction of sugar from cane, brought prosperity to the region. Cali almost tripled in population during this decade due mainly to the war between Liberals and Conservatives known as “La Violencia” in the northern part of the department and the Coffee region (currently, the departments of Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío). Since then, a growing network of roads and the advent of air transport have finally ended the isolation of Cali and the Valle from the rest of Colombia and the world.

On August 7, 1956, about 1,100 were reported killed when seven army ammunition trucks, which had been badly parked right in town, exploded. This catastrophe, however, could have been worse, since these trucks were parked in the Plaza de Cayzedo right in the city's very populated downtown.

In 1971, Cali hosted the Pan-American Games, an event which spurred its citizens to rebuild and improve many urban areas, avenues, and sporting venues. From this time many of the sports centers and arenas in the city were built.

During the 1970s to 1990s the Cali Cartel had a negative influence in the City. The war of this organization against the Medellín Cartel brought selective violence and terrorist attacks to the streets of Cali.

Nowadays Cali is a sprawling city of over 2 million inhabitants, many of them recent immigrants from poor rural areas, who have created squalid slums on the outskirts while they absorb the skills needed to prosper in an urban setting, while the local government and its citizenry struggle to help them integrate. Like Medellin though, delinquent drug-related violence is responsible for far more homicides in the city than drug cartel activity.