San Andrés

Before Europeans arrived, Miskitu people from the coast of present-day Honduras and Nicaragua visited San Andrés and its neighbours to hunt at sea. Dutch seafarers are reported at the end of the 16th century, and between 1627 and 1629 English Puritans from Barbados and England settled the islands, evicting the Dutch in 1631. The colonists later moved on to Providencia, where hills gave fresh water and protection, and the islands became a base for privateers — Henry Morgan used them in 1670. The native islanders descend from the African and European settlers who first inhabited the islands.

In 1847 the Baptist church was founded at La Loma, and in 1848 the Colombian president Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera declared San Andrés a free port. The abolition of slavery in 1851 was followed by a literacy movement led by the pastor Philip Beekman Livingston. A municipality was created in 1912, and in 1928 the Esguerra–Bárcenas Treaty saw Nicaragua recognise Colombian sovereignty over the archipelago.

The great change came in the 1950s, when air services from the mainland and duty-free status brought tourists, traders and settlers, many of them from Lebanon. The population, about 20,000 in 1973, grew rapidly, and in the 1990s the local government restricted migration from the mainland to protect island culture. The archipelago became a department under the 1991 constitution and the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve in 2000. Nicaragua later challenged the 1928 treaty; the International Court of Justice confirmed Colombian sovereignty over the islands in 2007 and again in 2012, when it also expanded Nicaragua's maritime territory.

The native islanders, the Raizal, are an Afro-Caribbean people recognised by Colombia as one of its Afro-Colombian ethnic groups. Their language, San Andrés–Providencia Creole, is English-based and very similar to Miskito Coast and Belizean Creole, and it is an official language of the department alongside Spanish and English. Until the 1970s the English language, Caribbean wooden architecture and Protestant religion shaped island life; today the island is a blend of Latin American and English-Caribbean culture, with smaller Chinese and Middle Eastern communities.

Religion is central to Raizal identity. Most islanders are Protestant, Baptists above all, with Seventh-day Adventists and Catholics also present, and the First Baptist Church at La Loma is the island's oldest. Church music sits beside calypso, soca and reggae in the island's own musical tradition, celebrated each May at concerts at the Old Coliseum, while 20 July and the Reinado del Coco in November are the other big dates.

The arrival of so many mainlanders — they now make up about two-thirds of the population — has made Raizal identity and self-determination political questions. The Islander House Museum was created by natives to show visitors their traditional way of life, and La Loma, inhabited almost entirely by native islanders, and San Luis, with its Raizal majority, remain the best places to see the traditional wooden houses.

In 2007 the island had 72,912 people, and its most recent reported population, undated, is about 75,000, living on an island 13 km long and 3 km wide. El Centro, at the northern end, holds the departmental government, banks, shops, most hotels and the airport; La Loma in the hills and San Luis on the east coast are smaller and more traditional.

The economy was once built on fishing and small farms. Since the duty-free declaration it has depended overwhelmingly on tourism and trade, much of it run by the island's Lebanese families, and there is no industry. Tap water, which comes from wells or desalination plants, is not safe to drink.

Life outside the town has a rural feel: small houses along the circle road, people talking in the street late into the evening, and the sea always in view. Scooters, golf buggies and buses share the roads, and weekends and holidays bring crowds of Colombian visitors to the beaches and cays.

Island cooking is Caribbean rather than Colombian. The signature dish is rondón, a hearty one-pot stew. Recipes vary from kitchen to kitchen: crab, fish and pig's tail are cooked with plantain, potato, breadfruit and other ingredients. Many visitors seek it out in the areas around El Cove and San Luis, where traditional island dishes are served. Fish and crab appear on most menus, alongside the plantain common to the coast.

Coconut runs through the drinks as well: coconut water straight from the nut, and mixed drinks served in the shell, such as coco loco and coco fresa, sold at beach bars. Coconuts were once the island's export crop — San Luis was a port for shipping them, and Cotton Cay off the town takes its name from the cotton and coconuts the English settlers stored there. Local cooking can also be found in the restaurants of El Centro, the island's commercial and tourist hub.