Colombia

Colombia is Nuevo León's only gateway to the United States, a community of 615 people on the south bank of the Rio Grande directly across from Laredo, Texas, with Nuevo Laredo to the east and Hidalgo, Coahuila, to the west. An earlier settlement of the same name existed and had been abandoned by 1978, when the state attached it to the municipality of Anáhuac. In 1992 Nuevo León refounded it as a planned community with a clear purpose: to win a share of the import-export trade with Texas instead of relying on the crossings of neighboring Coahuila and Tamaulipas. The name honors Christopher Columbus, because the founding fell on the 500th anniversary of his landfall in the Americas. The town has a sculpture called Danza a la alegría.

A year later, in 1993, the Colombia–Solidarity international bridge opened; the City of Laredo counts it among its four bridges, the farthest northwest of them. For decades it saw little traffic. The federal government canceled its concession in 2020 after years of neglect and in 2023 handed it to Nuevo León for 30 years, renewable for another 30. Since then crossings have grown from about 3,400 to more than 5,500 a day; in August 2023 the Laredo city council approved more lanes, with the cost split equally, and in 2024 Nuevo León and Laredo backed two more bridges at the same spot. To feed it, the state built the toll-free La Gloria–Colombia highway, 102 km long, at a cost of nearly 5 billion pesos. During the pandemic the bridge also served as a cross-border vaccination point for people from Nuevo León and Nuevo Laredo.

For travelers, Colombia is mainly a calmer crossing than those in Nuevo Laredo and a curiosity on the map: a small town about 150 meters above sea level, with a hot semi-arid climate, that exists because of its customs post and its bridge. Do not expect a historic center: this is a new town, built around the customs post on the bank of the Rio Grande.