Juan Manuel Santos
Colombian politician who was President of Colombia from 2010 to 2018 and won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for the peace agreement with the FARC.
Biography
Juan Manuel Santos Calderón was born in Bogotá in 1951 into the family that long controlled the newspaper El Tiempo. After naval cadet school in Cartagena and service in the Colombian Navy until 1971, he studied economics and business at the University of Kansas, economic development at the London School of Economics and public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School, and represented Colombia's coffee growers at the International Coffee Organization in London before becoming deputy director of El Tiempo.
Under César Gaviria he was Colombia's first minister of foreign trade (1991-1994) and presidential designate, and under Andrés Pastrana he was finance minister (2000-2002). In 2005 he co-founded the Social Party of National Unity to back Álvaro Uribe, and from 2006 to 2009 he was defence minister, overseeing major blows against the FARC, including the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, but also the period of the 'false positives' killings, which he acknowledged in 2008.
Santos won the presidency in 2010 as Uribe's heir, then broke with him by opening peace talks with the FARC in 2012. He narrowly won re-election in 2014. Voters rejected the peace accord in an October 2016 referendum, but he received the Nobel Peace Prize that month, and a revised agreement was ratified by Congress in November 2016. He left office in August 2018.
Offices held
Affiliations
Party membership
- from Dec 18, 2005 Social Party of National Unity Social Party of National Unity (Party of the U), which he co-founded in 2005; start is the party's founding date
- Colombian Liberal Party
Education
- University of Kansas University of Kansas (BA economics and business administration 1973)
- London School of Economics London School of Economics (MSc economic development 1975)
- Harvard Kennedy School Harvard Kennedy School (MPA 1981)
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