Researching Juan Santos

An economist by profession and a journalist by trade, Santos is a member of the wealthy and influential Santos family, who from 1913 to 2007 were the majority shareholders of the newspaper El Tiempo until its sale to Planeta DeAgostini in 2007. He was a cadet at the Navy Academy in Cartagena. Shortly after graduating from the University of Kansas, he joined the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia as an economic advisor and delegate to the International Coffee Organization in London, where he also attended the London School of Economics. In 1981, he was appointed deputy director of El Tiempo newspaper, becoming its director two years later. Santos earned a mid-career/master's in public administration in 1981 from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and was a 1988 Nieman Fellow for his award-winning work as a columnist and reporter. Santos was a Fulbright visiting fellow at Fletcher at Tufts University in 1981. Santos has been a member of the Washington-based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue since 1990, and he previously served as co-chair of the Board of Directors. Santos was president of the Freedom of Expression Commission for the Inter American Press Association.

In 1991, he was appointed by President César Gaviria Trujillo as Colombia's first Minister of Foreign Trade. Santos worked in expanding international trade with Colombia, and worked in creating various agencies for this purpose including: Proexport, Bancoldex and Fiducoldex. In 2000, he was appointed by President Andrés Pastrana Arango as the 64th Minister of Finance and Public Credit.

Santos rose to prominence during the Administration of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. In 2005, he co-founded and led the Social Party of National Unity (Party of the U), a liberal-conservative party coalition that backed the policies of President Uribe, successfully supporting his attempt to seek a Constitutional reform to be able to run for a second term. In 2006, after Uribe's re-election, when the Party of the U won a majority of seats in the two chambers of Congress, Santos was appointed as Minister of National Defence, and continued defending the security policies of President Uribe, taking a strong and forceful stance against FARC and the other guerrilla groups operating in Colombia. Santos also created the Good Government Foundation.

In 2010, Santos won the presidential election as the protégé of his predecessor Álvaro Uribe Vélez. However, some months after Santos' possession, Uribe became his strongest opponent, who also founded, three years later, the opposition party Democratic Center. This rivalry determined both Santos' unpopularity and his near-missed defeat during the presidential election in 2014 before Uribe's protégé Oscar Iván Zuluaga.

On 7 October 2016, Santos was announced as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts negotiating a peace treaty with the FARC-guerrilla in the country, despite his defeat in the referendum held over the deal, where the "no" campaign led by Uribe's party Democratic Center won. The Colombian government and the FARC signed a revised peace deal on 24 November and sent it to Congress for ratification instead of conducting a second referendum. Both houses of Congress ratified the revised peace accord on 29–30 November 2016, thus marking an end to the conflict. The treaty brought deep divisions and polarization in the country, which questions its legitimacy. Juan Manuel Santos has been named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. However, Santos left office with one of the lowest levels of popular approval ever, and his successor was Uribe's new protégé, Iván Duque Márquez, a moderate critic of Santos' peace treaty with the FARC-guerilla.