Juan Manuel Santos

Some Lesser Known Facts About Juan Manuel Santos

• Juan Manuel Santos’s family has been influential since the mid-20th century.

• One of his ancestors, María Antonia Santos Plata, was a renowned personality during Colombia’s fight for independence.

• His great-granduncle, Eduardo Santos Montejo, served as the President of Colombia from 1938 to 1942 and owned the newspaper El Tiempo. El Tiempo, one of the largest newspapers in the country, was founded in January 1911.

  

• His family has been closely linked to El Tiempo and has had a significant impact on Colombian politics. His father, uncle, and cousins were all involved in the newspaper.

• Juan Manuel Santos was previously married to Silvia Amaya Londoño, a filmmaker and TV presenter, but they divorced after three years without having children. He later married María Clemencia Rodríguez Múnera, also known as ‘Tutina,’ whom he met while she was working as a secretary at the Ministry of Communications.

• After completing his high school education, he joined the Colombian Navy and went to the Admiral Padilla Naval Cadet School in Cartagena.

  

• Juan Manuel Santos worked in the Navy until 1971. After leaving the Navy, he moved to the United States and studied at the University of Kansas.

• After studying at the University of Kansas, Santos worked at the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia in London.

• He studied at the London School of Economics and then at Harvard University. He then returned to Colombia to work for his family’s newspaper and became involved in various organizations.

  

• At the age of 40, he left his job as a columnist and deputy publisher at El Tiempo, where he won the King of Spain Award for Journalism, to pursue a career in politics.

• Juan Manuel Santos has held different government positions in Colombia like Minister of Foreign Trade and Finance Minister. He has also been involved in international organizations and conferences.

• In 1994, he started the Good Government Foundation, which works on improving the Colombian government’s effectiveness.

• Juan Manuel Santos has received many honours, including being named one of Time magazine’s most influential people and receiving an honorary doctorate from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

• His cousin, Francisco Santos Calderón served as vice president (2002-10) under the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

• Juan Manuel Santos started a political party called the Social Party of National Unity in 2005 to help Alvaro Uribe Velez become president.

  

• He became the Minister of Defence in Columbia on 19 July 2006.

• When Juan Manuel Santos was serving as a Defence Minister, the government had some wins against the FARC and other guerrilla groups. They also rescued some hostages.

• In 2008, a scandal named the ‘false positives’ scandal came to light. It was about soldiers killing civilians to make it look like they were fighting guerrillas. Santos admitted the happening of the scandal and promised to fix it. Many soldiers were fired or arrested during the operation.

• Many investigations were initiated into many cases of civilians being killed unlawfully. Some people blame the government for encouraging these killings with reward policies.

• In June 2009, the United Nations said that Colombian soldiers had been killing civilians regularly. Santos said in media conferences that these killings stopped in 2008, but some cases still happened afterwards.

  

• Santos resigned as Defence Minister in May 2009. He stated that his resignation did not mean he was running for president in 2010, but later he contested the presidential elections when Uribe decided to quit.

• On 20 June 2010, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón became the President of Colombia after winning the election. He took office on 7 August 2010. During this time, Colombia had tense relations with Venezuela, but it was quickly resolved.

• On 20 June 2010, he defeated Antanas Mockus in the presidential election by winning a 69% ballot.

  

• Juan Manuel Santos started talks with the FARC rebel group on 27 August 2012 to end the conflict in Colombia. He kept the military operations going while talking.

• He promised FARC members they would not be sent to trial in other countries. Some people praised him for trying to make peace, but others, like former President Uribe, criticized him.

• In October 2012, Juan Manuel Santos received an award for his efforts to bring peace, and he mentioned Colombia’s support for a two-state solution in Israel.

• In September 2016, Santos announced an agreement to end the conflict between the government and FARC. It included admitting responsibility and doing community service instead of facing punishment.

  

• He got an honorary degree from the University of Kansas in 2017.

• The war in Colombia cost about $152 billion, according to a monitoring group. In five years, it cost about $9.3 million per day. Reportedly, this money could have been used to feed millions of people and end extreme poverty in Colombia.

• In May 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump and Santos had a joint news conference at the White House. Trump praised Colombia’s efforts to end a 52-year civil war and called it a “great thing to watch.”

  

• During that time, there was news of Trump meeting with former Colombian presidents Uribe and Pastrana at his Florida resort. This raised suspicions that Santos’s political opponents were seeking Trump’s support against the peace deal.

• Reportedly, the White House did not announce such a meeting.

• In September 2017, Trump criticized Colombia for its increasing coca cultivation and production.

• Juan Manuel Santos defended Colombia’s efforts but faced threats of reduced funding from the U.S. Reportedly, Donald Trump was concerned about Colombia’s decision to stop using glyphosate to destroy coca crops due to health reasons.

  

• In May 2014, he expressed support for same-sex marriage during an online discussion hosted by a Colombian newspaper. He stated that he believed marriage between homosexuals should have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual marriage.

• On 20 November 2013, Juan Manuel Santos announced his plan to contest the presidential elections in a speech and officially filed his election papers on 25 November.

• He was unopposed within his party, the Social Party of National Unity, and received huge support from party delegates. He also gained nominations from other political parties and formed a coalition named the National Unity Coalition.

• Juan Manuel Santos launched his re-election campaign on 12 March 2014 under the slogan ‘We have done much, there is much to be done.’ He chose Germán Vargas Lleras as his running mate and replaced his previous vice president who had decided to retire from politics.

• In the first round of the presidential election on 15 May, Santos received 25.69% of the votes, placing second behind his main rival, Óscar Iván Zuluaga Escobar.

• Since no candidate won the required majority, a run-off election was held. Santos gained support from other parties and won the run-off on 15 June 15 with 50.95% of the vote.

  

• Santos celebrated his victory and stated that it marked the end of 50 years of conflict in Colombia and the start of a new era. His win was attributed to strategic endorsements from left-wing politicians like Clara López.

• These endorsements helped him secure victory in a close race against his Conservative opponent. Many on the left hoped Santos’s victory would improve their political standing in Colombia’s traditionally Conservative-Liberal political landscape.

• In November 2017, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism suggested that Juan Manuel Santos was linked to two offshore companies in Barbados.

• Juan Manuel Santos responded by explaining that he had resigned from the management board of one of these companies before taking a ministerial position.

• He was given the Nobel Peace Prize 2016 for his peace deal with Farc guerillas, the result of four years of negotiations, which was narrowly rejected in a referendum in the country. The Nobel committee said that the result of the referendum was strange, and Santos “has brought the bloody conflict significantly closer to a peaceful resolution.”

  

• Juan Manuel Santos likes travelling to distant places, driving a car, and reading books in his free time.