Francisco Santos Calderón

Vice President of Colombiae

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Francisco Santos Calderón has been Vice President of Colombia since 2002, when he was elected, together with current President Alvaro Uribe on a pledge to improve security and economic prosperity. Both President Uribe and Vice-President Santos were re-elected in 2006 with a wide margin of support.

Before his election as Vice-President, Mr Santos worked as a journalist for the daily Spanish newspaper “El Pais” after having been forced to leave Colombia in 2000 due to multiple death threats issued by the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Previously, Vice President Santos was the editor of “El Tiempo” Colombia’s largest daily newspaper. In his popular weekly column, he often spoke out against kidnappings and massacres and called for civil society to take a more active role in finding peaceful solutions to the problems facing Colombia. In 1990, Mr Santos was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar, then leader of the Medellin drug cartel. Along with ten other journalists, he was held for nearly eight months in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to extort a promise from current President César Gaviria guaranteeing that the Colombian Government would not extradite drug traffickers to the United States.

Once released, the Vice President spent a year at Harvard University as a Nieman fellow. In 1992 he returned to Bogotá and founded Pais Libre (Free Nation), an organisation that to this day assists kidnapping victims and their families. Through Pais Libre, Mr Santos promoted mass mobilisations against kidnapping and terrorism, culminating in the massive 1999 mobilisation involving millions of Colombians rallying under the banner “No Más!” (No More!).

In the late 1980s, Mr Santos taught journalism and US – Latin American relations at various Colombian universities including Universidad Central, Universidad Javeriana and Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano.

Vice President Santos received the Paul Harris Medal, Rotary International’s highest award. He studied journalism and Latin American Studies at the University of Kansas and theUniversity of Texas at Austin.