Francisco Santos Calderón (born 14 August 1961), also known as Pacho Santos, is a Colombian

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...

and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

. Santos was elected as Álvaro Uribe's running mate and became

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

in 2002. Santos was re-elected in 2006 for a second term with President Uribe. His great-uncle Eduardo Santos was President of Colombia from 1938 to 1942 and he is also a cousin of former president Juan Manuel Santos. Santos was appointed Ambassador of Colombia to the United States in 2018. He presented his credentials to president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

on 17 September 2018 and served until 2020.

Biography

Education

Santos, like his cousin, ex-President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, attended high school at

Colegio San Carlos Colegio San Carlos is an all-male, private, bilingual (English and Spanish) school in Bogotá, Colombia. The school has been recognized as one of the sources of many national leaders. The school works under the auspice of the local Roman Catholi ...

a private all-male elite school in

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the larges ...

. Both are also graduates of the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...

Lawrence, Kansas Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas River, Kansas and Waka ...

, United States. Santos also graduated from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

and attended Harvard as a Nieman Fellow.

Kidnapping

In 1990 the Medellín Cartel led by

Pablo Escobar Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (; ; 1 December 19492 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "the king of cocaine", Escobar is the wealthiest criminal i ...

kidnapped him to pressure the Colombian government to revert its support of

drug lord A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin or narcotrafficker is a high-ranking crime boss who controls a sizable network of people involved in the illegal drug trade. Such figures are often difficult to bring to justice, as they are normally not directly ...

extradition Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdi ...

s to the United States.

Human rights advocate

Upon his return, Santos became an advocate of

human rights in Colombia Colombia is a sovereign state situated in South America. It has been a member of the United Nations since 5 November 1945, and is party to a variety of international agreements concerning human rights. It also has a series of domestic laws conc ...

, especially those of victims affected by kidnapping after he himself suffered from this practice. He created a

non-governmental organisation A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...

called Fundación Pais Libre (Free Country Foundation), with the intentions of advancing awareness and helping the victims and their families. However, he has been criticised due to polemic declarations that support repression against students involved in protests.

Plan Colombia

2007 in an interview for the film documentary '' The War on Drugs'' Santos defends Plan Colombia and the use of aerial fumigation as a tool for Coca eradication in Colombia.

Shared Responsibility

Since 2008, Santos has spoken as part of the Shared Responsibility campaign to raise public awareness of cocaine production's impacts on Colombia's forest biodiversity, including deforestation and chemical contamination. The campaign links cocaine use to environmental destruction.

Ambassador of Colombia to the United States of America

Santos served as Ambassador of Colombia to the United States of America in Washington D.C. from September 2018 to 2020. He was succeeded by Juan Carlos Pinzón.

Popular culture

* In TV series '' Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord'' is portrayed by the Colombian actor Gustavo Ángel as the character of Fernán Santana.

References

External links

globalsecurity.org - Francisco Santos CalderónFundacion Pais Libre - Quienes somos

Santos appears in the film documentary The War on Drugs

Santos Interview on YouTube
, - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Santos Calderon, Francisco 1961 births Living people

Francisco Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name '' Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed " Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father o ...

Colombian activists Colombian human rights activists Colombian journalists Male journalists Harvard Extension School alumni Kidnapped Colombian people Kidnapped politicians Maria Moors Cabot Prize winners University of Kansas alumni University of Texas at Austin alumni Politicians from Bogotá Ambassadors of Colombia to the United States Vice presidents of Colombia Colombia First politicians Democratic Center (Colombia) politicians