In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Orestes kills his mother to avenge his father, whom his mother had murdered after he sacrificed their daughter. The Furies, goddesses of vengeance, pursue Orestes until Athena establishes a court to put him on trial, breaking the cycle of retribution.

Last week, Danilo Rojas Betancourth, 65, chose this myth for his inaugural speech as president of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the tribunal established under the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the now-defunct guerrilla group. For him, this is the ultimate purpose of justice: to put an end to vengeance.

But he takes office at the worst possible moment for the institution. The government of Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has cut its budget by 170 billion pesos (around $52 million), forcing the JEP to leave its headquarters, move to remote working and scale back protection for victims, witnesses and judges. Meanwhile, a constitutional reform bill is making its way through Congress that would shut the tribunal down in 2028.

Who are the Furies today? The judge, a former president of Colombia’s Council of State, prefers not to name them. “I wish I knew who was behind it.”

Question. You have been chosen to lead a jurisdiction that the government has effectively marked for closure. Are you here to run the JEP or to manage its winding down?

Answer. Both. The JEP is already beginning to plan for its closure. It has resolved nearly 1,000 amnesty cases involving former guerrilla fighters and granted 1,070 decisions not to prosecute members of the military. By December 15, it will have issued its final indictments in the 11 major cases it is investigating. Next year, those indicted will decide whether or not to acknowledge responsibility. Those who do will face trials resulting in restorative sanctions. Those who do not will go to trial and could face prison sentences of up to 20 years.

Q. Can the JEP function with a budget cut of 170 billion pesos and 85% fewer contracts?

A. It is the most devastating blow the JEP has received in all these years. It forces us to undertake a complete restructuring. We will vacate these premises in March, with remote working becoming the norm and staff working on a rotating basis. We will have to scale back activities that were very important for victims. We have to change strategy.

Q. Did you expect such an aggressive assault?

A. No, of course not. But the JEP has a longstanding legitimacy problem, because the peace agreement lost the referendum. It was much like Brexit: it was close, but it lost. Since then, anything that happens at the JEP is accepted by half the country and resented by the other half.

Q. Is there an element of revenge in this offensive — in the budget cuts and the attempts to undermine the JEP’s legitimacy?

A. I don’t know whether revenge is the right word, but there has been a merciless ad hominem attack: the focus has been more on the person than on the arguments. My colleagues have been subjected to attacks that are false and malicious. The dignity of many people here has been undermined.

Q. Who is behind it?

A. I wish I knew. Some politicians have spoken out about it, but it’s very hard to know who might be behind it.

Q. The budget cuts affect security arrangements for the judges themselves, who are also targets of these attacks, as well as for victims, witnesses and those appearing before the JEP. How many people will lose their protection?

A. We are talking about almost 250 people whose security arrangements will have to be scaled back and reassessed. I don’t think they will be left without protection altogether; that would be very risky. I have repeatedly told the government that it must take responsibility for this.

Q. Almost 10 years on, there have been just two rulings. Was the JEP too ambitious?

A. I acknowledge that it was. In its effort to ensure that no one escaped justice, the JEP took on a broader remit. In my view, it could have been somewhat narrower. But when you reduce the number of people under investigation, you increase the scope for impunity. Our two rulings — on kidnapping and false positives [civilians killed by Colombian military personnel and falsely reported as guerrillas killed in combat] — cover an enormous number of incidents: the kidnapping ruling alone covers 21,000. It is not a ruling on a single case, but on thousands. There have also been decisions that are equivalent in substance to rulings, even if they are not formally called that: the 1,000 amnesties and the 1,070 decisions not to prosecute.

Q. With today’s perspective, what would you have done differently?

A. I would have opened only four cases: the FARC case, the security forces case, the case of civilians involved in the war and the case of state agents such as congresspeople, governors and mayors. Those appearing before the JEP and the victims would not have had to attend different cases, but just one. But the qualitative aspects are harder to measure. This process produces genuine reconciliation. Admitting responsibility is not easy. Doing so in front of a victim, in relation to serious harm inflicted on them, is immensely valuable.

Q. What do you say to those who believe that planting trees or painting a mural is not a punishment enough for crimes such as kidnapping and false positives?

A. The JEP did not invent these sanctions; they were established in the peace agreement. No state can bring every perpetrator of mass harm to justice, so a transitional arrangement has to be agreed: a small number are tried, and they answer for all the crimes. That is what could happen in Ukraine or Gaza when the time comes to establish accountability. Here, the decision was: no prison, but a sanction that restricts freedom and restores lives. What is sometimes so readily dismissed — a mural, a tree-planting project, a mine-clearance operation — is very transformative for the victim, because that is the kind of sanction they asked for.

Q. Do all victims see it that way?

A. No, and that is entirely understandable. There are victims who have every right to say: “What I want is for this person to rot in prison.”

Q. Some of your colleagues argue that the real aim of shortening the JEP’s mandate is to prevent the trials of the 29 military officers who refused to acknowledge their crimes, almost all of them generals. Do you share that view?

A. There is a group of generals who did not admit responsibility, and our small prosecution office has until March 14, 2028, to charge them. I would seriously doubt that this project seeks to obstruct that, because doing so would mean empowering the ordinary justice system and changing everything the peace agreement set out to achieve. And if charges could not be brought because the timeframe had been cut short, the International Criminal Court’s preliminary examination could be reopened. That is a risk.

Q. The JEP is constitutionally guaranteed to remain in place until 2033. If Congress passes the bill, will you take the matter to the Constitutional Court?

A. I would hope it would not have to reach the Constitutional Court, that Congress would stop the process. A law that shortens the timeframe and changes the court with jurisdiction over the cases is not consistent with the peace agreement. But if it passes, I am in favor of going to the Constitutional Court.

Q. And would you appeal to international bodies, even if that put a strain on relations with the government?

A. Scrutiny by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will be unavoidable. The government of Iván Duque signed a cooperation agreement with the ICC prosecutor that expressly states that the JEP’s budget must not be affected and that its legal framework must not be changed. That is precisely what has been done in budgetary terms and what they are now seeking to do in legal terms.

Q. Anyone looking at Colombia today would see anything but the end of a war. Where are we now?

A. The FARC disappeared. There has not been a single attack by that guerrilla movement in 10 years. Dissident groups, deserters and criminal groups such as the Clan del Golfo remain, which have gained ground because the state failed to take control of those areas. It is a new war, but completely different from the one waged by the FARC, which did aspire to seize power.

Q. Will the government’s hard-line approach to bringing armed groups under its authority work?

A. I hope it works. But the bill on the submission of armed groups to justice draws heavily on the restorative justice system, which is our area of expertise. It does not provide for prison sentences behind bars, but rather detention in agricultural colonies, and it sets conditions requiring perpetrators to tell the truth and help locate the disappeared.

Q. Colombia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mauricio Gaona, said the peace agreement is not a model for the world. Was it necessary to go that far?

A. Gaona was simply doing what his role requires, in line with the government. All the countries that intervened before were generous, including the United States. The discrepancy is glaring.

Q. Are you concerned that, when the JEP closes, its legacy may not be what you hoped for?

A. Over time, it will become clearer. It seems we may need to go through another experience for people to see how well we did things here. The victims were treated very well: not only did they take part in the process, but the psychosocial support provided to people who had suffered so much was also very important. And I am convinced that this model can be useful beyond Colombia. There are heads of state responsible for mass atrocities who will never go to prison. When they operate at that level, a way forward has to be found. And that way forward is: no prison, but they must accept responsibility. Accepting responsibility is not easy.

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Gustavo Petro’s private life has become the focus of public debate in Colombia. The allegations against the former president have left Colombia’s left-wing opposition in a difficult position. Back in opposition after Petro’s presidency and now holding the largest bloc in Congress, albeit well short of a majority, it is trying to resist the offensive launched by the far-right government of Abelardo de la Espriella.

But the accusations, which claim that Petro awarded public contracts to women in exchange for sex, have opened a Pandora’s box over practices both in the previous administration and within the Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact), the left-wing coalition that united Petro’s supporters into a single party, where tensions between different factions are beginning to show.

The left finds itself caught between loyalty to Petro and a desire to distance itself from him. While many on the left insist on due process and the presumption of innocence, calls for introspection and self-criticism are growing, particularly over what critics see as a betrayal of the feminist principles the movement once championed.

The allegations go beyond the private life of the first left-wing president in modern Colombian history. Deicy Jiménez, a 26-year-old woman who received several state contracts during the previous administration, claimed last month that the 66-year-old former president set up a network of women whom he rewarded with public jobs in exchange for sexual relationships. Shortly afterwards, she released a video showing the two kissing. Since then, additional videos and chat messages have been leaked to the media.

Petro has denied the allegations, though not his relationship with Jiménez, who is 40 years his junior, and has said he will defend himself “before the courts,” rather than on social media, his preferred means of communication. Even so, he took to X on Monday to respond to what he described as a “false narrative.”

The head of President Abelardo de la Espriella’s Administrative Department of the Presidency, known as Dapre, has claimed that the network involved more than 40 women, though he has provided no further details or evidence, and the allegations remain under investigation. Beyond feminist criticism, the right has found a political gold mine in the former president’s scandal-ridden sex life and has seized on it to mount relentless attacks on his character and morality.

Last week, Noticias Caracol published a chat exchange from late 2025 in which Petro appears to ask the then head of Dapre to renew a contract for Deicy Jiménez at the Interior Ministry. Jiménez also held contracts with the Superintendency of Surveillance and with then-government senator María José Pizarro, who has said the accuser should be heard “with every guarantee” of due process.

Journalist María Jimena Duzán added to the controversy by writing in a column that at least 10 sources had described “getaways” with Petro involving “prostitutes, transvestites and friends who supplied him with hallucinogenic substances.” “Many of the people who attended his parties were paid with contracts to buy their silence,” Duzán wrote, without identifying her sources.

At a politically inopportune moment for internal divisions, the scandal has dealt a significant blow to Colombia’s left. Throughout his long political career, Petro, who has often been inclined to dominate the spotlight, has also been something of a politician without a party. After belonging to the M-19 Democratic Alliance, the political successor to the guerrilla movement he joined in his youth, he was a congressman, mayor of Bogotá and presidential candidate under a succession of parties and movements, including Vía Alterna, Polo Democrático Alternativo, Progresistas and Colombia Humana.

He ultimately reached the presidency backed by the Historic Pact, then a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of progressive forces. Under Petro’s influence, the coalition was transformed into a unified political party. Today it holds 26 of Colombia’s 103 Senate seats, more than any other single bloc.

Far from stepping away from politics after handing over power on August 7, Petro went on to take the helm of the Historic Pact, after promoting claims of electoral fraud that found no support among the country’s electoral authorities. He still retains considerable popular appeal, and there has been persistent speculation that he could run in next year’s local elections for mayors and governors, though the former president himself has neither confirmed nor denied the possibility.

That has not shielded him from criticism within his own camp as the scandal continues to unfold. Senator Iván Cepeda, the Historic Pact’s presidential candidate, who narrowly lost the runoff election to De la Espriella, urged the left on Sunday not to cover up violence against women out of political loyalty, though he stopped short of mentioning Petro by name. He hardly needed to. Speaking in Valledupar, Cepeda acknowledged that the Historic Pact still harbors “deep-rooted machismo and patriarchy in its leadership and throughout its structures.”

That tendency, added Cepeda, who is expected to lead the opposition, “manifests itself in strongman politics and the cult of male leadership; in the concentration of decision-making within circles of men; in the discrediting of women who exercise authority,” as well as “in the silencing of complaints and the revictimization of those who dare to speak out about abuse.” Progressives, he argued, cannot assume they are “immune” to such practices simply because of their history of social struggles. He called for a “collective reckoning” in which men acknowledge their privileges and examine their own behavior.

Sociologist and political analyst Sara Tufano, one of the first voices to denounce sexist practices within Colombia’s left and the Historic Pact, believes there is clearly a far-right campaign to discredit Petro that goes beyond the allegations, which she says must nevertheless be thoroughly investigated.

“One can recognize the achievements of the Petro government and, at the same time, acknowledge that he is sexist,” she says. “One can denounce his practices and, at the same time, denounce Abelardo’s tax reform. One can recognize the abuse of power and, at the same time, know that the right will instrumentalize the allegations.”“

She continues: “When there are accusations of this nature, and even more so when they involve a former president and party leader, the most sensible thing would be for him to step aside.”

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Never before had humanity been so close to its destruction. It was January 2025: the hands of the clock stood at 89 seconds to midnight.

Juan Manuel Santos was looking at the Doomsday Clock in Washington, D.C. The former Colombian president — who governed between 2010 and 2018 – had been invited by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to participate in the annual session of this unsettling assessment of the dangers threatening the planet.

For almost 80 years, the clock has offered a symbolic calculation, warning us how close we are to total annihilation. The closer the hands get to midnight, the less time remains until the end of the world.

The Doomsday Clock, created in 1947, has been adjusted in response to wars, tensions between world powers, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and, more recently, climate change and new technologies. Not without criticism for spreading alarmism, the clock is a metaphor for fear, but also for humanity’s capacity to avert its own destruction.

In January 2026, a year after Santos’ visit, the clock moved four seconds closer to midnight: it’s now 85 seconds away.

Juan Manuel Santos is 75 years old. And he has a strong belief that seems to have survived the disappointments of the last decade: all conflicts have a solution.

This isn’t a naive statement, given that it comes from someone who spent a good part of his life involved in war. As minister of defense for three years (2006-2009) during the administration of president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) — his current nemesis — Santos led some of the most decisive operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). As president of Colombia, he negotiated with the men he had fought against: those he had once wanted to kill and who had wanted to kill him, too.

After leaving office, he has dedicated much of his time to defending that peace agreement with FARC, which has been questioned since its signing in 2016. It’s still awaiting full implementation, after neither the administrations of Iván Duque (2018-2022) nor Gustavo Petro (2022-2026) showed any real interest in doing so.

Today, the kind of politics that has been consolidated — one that uses brute force as the primary instrument of power — has changed the landscape that once made the Colombian peace agreement possible. Santos notes how, during the Cold War, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were able to sit down and negotiate agreements to reduce the nuclear threat. Today, however, to expect such a willingness seems entirely unrealistic.

Santos believes that the problem isn’t a lack of solutions, but rather the absence of leaders willing to find them: “A true leader is someone who thinks long-term, someone who makes decisions — even if they’re unpopular — knowing that they’re the right decisions for the long run. It takes perseverance, as well as a certain amount of courage, to go against the grain. I went to war so that I could make peace.”

·

On November 24, it will be 10 years since Santos and Rodrigo Londoño — alias Timochenko, the top leader of the insurgency — signed the peace agreement for the second time. The first agreement (signed on September 26) was shattered at the polls just days later, after citizens rejected it in a referendum. Santos has always considered that holding the referendum was a mistake.

In December 2016, the Colombian president received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for getting the FARC — Latin America’s oldest guerrilla group — to lay down their arms and sign a peace treaty, which ended the FARC’s conflict with the state after more than 50 years of war.

To mark that 10th anniversary, Santos received EL PAÍS four times between April and September of this year. The conversations — each lasting about an hour and a half — took place in his office at the Compaz Foundation, which he created after leaving the presidency. Today, he also chairs The Elders, the organization founded by Nelson Mandela that brings together former international leaders.

Politicians and other figures from Colombian public life come and go from his office before and after the interviews. Santos retains his eagerness to talk and sets few limits on the topics of conversation. He only becomes more reserved when the conversation delves too deeply into the day-to-day politics of his country.

His manner of speaking hasn’t changed much since his presidency, nor has his inclination to explain each of his decisions in detail. What has changed is the world he speaks about. Ten years ago, Colombia occupied a central place on the international agenda; it was a beacon of hope, and Santos was on the verge of becoming one of the central figures in its history. However, today — with his legacy inextricably linked to that agreement — he reflects on a decade in which the conditions that made peace possible seem increasingly difficult to replicate. The man who brought an end to one of the longest wars in the Americas now speaks of a world that seems to have regained its taste for conflict.

— Do you think the Colombian peace agreement would be possible in today’s world?

— In the last 15 years, the only peace negotiation that the U.N. has been involved in is the Colombian agreement. This is the issue on which the UN Security Council has unanimously adopted the most positive resolutions. Today, that would be impossible.

The negotiations required major international support. The United States, Cuba, Venezuela and other powers — each with very different interests — ended up backing the same objective. One of the most delicate moves was securing Hugo Chávez’s cooperation. As defense minister, Santos had been locked in a bitter feud with the then Venezuelan president, who maintained close ties to the FARC and provided safe haven to its leaders on Venezuelan soil. It was precisely for that reason that Santos concluded Chávez was indispensable to achieving peace. The challenge was to turn someone who had been part of the problem into part of the solution.

“Chávez and I needed each other. He was absolutely fundamental and he was also someone I had really fought with. So, I had to build a bridge,” he recalls.

The reconciliation began in 2010, at Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, a hacienda in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta. That’s where the two presidents mended their strained relations. Juan Manuel Santos then began asking Chávez to use his close ties with the guerrillas to facilitate dialogue.

“He didn’t contradict me. In fact, he used [his connections]. Almost implicitly, he was telling me: ‘Yes, I have very good contacts with them, I can help.’ And he did help.” Thus, Venezuelan cooperation became an important element of the secret talks that preceded the negotiations in Havana, Cuba. The former enemy had ended up becoming an ally in achieving the most important objective of the Santos presidency.

·

Santos wasn’t always a man of peace. Or, rather, for a long time, he didn’t understand that peace required renouncing the use of force. As minister of defense, he transformed Colombia’s intelligence services, modified his country’s military strategy, and strengthened cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom. His objective went beyond weakening the guerrillas: he was convinced that the use of force would lead the FARC commanders to realize that their survival and future depended more on an agreement, rather than on continuing the war. “We had to get through to them, and we began to do so.”

Today, he recalls that the first commander to fall after that change in strategy was Tomás Medina Caracas (alias Negro Acacio), who controlled drug and arms trafficking in eastern Colombia. Many others followed, like Raúl Reyes, who was killed during a Colombian military operation on Ecuadorian territory.

When Santos was president — “I was elected because I had been the minister of defense,” he acknowledges — Jorge Briceño Suárez (alias Mono Joyjoy) and Alfonso Cano (the top guerrilla leader at the time) were killed just as the peace process was beginning. That was one of the most decisive actions taken by Santos. According to his interpretation of events, the war allowed for a shift in the balance of power, making negotiation an attractive option for the state’s enemies: “The person who hit the FARC the hardest in its entire history — and the commanders themselves say so — was me, both as minister of defense and as president.”

In reality, however, the story is more unsettling than a string of military successes. Colombia’s security policy has long been riddled with serious human rights violations, especially during Uribe’s presidency. For instance, there was the so-called “false positives” scandal — the murders of civilians, who were presented as guerrillas killed in combat.

Santos, who was serving as minister of defense when the scandal broke, apologized. And he has always distanced himself from those events, which still haunt Uribe. He insists that he spearheaded a doctrinal shift to strengthen respect for human rights and rebuild trust with communities. And he maintains that he learned something that ultimately proved to be essential: legitimacy can be just as important as military superiority.

The first two interviews with EL PAÍS for this report took place before Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidential elections back in June. The third took place the day after his electoral victory. And, finally, the last was conducted after De la Espriella had been sworn in as the new president of Colombia.

A few days before that fourth conversation, De la Espriella celebrated a military operation. It concluded with him posing alongside the bodies of the criminals, which were wrapped in sheets on the ground.

— What did you think when you saw the sitting president walking around and displaying corpses?

— It saddened me greatly because the way we won the war — in the sense of bringing the FARC to the negotiating table — was precisely by doing the opposite: respecting the dignity of the guerrillas. The legitimacy of a state and its military forces is their greatest asset. If you lose that legitimacy, you lose respect. You can’t do what your enemies do. The state must be above that. I think that it’s very sad and counterproductive.”

Santos then recalls the operation launched against Alfonso Cano, which took place shortly after the peace process began: “I gave instructions to the brigade commander in charge of the operation: ‘Try to capture him, not kill him.’ I even thought that the impact of Cano’s capture — like that of Abimael Guzmán [the Shining Path leader, now deceased, who was arrested and imprisoned in Peru back in 1992] — could be very positive for peace. I knew it would be very difficult to capture him and that he wouldn’t give up. And what happened, happened. But it’s not true what they say, that he was murdered in cold blood. He was hiding; it was nighttime. He ran out and a soldier shouted [at him to identify himself], but he didn’t respond, so he was killed.”

·

Santos has never hidden the fact that his approach to politics is highly calculated. “I love poker,” he admits with a smile, referring to one of the most frequent criticisms leveled against him: his willingness to take political gambles. “I like to take risks, but risks to win, not risks to lose,” he clarifies, when he recalls why he made the decision that ultimately defined not only his presidency, but also his entire career.

Peace was the riskiest gamble of his time in politics. And it wasn’t an improvisation or a sudden conversion. “I had this idea of peace in my head,” he says, with a gesture suggesting it had been a long time coming. For decades, he had built up experiences that led him to believe that Colombia could never reach its full potential while trapped in a war.

Long before becoming president, Santos had understood that goodwill alone wasn’t enough to achieve peace. It was necessary to learn how to negotiate. His approach to the country’s internal conflict was driven by both intellectual curiosity and an obsession with methodology. Years earlier, he had been a student of Roger Fisher, a Harvard professor and one of the world’s leading experts in conflict resolution. Santos consulted Fisher when he became interested in the reconciliation experiences of other countries. And it was his former professor who put him in touch with Adam Kahane, a Canadian expert who had participated in dialogue initiatives during the South African transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s.

Santos invited him to Colombia in 1996. Kahane — who was also working on other international conflicts at the time — accepted, but on one condition: that Santos bring together people from truly opposing sides. The former president began calling guerrilla leaders, representatives of paramilitary groups, members of the government, opposition figures, business leaders and rural organizations. A dialogue, as well as scenario planning, emerged from that effort. The initiative — known as Destino Colombia (“Destination Colombia”) — sought something that seemed impossible in a country riddled with violence: that, together, the protagonists of the conflict could imagine a different future. The negotiation of an agreement still wasn’t in the works, but the parties were at least learning to listen to one another. They recognized that there could be another destiny besides war.

Santos has also learned from other peace and reconciliation processes. He especially remembers a conversation with Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He was impressed to see how victims and perpetrators met in public forums to discuss the crimes of apartheid. Mandela explained the meaning of that exercise and warned Santos that Colombia could never truly take off until it resolved its armed conflict.

That conversation marked him deeply. Decades later, Santos still invokes Mandela to defend a seemingly simple idea: negotiation requires recognizing the adversary, listening to their concerns and accepting that no one has a monopoly on the truth. But his interest didn’t stop at the moral teachings of great leaders. When the time came to negotiate with the FARC, he also turned to William Ury, a disciple of Fisher and another of Harvard’s leading figures in negotiation theory. And he surrounded himself with specialists who had participated in the peace processes in Northern Ireland (Jonathan Powell), the Middle East (Shlomo Ben Ami) and Central America (Joaquín Villalobos), among others.

The Colombian peace process had something of a laboratory feel to it: a combination of military experience, political intuition and negotiation techniques, honed over decades. “They were my advisers — not the team’s advisers. They were immensely helpful in difficult times. Everything they told me made sense and was very useful,” Santos recalls. He frequently met with them to discuss how the talks were going: “They were a dream team.”

At one point, when he was still hesitant about the risks he was willing to take, former Israeli minister Shlomo Ben-Ami posed the following question to him: “I know you’re facing this dilemma, but consider this: Stand in front of your grave, look back, and ask yourself this question: ‘If I take the risk of making peace and succeed… how many lives will I have saved?’ If you do not [take the risk], will you go to your grave with a clear conscience?”

Santos concludes: “That argument was very powerful in finally convincing me to do what I had to do.”

·

On September 24, 2015, Santos and Rodrigo Londoño met face to face for the first time. In public, Cuba’s Raúl Castro took each of their hands and clasped them together for a handshake. When they met, Santos admits, there was a special connection. He recounts that, during the meeting, he was calm: “I’m very level-headed. I wasn’t nervous, and I wanted to put him at ease.”

The FARC leader confessed that he was sick, that he had dengue fever. “That meeting impressed me a lot, because I saw that he was willing and sincere. We talked about the difficulties that he was going to have with his own people and I, with mine.” The then-president told him: “Listen, you and I have been trying to kill each other for 35 years. Now, let’s commit to getting in the same boat, rowing in the same direction and not stopping until we reach our destination.”

When asked if he thinks that this is what has happened, Santos replies: “Yes, I have to admit that he’s kept rowing. From back then — when I met him — all the way until now, he’s grown as a human being, I admire him even more.”

The Final Agreement, signed in 2016, ended the conflict with the FARC. Thousands of combatants laid down their weapons and began their reintegration into civilian life. However, the signing didn’t end all the violence in the country, nor did it resolve the problems that had fueled the conflict.

Santos distinguishes between the end of the war and the violence that still permeates many parts of Colombia today. For the former president, the current violence is caused by gangs vying for territory. The state has left gaps in security by failing to fulfill the security and rural development commitments outlined in the agreement.

— Was this the peace you envisioned?

— With the FARC, yes. As for the country, no. 2017 and 2018 were the most peaceful years we’ve experienced in 100 years, but that peace was reversed. That vacuum [left by the demobilized guerrillas] was left to chance. And criminal gangs began to fill it. The violence in Colombia today is similar to what the entire continent is experiencing. I never imagined this would happen, but it has occurred precisely because of the non-implementation of the agreement. There’s still time if we manage to gain control of the territory. The state must be present. Implementing the peace agreement is the best security policy for this government — not [Trump’s] Shield of the Americas.”

·

Santos speaks of moderation as if it’s a political cause that needs rescuing. “I’m not willing to fuel divisions or aggression under any circumstances; I believe that makes democracy unviable. I believe in finding the best of both the left and the right and putting it to work.”

— Being a moderate now is somewhat like being a rebel…

— The decline of democracies around the world is due to the loss of that moderation. If that’s being a rebel, then I’m a rebel.

This statement aptly expresses his diagnosis of an era in which, according to him, confrontation offers greater electoral benefits than negotiation. “The effect of social media in fueling aggressive language has solidified the notion that, politically, we’re more polarized than before. The more hateful the speech, the more traction it gets.”

Throughout his life, Santos has been a tough, competitive politician, convinced of his decisions. He hasn’t always shied away from confrontation. And although he acknowledges his mistakes, he shows great reluctance to question his presidency.

— Did you ever think you were making a mistake?

— Many times. You never have the absolute truth. Constant doubt is necessary to fuel perseverance. It helps you stay on track.

·

Santos frequently recalls that, when he began exploring negotiations with the FARC, he encountered opposition even among close associates. Some warned him that it could destroy his career and hand his enemies a political victory.

The outcome wasn’t what some had imagined, either. The signing of the agreement didn’t produce immediate reconciliation, nor did it end the disputes or transform his adversaries into allies. The peace agreement, however, did alter Colombian political life. The former president believes that one of its less-appreciated effects was helping to remove the stigma that had been carried by segments of the left for decades, as they were frequently associated with the armed insurgency. “The stigma attached to the left was lifted, and it gradually established itself as a legitimate movement, back when it was said that leftist movements were the political arms of the FARC,” the former president notes.

Santos now observes this process through a global lens. The cooperation between the United States, Cuba and Venezuela that helped forge the agreement seems difficult to replicate in a fragmented world. Multilateral institutions face new tensions. And, once again, the foreign policy of the major powers is marked by strategic competition.

The former president reflects on some of the current global conflicts. Regarding the possibility of the war between Russia and Ukraine coming to an end, he refers to the Colombian experience: “Every negotiated [end to a] conflict has to consider where the line is drawn between justice and peace. There can be no peace if Russia keeps everything it wants, nor if Ukraine refuses to compromise. There always has to be a sacrifice on both sides.”

For Santos, in a world where “force prevails over law” — specifically regarding the case of Venezuela and the transition after the January 3 operation that led to Nicolás Maduro’s arrest — he argues that “a true democracy cannot be imposed from the outside; otherwise, it won’t be a lasting democracy.”

For decades, the Colombian war seemed impossible to end. Many tried to negotiate and failed. Santos could also have failed. He lost the referendum, won the Nobel Peace Prize, signed the peace agreement and spent the following years defending it. His victory was incomplete and the consequences of the agreement are still being debated. But thousands of former combatants laid down their arms. A seemingly endless war came to an end. And, 10 years later, Santos is still rowing that imaginary boat with Timochenko. He knows the journey was much longer than expected, that some abandoned their commitment, and that others never wanted to get on board in the first place.

The Doomsday Clock keeps ticking. Juan Manuel Santos watches its hands with the concern of someone who knows the consequences of violence, and the conviction of someone who once succeeded in bringing it to an end. “I believe in the law of the pendulum; I believe people will realize that what’s happening, in the long run, could be fatal. It’s simply a matter of sitting down and talking.”

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