Humberto De la Calle


Humberto de la Calle Lombana is a Colombian lawyer and politician. He served as Vice President of Colombia from 1994 to 1997. De La Calle served in the cabinet as Interior Minister under two Presidents, Andrés Pastrana and César Gaviria. He also served as Ambassador to Spain and the United Kingdom. After 2003, De La Calle worked at his own Law firm which specialises in advising and representing international clients in Colombia. In October 2012 he was appointed by President Juan Manuel Santos as the chief negotiator in the peace process with the FARC.

Education and Family

During his high school years, De La Calle was a known activist of Nadaism and an admirer of Colombian poet Gonzalo Arango. He studied at the University of Caldas where he earned a Law degree and met his future wife and mother of his three children. De La Calle then went on to study International Law at the Inter-American Judicial Committee in 1979. De la Calle is an atheist.

Law career

De la Calle became a professor while practicing his law profession under private law firms. He started teaching in 1978 and became Dean in the universities of Caldas and Manizales until 1980. He also taught in prestigious universities from Bogotá, such as Andes University and Our Lady of the Rosary University.
For almost a decade De la Calle served in the Judicial Branch; he was appointed National Civil Registrar in the late 1980s during the administration of President Belisario Betancur. In 1986 De la Calle also served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

Political career

In 1990 he was appointed to the Ministry of Government during the administration of President César Gaviria until 1992. In 1993 followers of President Gaviria from the Liberal Party suggested De la Calle as a possible presidential candidate. De la Calle resigned as minister to pursue the presidency, but in the party primaries he was defeated by Ernesto Samper. Samper then invited De la Calle to be his vice president.
In the 1994 Presidential election, Samper and De La Calle were elected.
In the May primary election and the June general election of 1994, Samper and De la Calle were elected. De la Calle's relationship with President Samper was not strong and he was appointed as Ambassador to Spain while still serving as vice president.
In 1996 with the outbreak of the 8000 Process scandal in which the Samper presidential campaign received millions of dollars from the Cali Cartel, De la Calle's relationship with the government deteriorated to the point that De la Calle asked for the resignation of President Samper. After President Samper decided not to resign, and the government continued to lose credibility, De La Calle finally resigned as vice President in 1997.
De la Calle then allied with Andrés Pastrana, a conservative and political foe of President Samper. In the 1998 elections Pastrana was elected president and appointed De la Calle Ambassador to the United Kingdom, a position in which he served from 1998 to 2000. He was then appointed as Minister of the Interior, where he served between the years 2000 and 2001.
From 2001 to 2003 De la Calle served as Colombia's Ambassador to the Organization of American States. Afterwards he worked in his own law firm with his associates Ignacio Londoño Rivera, José Miguel de la Calle Restrepo and Mario Posada García-Peña. The firm offers services on legal advice and legal representation in different legal areas for Colombian nationals and international clients. He is also a regular columnist in the Bogotá daily El Espectador.

2012-2016 Colombian Peace Process

On 1 October 2012, President Juan Manuel Santos appointed De La Calle as the government's chief negotiator with the FARC in the Colombian peace process which was hosted in Havana, Cuba. As a result of these peace talks, a final agreement was concluded in September 2016. The agreement was put to a vote in a special referendum in October 2016, during this period the polls were very tight and the campaign became very divisive between the Yes and No campaigns. After a low turnout, the Yes campaign lost with 50.2% voting No and 49.8% voting in favour of the peace accords. After government meetings with the opposition, and Government and FARC representatives, a new agreement based on the original version but with adjustments was signed. The Senate and House of Representatives soon approved the new agreement with substantial majorities. Currently De La Calle continues in his position, now charged with facilitating the implementation of the agreements.
In March 2017, De La Calle announced that he will work to form a coalition of different political parties in order to provide a unified front that will protect and implement the peace agreements. He ran in the 2018 presidential election as the candidate of the Liberal Party/Indigenous Social Alliance Coalition. De La Calle hoped to prevent right wing candidate Iván Duque Márquez from getting elected and disrupting the Colombian peace process.

Published work

Books
Magazine articles