The past couple weeks have been full of ups and downs for Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos.

On October 2, he suffered a surprise defeat when Colombian voters narrowly rejected his peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). After four years of negotiations with the rebels, it seemed his plan to end the fifty-two-year conflict — the plan he had hoped would define his presidency — had come to nothing. As he negotiated with the deal’s opponents in a desperate bid to find a compromise, many Colombians feared that the country would be plunged back into war and that a unique chance for peace had been lost.

Less than a week later, Santos was no doubt in a cheerier mood. The Nobel Committee had just announced it would award him its peace prize, making him only the second Colombian Nobel laureate. The august body praised Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people.”