Conservative Ivan Duque wins Colombia's presidential election

(Image credit: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)

Conservative Ivan Duque of the Democratic Center party is the next president of Colombia, after winning 53.9 percent of the vote in a second round runoff election Sunday.

Duque campaigned against the peace deal the government signed with FARC rebels in 2016, which ended 52 years of civil war. He vowed to modify parts of the deal that were controversial, like giving former militants guaranteed seats in congress. His opponent, Gustavo Petro, is the former mayor of Bogota and was once a leftist militant; he supports the peace deal.

When Duque takes office on Aug. 8, shortly after his 42nd birthday, he will become the country's youngest ever president. He worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., before returning to Colombia in 2014 at the insistence of former president Alvaro Uribe to fill a seat in the senate. Critics say Duque is Uribe's puppet.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.