When Gustavo Petro became Colombia’s first left-wing president on Sunday, his running mate Francia Marquez also made history: she will be the first black Colombian and the second woman to rise to the vice presidency.
It was a momentous event not only for a woman struggling with racism, classicism and even an assassination attempt, but also for an entire community politically marginalized in Colombia.
“We’ve taken a very important step, after 214 years we’ve achieved a government of the people … those with calloused hands, those on foot, the nobody,” said Marquez, 40, during Sunday night’s victory speech alongside Petro.
Racism is rampant in Colombia and during the campaign both celebrities and social media users attacked Marquez for her racial origins and lower-class roots.
She has received more than 1,000 racial comments and messages on media and social media since April, according to the Racial Discrimination Observatory at Los Andes University.
Surrounded by her family and dressed in a brightly colored dress with an African pattern, Marquez said on Sunday: “Together we will defeat structural racism in Colombia.”
Although the Afro population makes up 10 percent of Colombia’s 50 million population, they are severely underrepresented in politics.
But Marquez is bringing new hope to the community.
And she won’t wait until she takes office on August 7th. On Monday she announced that the new government would create an Equality Ministry.
“I come from a region that has historically been abandoned,” Marquez wrote on Twitter.
“My job is to guarantee the rights of these excluded and marginalized areas, to guarantee the rights of the Afro-descended and indigenous people.”
She also pledged to achieve women’s equality.
“Today, most Colombians still don’t have worthy conditions,” she added.
– Under fire –
Marquez was born into a poor family in the southwestern department of Cauca — a region ravaged by violence related to armed groups fighting over drug trafficking and illegal mining resources.
A single mother at just 16, she fled her home after threats and worked as a domestic while she was studying law.
But she returned home to get involved in local politics and can often be seen visiting public places in her African-printed clothing and campaigning for the rights of the marginalized.
But she also made enemies.
In 2019, she survived an attack by gunmen who tried to kill her for her work defending the region’s water resources against mining companies.
The year before, it was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize.
“We nobodies, those whose humanity is not recognized, those whose rights are not recognized in this country, we stand up to change history, to occupy politics,” Marquez told AFP in March.
In the left primary earlier this year, Marquez finished second to Petro, who duly named her his running mate.
Marquez made headlines during the election campaign with her feminist, green, and left-wing speeches and her proposition of “living good,” an idea popular in the black community fighting for peace and living in harmony with nature.
“We women will eradicate patriarchy in our country, let’s stand for the rights of the diverse LGBTIQ+ community, let’s stand for the rights of our mother earth,” she said on Sunday.
She also pledged to work for reconciliation with the armed groups responsible for a surge in violence this year, reversing a decline that stemmed from the 2016 peace accord between the state and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC ) followed.
“Let us reconcile this nation, let us resolutely make peace, without fear, with love and happiness. Let’s be for dignity, for social justice,” she said.
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