She is an Afro-Colombian environmental activist who has faced countless death threats and survived at least one assassination attempt to become one of the leaders of Latin America’s new left.
Now Francia Márquez, 39, could be on the verge of becoming Colombia’s next vice president after left-wing front runner Gustavo Petro chose her as his running mate – a move that has delighted progressives and civil rights activists across the region.
“How could I not cry when I represent the black women of this country?” Marquez said after receiving the nomination Wednesday morning.
“Every Colombian, in their diversity, from the regions, from every territory, has made it possible for us to be here,” said Márquez, who if elected in the May 29 vote would be one of only Costa Rica’s Epsy Campbell Barr would join two black women vice presidents in Latin America.
“I thank the people who remained in the resistance for life, peace and social justice,” she added, vowing to “fight for the ‘nobody’ of this country”.
Law student and mother of two, Márquez hails from the war-torn western department of Cauca, where her outspoken opposition to illegal gold mining mobs led to death threats that forced her to flee.
She later led a 10-day, 350-mile march with 80 women from the Amazon to Bogotá, prompting the government to send troops to remove the miners and put an end to the cyanide and mercury pollution they were causing.
In 2018 she was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize for her election campaign.
Marquez’s choice to run alongside a serious presidential candidate is breaking with mold in Colombia, where politics has been dominated by wealthy white men since independence.
Afro-Colombians make up almost 10% of Colombia’s 50 million people and are descended from enslaved people brought from Africa to work on sugar cane plantations, gold mines and the large estates of land-owning Spanish colonists. They are still underrepresented in business and politics.
“As someone from a group that has historically been discriminated against by power systems in Colombia, I am incredibly fortunate,” said Yacila Bondo, a young Afro-Colombian activist. “Just that she was named as a candidate for vice president is historic.”
“It was unimaginable just a few years ago and when she announced her campaign, people laughed,” Bondo continued. “That’s going to open so many doors in our social imagination, and we’re going to see more black women and girls go into politics.”
Márquez was elected as Petro’s running mate after winning over 750,000 votes in a primary earlier this month. Both belong to the left-wing Historic Pact coalition, which is made up mostly of anti-establishment politicians and many political newcomers.
“Not only is she a Black woman, mother, and head of household and victim of the conflict, she is also bridging the urban-rural divide in Colombia,” said Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a local consulting firm. “The only doubt she had before was whether she could get votes, which after the primary we know she can.”
Francia Márquez with Gustavo Petro, presidential candidate of the Historic Pact coalition, right, during an event in Bogotá on Wednesday. Photo: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images“We are not one and one, we are one and one, a team working for Colombia,” said Petro, who is fighting to become the country’s first left-wing president.
Petro, who was a member of the now-defunct M-19 guerrilla group as a youth, was mayor of the capital Bogotá and came second in the last presidential election in 2018.
His main rival this year will be Federico Gutiérrez, the former mayor of Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, who is widely seen as representing the centre-right status quo. Colombia has never had a left-wing president.
Also on the ballot will be Colombia’s fragile peace process with left-wing rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were demobilized after signing a peace deal in 2016, ending a decades-long civil war that killed over 260,000 and displaced 7 million. State forces and their paramilitary allies contributed to the violence.
Petro is said to be a fervent supporter of the deal, while Gutiérrez is said to be a skeptic.