Who is Francia Márquez, Vice President-elect of Colombia

Francia Márquez became Colombia’s vice president-elect this Sunday (19), when she triumphed at the polls alongside Gustavo Petro in the second round of the country’s presidential elections. Francia Márquez’s rise in politics began with the historic election results in the left-wing coalition consultation in Colombia.

Francia Márquez is Gustavo Petro’s deputy from 2023 to 2026. Petro won with 50.44% of the votes, or 11,281,013 million votes in a historic election for the country. The former mayor of Bogotá and former guerrilla fighter had a fierce dispute with businessman Rodolfo Hernández, a right-wing populist candidate with an anti-system discourse. Hernández had 47.31% of the votes, with 10,580,412 voters.

Francia Márquez (who grew up in Yolombó, Cauca, in 1981) is, according to her own biography, the first “black, Afro-descendant, native to the poorest regions” in Colombia who, with a historic vote on March 13, obtained more than 783 votes. thousand votes in the consultation of the Historic Pact (14%). She participated on behalf of the Alternative Democratic Polo party.

She came in second, after Gustavo Petro, who later called her to be his vice president.

The electoral phenomenon of Francia Márquez

Although Petro’s victory was overwhelming, Francia Márquez’s votes exceeded experts’ expectations, and he had more support from someone with higher visibility like Camilo Romero, who was a senator and governor of the department of Nariño.

Francia Márquez’s vote was higher than, for example, the winner of the centre’s consultation, Sergio Fajardo, who received just over 723,000 votes.

Francia Márquez traveled through much of the country with a campaign to, according to her, dignify politics and make visible “the nobody”, the women who were raped and the victims of violence in this country.

“I come from no one’s territory, I come from forgotten territories in terms of social investment, but violated by a policy of death,” Márquez told reporters in March. “So it wouldn’t make sense to be part of the Historic Pact if it wasn’t to transform these realities that people still live in”.

Francia Márquez, an activist proud of her blackness

Francia Márquez was born on a mountain in the middle of two rivers in the municipality of Suárez, Cauca, in southwest Colombia. As she recounted, she learned about mining, agriculture and fishing there. From a very young age, she began to lead spaces in her community, and to empower hers, even from the recognition of her blackness, in a highly racist country.

“I became an activist in the process of black communities where I learned to recognize myself as a black woman, to recognize my hair, my blackness with pride, because this country made us feel ashamed, made us feel responsible for the misfortunes we had to live” , said Márquez, who from a young age has been a defender of the struggles of black communities.

Márquez is a mother of two, who, out of fear, had to move out of the country while advancing in the current campaign, she said in March. She is a lawyer graduated from the University of Santiago de Cali and received the Goldman Prize in 2018, something like a ‘Nobel Prize for the Environment’ for her struggle in the community of La Toma “to stop illegal gold mining on their ancestral lands”, that he was contaminating the river where his entire community fished with mercury.

And although he says he makes no promises, he stresses that it is “a priority” to solve the problem of hunger throughout the country. But for that, he explains, it is necessary that his project reaches the presidency in the next three months. Márquez said he doesn’t care what position he is in, but that he can work for the most vulnerable communities.

As political analyst Jorge Andrés Hernández told CNN, before the March 13 elections, Márquez was seen as a woman with little political experience in popular election positions, to which she responds that her struggle did not even begin with the Historic Pact. , nor with political representation.

“I have struggled to dignify life since my childhood,” Márquez told a group of journalists in March.

Her fight against racism and in favor of feminism

Márquez says that his victory in the internal consultations is largely due to women and young people, and guarantees that his victory “is already evidence that we are breaking with patriarchy and machismo in politics”.

With the campaign motto “I am because we are”, it intends to seek racial justice, defend human rights and the care of life and territory, as well as the rights of women. In fact, she says that, thanks to many women in the country, she reached the mark of having the second vote in the Historic Pact.

“The disadvantage we had in this process is that most Colombians do not know us,” he says.

However, the feminist struggle transcendentally marks her political project. She says she is not interested in coming to power just for one job, nor is she interested in making deals with women who are about to break the “glass ceiling”.

In Colombia, no women held the presidency, but Marta Lucía Ramírez was chosen as the vice-presidential ticket by Iván Duque, and they won the presidential elections in 2018. Ramírez is the first woman to hold the position of vice president.

“I am here to join hands with the women who were voiceless, with whom they never had opportunities or privileges, whose voices were silenced and those who were not allowed by their conditions as impoverished and racialized women to live in peace and with dignity.”