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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Francia Márquez, Vice President-Elect of Colombia</h1>June 22, 2022</div>
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<img src="https://orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Francia-Marquez.jpg" alt="Francia Márquez, vice-president elect of Colombia. Photo: Daniel Muñoz/AFP." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="261">
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Francia Márquez, vice-president elect of
Colombia. Photo: Daniel Muñoz/AFP. </p>
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<p>The first fact about the vice president-elect of
Colombia, Francia Márquez, is her African descent. However, her origins
are more relevant than what is evident at first glance. It was her
history as a human rights activist and lawyer for social causes that led
her to where she is today.</p>
<p>Márquez was born in 1981, in the village of Yolombó, located in
Suárez, a town in the department of Cauca in south-western Colombia
where mining is the main factor of economic dependence and social
struggles.</p>
<p><strong>A history of militancy against extractivism</strong><br>
Márquez’s family depended on the mining industry. While her mother was a
midwife in the small local healthcare system, her laborer father worked
in the mines and she herself had her first job as an artisanal gold
miner. She later became a domestic worker, and at the age of 16 she had
the first of her two sons.</p>
<p>As a teenage mother, Márquez studied at the University of Santiago de
Cali and graduated as a lawyer. At the same time, the environmental
damage due to mining and forced displacement of hundreds of inhabitants
of her hometown was growing. These two were the triggers for her social
and political activism.</p>
<p>She opposed the indiscriminate extractivism, caused by the granting
of mining titles to companies everywhere, and made her own the defense
of the environment as well as of human rights that were also damaged by
that industry.</p>
<p>Her activism began in 2009, during protests to save the Ovejas River
from the contamination caused by mining, and since then she has received
several recognitions for her work. One of the milestones of her
lifelong social struggle was receiving the Goldman Environmental Prize,
considered the environmental Nobel Prize.</p>
<p>In 2014 she participated in the interethnic and intercultural
roundtable that demanded the Colombian government to stop illegal mining
and the granting of mining titles without prior consultation in the
territories of indigenous communities. She became a target of
paramilitary groups that regularly harassed villagers.</p>
<p><strong>A fighter, a victim</strong><br>
That year Márquez was forcibly displaced from her home. Later she
organized, together with some 70 Afro-descendant women, The March of the
Turbans, an event that was also known as Black Women for the Care of
Life and Ancestral Territories. On November 17, the group left Suarez
for Bogota. They traveled 600 kilometers to demand from the government a
solution to the problem of illegal mining.</p>
<p>Márquez also traveled to Cuba during the peace talks between the
government of Juan Manuel Santos and the leaders of the now dissolved
FARC. In 2015, she participated in a community assembly in northern
Cauca to demand the Colombian state to guarantee protection for social
leaders who are continually threatened.</p>
<p>However, her ethnic and peasant activism earned her several new
threats, and even an attempt on her life by paramilitaries in 2019,
while she was the legal representative of the Community Council of La
Toma de Suárez, a position she held since 2016.</p>
<p><strong>A symbol of marginalized communities</strong><br>
Márquez being a woman, and her African descent were other fronts of
battle for her. Moreover, these were the topics for which the most
conservative right-wing sectors of Colombia questioned her competence
for her position as Gustavo Pertro’s running mate.</p>
<p><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/gustavo-petro-is-colombias-new-president/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED CONTENT: Gustavo Petro is Colombia’s New President</a></p>
<p>However, Márquez, dressed in colorful costumes typical of her region,
and with her ability as a speaker, captivated the electorate,
especially women and the youth. She became a political phenomenon and a
symbol of the communities traditionally marginalized in politics, and
opened a space for the hope of representation of those who had none.</p>
<p>Another front of attack against her during the electoral campaign was her lack of experience in the partisan political arena.</p>
<p>“Many say that I have no experience to accompany Gustavo Petro to
govern this country, and I wonder why their experience did not allow us
to live in dignity?” Márquez responded in one of her speeches.</p>
<p>“Why has their experience kept us subjected to violence for so many
years, which gave us more than eight million victims?” she questioned.
“Why did their experience not allow all Colombians to live in peace?”</p>
<p><strong>To whom Márquez dedicated her victory</strong><br>
Márquez dedicated a special part of her first speech as vice president-elect to social and minority struggles.</p>
<p>“We women are going to eradicate patriarchy from our country, we are
going to fight for the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community, we are going to
fight for the rights of our mother earth, the home of all of us,”
Márquez said in her speech after the election results became known. “We
are goint to take care of our home, of biodiversity, and let us fight
together to eradicate structural racism.”</p>
<p>Her message, she added, was for the “social leaders who sadly were
murdered in this country, for the youth who have been murdered and
disappeared, for the women who have been raped and disappeared. To all
of them who I know are accompanying us from somewhere in this historic
moment for Colombia.”</p>
<p>(<a href="https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/19/francia-marquez-vice-president-elect-of-colombia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Internationalist 360°</a>)</p></div>
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