Right-wing men have ruled Colombia for years. Now, however, the people want a change that was surprised by an Afro-Colombian woman from the outskirts of Cauca.
What seemed impossible for decades, became a reality on Sunday. For the first time ever, Colombia’s presidential election was won by a leftist candidate.
In the decisive second round, the former leftist, the current senator Gustavo Petro defeated the uncommitted millionaire populist Rodolfo Hernándezin percentages from 50.4 to 47.3.
Petro’s vote catch last Sunday was the highest ever in Colombia’s presidential election. Despite this, Petro, who ran for the third time in the presidential race, was not the biggest surprise of Colombia’s election year.
Read more: Colombia elects first left-wing president – former left-wing Gustavo Petro takes over a country ravaged by poverty
Left moreover, in Colombia, the winning “los nadies,” i.e., those who are none in society. The voice of these women, Afro-Colombians, indigenous peoples, racists and the poor in remote areas, has not been reflected in Colombian politics.
Until the environmental activist French Marquez surprised the whole of Colombia in March. He garnered nearly 800,000 votes in the left-coalition presidential candidate’s ballot.
Now he will become Colombia’s vice president.
“Today we start writing history,” Márquez said On Twitter after the election victory.
Gustavo Petro (left), elected president of Colombia, and Francia Márquez, who will take over as vice-president after the election victory last Sunday.
Marquez says he comes from an area that has suffered a “politics of death”. It’s not just a language picture.
More than 300,000 people have died or been killed in Colombia’s civil war. In the late 1990s, 16-year-old Márquez was a single parent and a teenage mother in Cauca. They were the bloodiest years of the war in one of the war-torn areas.
In 2015, he participated in peace talks in Havana as a victim of the conflict. There, she spoke about the effects of the war, especially on the lives of women and Afro-Colombian communities.
Critics have accused the new vice president of political inexperience. He himself has emphasized that he has fought since childhood for the “restoration of the value of life” and for the dismantling of patriarchy and structural racism.
In his home region, Márquez became famous when he rose to protect fishing waters contaminated by gold diggers. Local activism also gained international recognition. In 2018, Márquez won the Goldman Environmental Award, called the “Green Nobel Prize”.
In his election day commendation speech, he thanked those activists and community leaders who have lost their lives “by sowing the seeds of resistance and hope”.
There are many of them. In Colombia, about a thousand community leaders have been killed since 2016. Environmental activists in the country are being murdered more than anywhere else in the world.
As Vice President Márquez has said he will focus primarily on eradicating famine. There is a lot to do. More than half of Colombians suffers from hunger and has more than half a million chronically malnourished children.
The pandemic has only deepened the anxiety.
A mural depicting Francia Márquez in Suarez, Colombia.
No matter how successful Márquez as vice president, he has already given a face to the forgotten part of the people he is defending.
Colombia has long been ideologically divided. Yet power has always remained firmly in the hands of right-wing, white men. They have come from the great cities of the country. At the same time, the rural population in particular has been living in the shadow of the armed conflict.
This difference in reality was exacerbated in the 2016 vote on the peace agreement. The state and the socialist guerrilla movement Farc had negotiated peace. But when the people got to vote, they rejected the treaty.
The war-torn areas voted for peace, but the strongest right-wing support areas in the center of the country opposed it.
Peace was finally achieved and Farc lowered his gun in 2016. A large proportion of Colombians still missed out. Their dissatisfaction erupted into a general strike and major protests first in 2019 and then in 2021.
The country’s youth in particular demanded change. Ivan Duquen the state-led state responded with police violence and the killing of protesters.
During the fiercest weeks of the protests, even the Colombian army did not venture into certain areas of the city of Cal, which became a center of protest. However, one political figure moved with them confidently and talked to the protesters: Francia Márquez.
The threat of violence has always been present in Márquez’s life and he has been threatened with death first by environmental activism and then by the election campaign. However, he was safe among the protesters.
They appreciated the activist woman who not only promised change, but lived it.
#Colombia #Fatally #threatened #environmental #activist #Francia #Márquez #teenager #worsttorn #areas #Civil #War #Colombias #vice #president
