As a prominent activist, Francia Márquez faced death threats, racist tweets — even an assassination attempt. Then she was named a candidate for vice president to the front-runner in this month’s election.
Of the six presidential tickets in the May 29 election, four have an Afro-Colombian vice-presidential candidate — a remarkable shift in a country historically led by men from a small group of elite families.
Colombia has one of the largest populations of descendants of Africans in Latin America. Census data indicates Afro-Colombians make up more than 6.2 percent of the population, but analysts say the true count may be much larger.Márquez’s talk about race is disruptive in a country that for generations identified its people as sharing a single mixed race, called Mestizo.
As much as 90 percent of the population along the Pacific Coast is Afro-Colombian, most of them descended from people enslaved by the Spanish to work in gold mines in the region before the legal abolition of slavery in 1851. But there’s a long-held belief among Colombians that Black people live only in the remote forests of the Pacific region, Herrera says.
This is also what distinguishes her from the other Black candidates running for vice president. Luis Gilberto Murillo, the running mate for centrist candidate Sergio Fajardo, is a former environmental minister and governor who was educated abroad. Murillo “speaks in the language of the elites,” Viveros said.Murillo, asked if Colombia is racist, responded: “I’m not the one saying it; the constitutional court has said it, many times. If I say it is, then people will call me resentful.
“The problem people have with Francia is that she is a Black woman who does not behave well, who knows she is Black, and knows what that means in historical terms,” Restrepo said. “And she doesn’t shut up.” Márquez spoke out against illegal gold mining. Death threats forced her to flee her town. That same year, she led dozens of women on a 217-mile march to Bogotá to protest a mine that threatened a river on which her community depended. The Colombian government eventually responded by sending troops to push the illegal miners out.won the Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded to one activist from each of six regions around the world. A year later, she survived an assassination attempt.
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