EFE Funky Videos
Francia Márquez, a vice-presidential dream for Colombia to live “tasty”
Bogotá, June 14 (EFE) .- When she was a girl, no one told Francia Márquez that she could be vice president, it was unthinkable that a woman like her, African-American and from an area as affected by the armed conflict as Cauca, could even study, let alone govern. But she may get it this Sunday, under the promise of fighting for a Colombia in which she finally lives “tasty.” Márquez’s, born in the Cauca town of Suárez in 1981, has been a life of struggles: to study, to survive in one of the “hottest” areas, to support her family after being a teenage mother, to have to forcibly displaced after receiving threats for fighting for their rights and those of their own, and for defending the land where they were born. Her aspiration as the running mate of the leftist Gustavo Petro has put her in the public spotlight and has brought to light some of the most despicable racist and misogynistic behavior of a presidential campaign that could take her to a power she never craved and from which she will seek to do of Colombia a fairer country. After obtaining almost 800,000 votes in the internal consultation that chose the presidential candidate of the left-wing coalition Historical Pact -the second largest vote-, Márquez got on the train led by Petro with the desire to take the left for the first time to the House Narino. STRUGGLE FOR REPRESENTATION Márquez has become a political phenomenon and a symbol of communities traditionally marginalized in Colombian politics and society, opening a window of hope for representation and change. Although precisely this element of novelty in the political landscape has also earned her criticism for her political inexperience. “Many say that I do not have the experience to accompany Gustavo Petro to govern this country and I wonder why their experience did not allow us to live in dignity? Why has their experience kept us for so many years subjected to the violence that generated more than eight million victims? Why didn’t his experience make all Colombians live in peace? “, he asked the audience at the closing of the campaign of the first round. Márquez is clear: “The time has come to heal our country, to reconcile as the Colombian family that we are.” “I didn’t ask to be in politics, but politics got into our lives. That patriarchal, hegemonic, racist and classist Colombia is the politics we want to transform,” she says, knowing that she is very close to becoming vice president. “I am an Afro-descendant woman who, since she was a child, was imposed the fear of recognizing ourselves as women and as Afro, who was taught to feel ashamed of her skin color, her hair and her history,” says Márquez, who now seeks vindicate their heritage with the dream that in Colombia they can “live tasty”. “Living tasty is not living lazily; it is living in dignity, it is living in peace, it is living without fear and it is living with joy. It is that the young people of Colombia have opportunities, that they can live their dreams,” she emphasizes. THE ACTIVISM THAT ACCOMPANIES HER One of the milestones of her long social struggle is the Goldman Environmental Prize, considered the environmental Nobel Prize. The vice-presidential candidate was born in the village of Yolombó in the village of La Toma, in the municipality of Suárez, in the north of the department of Cauca, where mining has made the region a very profitable economic source. An anguish that she shares with many Colombians, who pay for the sins of an extremely biodiverse and resource-rich land where multinational companies come to do business. Márquez stood up at the age of fifteen: she began her activism to save the Ovejas River and oppose mining, defending her land. Her activism led her to law school at the University of Santiago de Cali, from where she continued to promote complaints against the mining projects in her region of origin, which cost her death threats that forced her to to go away After a phone call in 2014 in which she was told that it was time to “settle accounts”, Márquez, a mother of two children and a grandmother at 40, did not look back and left her native Suárez de Ella. “That night I ran out of a meeting to look for my children, we asked for a taxi, they picked us up and we flew to Cali. On the way I only asked that we make ourselves invisible,” she recounts at her rallies. His long career in defense of life and land earned him the Goldman Prize in 2018 and, three decades after he mobilized for the first time to defend the Ovejas River, he is on the verge of taking the environmental fight to the Vice Presidency of the Republic. Márquez brings together the social struggle, feminism, the historically marginalized peoples and the “nobodies”, whom he continually evokes, the forgotten victims of the armed conflict, and has become a kind of symbol of the “change” that Colombia will have to decide at the polls this Sunday. “My name is Francia Márquez, I want Gustavo Petro to be my president and I want to be his vice president. We are going from resistance to power until dignity becomes customary” are the phrases with which Francia Márquez closes her speeches at rallies, hoping that Colombia, finally, “live tasty”. (c) EFE Agency
–
