Francia Márquez: From maid to Colombia’s first Black vice-president

When Colombians on Sunday elected their first leftist president ever, they also voted for their country’s first Black vice-president. Francia Márquez, a Black single mother who worked as a maid before challenging international mining interests as a fiery environmentalist, now becomes Colombia’s first Black female vice-president. Her victory marks a turning point in a country plagued by social inequalities and historically governed by conservative elites.

On the campaign trail, she was exuberant and unabashedly dazzling. In brightly colored Afro-Colombian garments teamed with big jewelry, Francia Márquez embraced her identity, challenged the status quo and proposed a brighter future.

“It’s time to move from resistance to power,” the 40-year-old candidate would chant, raising her fist – with a smile.

On Sunday, Colombians elected their first ever leftist president when Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla, defeated a real estate millionaire in a runoff victory that marked a seismic shift in the South American country long governed by conservatives or moderates.

With Márquez as his running mate, Petro has signaled not just a political break, but also a social one in a country that has historically denied the existence of racism.

What’s more, Márquez – with her brightly printed fabrics and the assertion of her Afro-Colombian roots – has also thrust the Europeanized elitism of Colombia under the spotlight, opening a discussion on racism in a country that overwhelmingly identifies as racially mixed, or Mestizo, sweeping racism under the table.

Márquez’s journey, from young, Black single mother to the country’s vice-presidency is an extraordinary story of grit against the odds.

There is nothing in Márquez’s past to suggest that she would embark on a political career. Born in 1981 in a small village in the southwestern Cauca region of Colombia, she grew up alone with her mother. Pregnant at 16 with her first child, she was first forced to work in a gold mine a few kilometers from home to support her family and then hired as a maid.