FROM MAID TO COLOMBIA’S FIRST BLACK VICE PRESIDENT
There was jubilation in Colombia after the country elected Gustavo Petro as its first leftist president ever as well as its first ever black vice president Francia Marquez on Sunday.
Marquez, a single mother, and a fiery environmentalist, worked as a maid before challenging international miners.
It was gathered that there was virtually nothing in Marquez’s past to have portrayed her chances of embarking on a political career or becoming a vice president.
Born in 1981 in a small village in the southwestern Cauca region of Colombia, she grew up with her mother. Pregnant at 16 with her first child, she was first forced to work in a gold mine a few kilometres from home to support her family. She was later hired as a maid, according to France 24.
Her victory marks a turning point in Colombia, a country that had been reportedly marred with social inequalities and historically governed by conservative elites.
On the campaign trail, she was said to have been exuberant and unabashedly dazzling. Embracing her identity, Marquez would wear her brightly-coloured Afro-Colombian garments teamed with big jewellery.
She challenged the status quo, and proposed a brighter future with politics, saying “It’s time to move from resistance to power.”
“The great challenge that all of us Colombians have is reconciliation,” the 40-year-old said upon her victory, raising her fist, and smiling.
“The time has come to build peace, a peace that implies social justice,” Marquez had said.
“I am someone who raises my voice to stop the destruction of rivers, forests, and moors. I am someone who dreams that one day human beings will change the economic model of death, to make way for building a model that guarantees life,” she had said on her website