In Francia Márquez’s extensive fighting career there is something that is almost never mentioned: who is in his heart. The new vice president of Colombia has waged her struggles all her life and her arrival in power is a huge symbol of the change that will take place after the inauguration of Gustavo Petro on August 7.
His discretion is enormous and he has managed to keep his privacy. However, the company of him in his possession did not go unnoticed. President Gustavo Petro himself greeted his partner in his speech. The vice president hadn’t talked about him until now.
He did it in an interview The Informants with the journalist María Elvira Arango. “I haven’t been very good at relationships,” she says.
“After having my children alone, I had a person that I loved very much. She died of a heart attack,” she narrated.
However, he added that a new love was beginning to blossom. “I am falling in love with another person, but very carefully. Feeling the pains of the heart is very hard,” she told Arango.
The vice president clarified to the program that she will live, yes, alone in the vice-presidential house. “It is very cold. I am not a vice president to stay in the office all the time, ”she pointed out.
The voice of those who have no voice
It was in 1995 when Colombia heard his voice for the first time. Francia Márquez Mina was just a 14-year-old teenager, who was giving an interview in a regional media outlet. The community decided that the spokesperson to explain why they opposed the diversion of the Ovejas River in the rural area of Suárez, north of Cauca, was that young woman with a soft and slow tone, but with forceful words.
However, France’s struggle began much earlier, even before he was born. Francia was born in Yolombó, district of Suárez, where opportunities are scarce and life is wild. A community, mostly Afro-descendant, that had two paths: the men dedicated to farm work and the women who went to the big cities like Cali, to work as live-in maids. France took the second course.
He left his territory when his adolescence was just blossoming, he worked in several family homes in Cali and, in his spare time, that is, on weekends, he traveled home to defend what little they had: the river and the benefits of the nature.
France was the voice of the voiceless. This is how she earned respect and the opportunity to be the one who gave her first interview in 1995. “We are not going to allow them to take away what is ours,” said the young Francia. And so it was, the community organized itself to prevent the Ovejas River from being diverted into the La Salvajina reservoir, built ten years earlier.
From that moment on, France became an authoritative voice in her community. “I haven’t stopped since that day,” she says. Some time later came the defense for the voracious exploitation of gold on a large scale in another of the tributaries of the region, France was there.
She does not have the best memories of her work as a domestic worker. In one of those anecdotes that hardly counts, because it threatens to bring out a couple of tears, she remembers that one of her bosses did not pay her salary, even though her son, whom she had when she was 16, was sick. “That day there was a concert and she preferred to give the money from my salary to her daughter for the ticket and she told me that there was no payment, that if I wanted to go out like this,” says Francia. At that moment, he says, he realized that something in this country had to change.
She combined environmental activism with her informal work in family homes, then resumed her studies suspended due to her first pregnancy; later, she entered the Universidad Santiago de Cali, where she graduated three years ago as a lawyer.
For its struggles, France was recognized in 2015 with the National Prize for the Defense of Human Rights, and in 2018 it was awarded the Goldman Prize for the environment. In 2019, the prestigious BBC in London listed her as one of the 100 most influential women in the world.
At the time, the international newspaper described France as: “A formidable leader of the Afro-Colombian community, she led a 10-day, 350-mile women’s march to the country’s capital, to reclaim her ancestral lands from illegal gold miners.” .
To such praise, Francia responded: “The fight that I do is for the rights as a black people, as a community with the right to territory, it is the continuity of the fight that the ancestors began and that our elders continued and that today is still in the hands of all of us to defend a people that has been marginalized, excluded and racialized in a country that does not allow them the guarantee of their rights and that when we claim we are branded as repressed, lazy, lazy, thieves and a long etc.”.
But not everything was rosy that year. After receiving the recognition, Francia escaped death in one of the most unfortunate days of his life. On May 4, 2019, on a farm in the village of Lomitas de Santander de Quilichao, they attacked him along with other social leaders: several heavily armed men threw fragmentation grenades and fired indiscriminately at those present; There were no injuries, but there was a warning bell.
Despite this, France did not leave the territory. She continued to visit rural communities with a security scheme of just two men. Neither the bullets nor the noise of the grenades managed to intimidate her. The woman with a soft voice and slow dialogue is not afraid.
Their dreams
A few hours after being recognized by the BBC, France was interviewed by a regional outlet. They asked her with some eagerness what she would do now that the international community was paying attention to her and that, in addition to the recognition, she received an economic incentive. She did not hesitate and replied: “My main personal challenge is to finish my studies as a lawyer, graduate, help finish the house for my mom and my family. I dream of supporting progressive politics in this country so that it closes the gaps of inequality and inequity, and a politics that thinks that betting on caring for the environment is development for the country, that development is linked to social and environmental well-being.”
He has already fulfilled two of those challenges: in 2020 he graduated with honors from the Santiago de Cali University and with the money earned in the awards he built the house he always dreamed of for his mother in the Yolombó district. He only has one pending: be part of a government that closes the gaps of inequality and inequity in this country, a dream that, after the vote this Sunday, is closer to being fulfilled.
France entered politics in the previous legislative elections. She aspired for a community council to keep one of the two Afro seats in Congress, but her vote was not the best.
In 2021, he announced to Colombia that he would be a presidential candidate. Her candidacy was a snowball that began to grow in the Colombian southwest. France achieved the endorsement of the Polo Democrático and was measured in a consultation with Gustavo Petro, Camilo Romero, former governor of Nariño, Alfredo Saade and Arelis Uriana. The representative of the blacks took second place, obtaining a surprise vote of almost 800,000 votes, which ensured her place next to Petro in the Historical Pact.
Francia Márquez Mina has two children, but she doesn’t like to talk about her private life. She says that now is not the important thing. However, she has referred to teenage pregnancy and her support for free abortion. She remembers that when she found out that her first child was on the way, the father abandoned them and she was left alone with that responsibility. “I had an uncle who became their father, but not all women have those same conditions, not all women have an extended family”counted.
Francia Márquez Mina wants to make history. Her profile is a slap in the face of traditional politics: a black woman, born in deep Colombia and made freehand from social and environmental activism. Her name could appear in the Casa de Nariño as one of the most mediatic political phenomena of the last century. France says it is ready. She is not scared.