Francia Márquez, the spokesperson for 'the nobody' who became vice president

Francia Márquez, who will assume the vice-presidency of Colombia tomorrow, was on the stage of the Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires on July 30, in one of the acts of her Latin American tour, while the voice of the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano sounded on a loudspeaker .

With his rhythmic voice, she read his poem

: “The nobodies, the children of no one, the owners of nothing.

/ The nobodies: the nobodies, the nobodies, the Hare running, life dying, screwed up, screwed up”.

The first Afro vice president of Colombia did not reveal her expression.

She is a strong, unassailable woman.

She barely managed a smile and asked for applause for the poem.

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Francia Márquez and the assault on the power of the nobodies

It could be said of her that she has transformed that poem into a political program.

Her arrival in power represents, in effect, the landing of the so-called

.

Now, her challenge is to materialize those hopes in the first leftist government of Colombia, which Gustavo Petro will preside over.

Márquez was born 40 years ago in Yolombó, a village in Suárez, a municipality in Cauca, in southwestern Colombia.

He has known fear.

The one of not having what to feed his two children, whose parents disappeared;

that of death threats in a country that kills environmental activists like no other.

She was an artisanal miner, she fought against illegal miners who were destroying a river on her land and putting her countrymen at risk of displacement.

She worked cleaning houses;

he studied law, although he dreamed of being a singer and a poet;

led a march of 80 women wearing turbans who walked for 10 days and 350 kilometers to Bogotá to demand that the government in power take away mining titles from companies that came from the hands of paramilitaries, and won The Goldman Environmental Prize 2018, the Nobel environmental.

The road has not been short, nor easy.

They have called her resentful, “equalized”, unprepared.

“When they tell me that I am an apparition, well yes and what.

Today we appear, although we had always been.

I've heard that all my life, today we show that we can, ”she said sarcastically.

She has been training as her leader since her adolescence when she discovered the pride of being black, she stopped straightening her curly hair and joined the Process of Black Communities (PCN).

She is well aware of the expectations that she now arouses from the other shore: “I have fought against mining-energy projects.

Now that I am the government, it will be my turn to see how we are going to do it.

They are projects that are seen as development, but they do not generate well-being”.

His political positions are not always well received.

She usually says things as she thinks them, she is distrustful and she is expected to be a radical and dissenting voice within the Government itself.

Her presence as a feminist gained weight before the new president, Gustavo Petro, who had just started the campaign had had disagreements with a sector of feminism.

The rise of Márquez has also exposed a entrenched racism in Colombian society.

She has been caricatured as a monkey and she, without fear of controversy, has sued influencers and a popular singer for racism and hate speech.

One of their claims is that in Colombia it is time to “live tasty”.

“It refers to living without fear, in dignity, in guarantee of rights.

Living tasty is that I could live in my own house, that I had security guarantees and maybe not with a few armed people”, according to her.

The new vice president has put words in the public debate that Colombia did not want to hear: she speaks of a classist, racist and patriarchal country.

She talks about the feminism that she knew, not from theory, but from life itself, having as references her grandmother and her mother, as well as other women in her community.

"I learned from women who, even without having anything, do whatever it takes to get their children ahead, so that their children do not go to bed with an empty stomach or go to school with torn shoes or that they are not snatched by armed actors" .

And also anti-racist feminism, whose inspiration also comes from her friend, the American philosopher Angela Davis, author of

(Akal).

"Black women are not fighting to break the glass ceiling, but to stand up and walk with their sisters alongside indigenous women who have always been on their knees," according to Márquez.

Francia Márquez's message enhances Petro's speech with his story and his voice.

He dresses in African prints and bright colors, with peasant silhouettes and skirts and gold earrings in the shape of Colombia.

He does not speak of poor people, but impoverished by a "neoliberal model that puts life at risk."

To govern as a collective act, under the ubuntu philosophy, defended in his day by Nelson Mandela, and whose essence gives its name to the movement,

.

"I represent

and

of Colombia," declared Márquez in April, at the beginning of the electoral race.

He represents, in the words of the philosopher Laura Quintana, the "dignified rage" of a sector of social mobilization that finally claims to have a better life.

Francia Márquez insists, repeats and sings that she will work “until dignity becomes a habit”.

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