"My fashion is resistance": this is the 23-year-old designer who dresses Francia Márquez, the vice president of Colombia

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Esteban Sinisterra is the young black fashion designer from the Colombian Pacific, a mostly poor region, who dresses Vice President Francia Márquez - the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold that position - in what he calls "resistance" fashion.

Sinisterra, whose colorful patterned dresses for Márquez

grew up in the municipality of Santa Bárbara Iscuande in Nariño province, where young people, he says, have few opportunities to escape the country's internal conflict.

Her life story has similarities to that of Márquez, who previously worked as a domestic worker and environmental activist, and who also grew up in the impoverished municipality of Suárez, in the department of Cauca, and

for her opposition to the mining of the Prayed.

Esteban Sinisterra Paz, 24, the creator of Esteban Africa, works in his workshop located in his apartment in Cali, Colombia, on July 6, 2022. The Washington Post via Getty Images

"In some ways his story and mine are similar, so I think there was a very nice spark there," said Sinisterra, 23, who now lives in the city of Cali and is studying social work alongside his job as a designer.

With the vice president "first we accept and recognize that we have roots that unite us, Africa, but taking into account those roots we also express the territory where we are from, the Colombian Pacific," explained Sinisterra, who learned his trade from his aunt and grandmother.

[The activist Francia Márquez will be the first black vice president of Colombia]

"

," Sinisterra stressed.

"It's being able to show that this is who we are...so for me fashion, my fashion, is resistance,"

Márquez, 40, who mentioned his ancestors in his oath, plans to lead a new equality ministry if the government wins congressional approval for its creation.