POWERFUL

Wednesday
22nd of March WOMEN'S Number 10

FRANCIA MARQUEZ
Environmental activist, feminist, leader of the African-Colombian
communities and now Vice precident of Colombia.

The indigenous, black, raizal, and palenquera

communities had to wait until the 1991
Constitution for it to be recognized that
Colombia is a multicultural and multiethnic
country. Although the attempts at exclusion did
not disappear with the promulgation of the
Magna Carta, the least favored had legal tools to
demand state presence and protection in the
territories. In this context, Francia Márquez,
current vice president of Colombia, is originally
from the village of La Toma, Cauca. A
geographical area characterized by a high level
of conflict derived from the presence of
unregulated extractive production methods
(Sañudo et al, 2016). Activities that contributed
to unjustified dispossession of land, low levels of
development and precarious living conditions.
In this sense, due to the precarious levels of
education and high percentages of violence and
displacement, job opportunities were limited in
physical jobs such as being a miner, worker,
farmer, among others (Banco de la República,
2021). At an early age, she began to take an
interest in issues of rights, social and
environmental difficulties faced by the
inhabitants of her area.

F rancia Elena Márquez Mina was born

in 1981 in Suárez, in the northern part of
the Cauca department of Colombia. She is
the mother of two children and before being
elected vice president of the Republic, she
was a social leader, environmental activist,
human rights defender and lawyer since
2020.
Of her early life she remembers spending
time at her maternal and paternal
grandparents' house, while sharing with her
mother, a midwife, farmer, miner; and her
dad, who worked as an agrominer.
When Francia Márquez was only 13 years
old, she had to suffer the threat to her
community in Cauca due to the construction
of a dam.
Like many Colombians, Francia Márquez
was the victim of forced displacement along
with her two children, after being identified
as a military objective by illegal armed
groups for her activism and defense of the
rights of the communities.
Francia Elena Marquez Mina, Vise president of Colombia.
"In my community we are taught [...] to love and
value the territory as a living space, to fight for it,
even putting our own lives at risk."
Since then she has taken on the role of
activist and local leader in the struggle for
environmental and ancestral land rights.
This activism at such an early age led her to
choose a career in law, which she was able to
complete after many personal adversities,
such as being a teenage single mother at 16
year and then at 20 year, suffering forced
displacement and having to move from
artisanal mining to domestic work in the city
of Cali.
In 2009, when mining titles were granted to
companies such as Anglogold Ashanti,
Francia opposed the displacement of her
community. She was in her second semester
of law school and filed a tutela action. In
December 2010, the Constitutional Court
ordered the suspension of the titles and
prevented the eviction. "I thought I didn't
have to study, but I had to do it to have the
tools with which I can now help my people,"
he says.
After this, he received threats from
paramilitary groups and had to flee the land
he had defended so much. He had stopped
large-scale mining, but his struggle did not
end there. Now the territory was threatened
by illegal mining.
In 2014 she led the Black Women's
Mobilization for the Care of Life and
Ancestral Territories, a march to denounce
how illegal mining was poisoning the rivers
and destroying the territory. "For many
people it may be nothing, but for me that
territory, where they sow our navel, is
everything. Our ancestors bequeathed these
lands to us and we cannot be mean by not
guaranteeing a space for our children." This
mobilization was a walk of more than 600
kilometers to Bogotá, which was joined by
around 80 Afro-Colombian women.
Achievement
• Leading the March of the
turbans gave her the visibility that
made her worthy of the National
Award for the Defense of
Human Rights in 2015.
• In 2016 She was invited to
participate, on behalf of the
Afro-descendant community, in
the peace process between the
Colombian State and the FARC
taking place in Havana, Cuba.
Márquez Mina supported the
participation of ethnic peoples
during the negotiations,
contributing to the "Ethnic
Chapter for Peace".
• She was presented to the
presidential consultation of
March 2022 by the Polo
• In 2018, she received the Democrático party and in the
Goldman Environmental Prize in coalition formula of the Historical
the United States, the equivalent of Pact. Although she was not
the environmental Nobel Prize, enough to win the presidential
awarded to social leaders who candidacy, she obtained an
defend and preserve the natural impressive vote of 760,000 votes,
environment and ecosystems. She surpassing other candidates with a
shared this award with figures of long political career.
the stature of the Grandmothers of
the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina or
the Honduran environmental and • Francia Márquez took office as
indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. vice-president of Colombia on
August 7, 2022.
• In 2019, the public service for
radio and television in the United
Kingdom, the BBC, highlighted
Francia Márquez as one of the
hundred most outstanding women
in the world, recognition that it
also awarded her the Casa
Amèrica Catalunya, in Spain, by
presenting her with the Joan award
Alsina Human Rights Award for
its environmental defense and the
rights of the Afro-Colombian
community, as well as for its
contribution to peace in
Colombia.
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 Wednesday POWERFUL Number 10
22nd of March
2023 WOMEN'S

Why this person should win the

award?

Márquez Mina embodies this desire to live tasty, making

visible not only women heads of household, but also black
and impoverished women who have historically
experienced discrimination and exclusion from a broad
sector of society.

This wonder woman also embodies the collective struggle

for ethnic and gender equality in a country that has
historically been governed by elite white men. Her arrival of
her to the vice presidency is an achievement of ethnic
minorities and without a doubt, she is a figure that
represents, makes visible and empowers historically
excluded, marginalized, racialized and forgotten peoples.

She is a woman who has formed a figure that represents

and gives hope, she is an example of resilience and constant
struggle to live in peace and with dignified conditions.
And as she says:

"I am part of a process, of a history of

"I am part of those who raise their voices
struggle and resistance that began with
to stop the destruction of rivers, forests
my ancestors brought in condition of
and moors. Of those who dream that one
slavery. I am part of the struggle against
day human beings will change the
structural racism, I am part of those
economic model of death, to give way to
who fight to continue giving birth to
build a model that guarantees life".
freedom and justice. Of those who
keep hope for a better life, of those
women who use maternal love to take
care of their territory as a living space."
Everything she is and represents her makes her a unique
woman and deserving of this recognition.

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