A 40-year-old black lady identified as Francia Márquez has created history in the South American country of Colombia by becoming the Colombian nation’s first-ever black vice president.
Francia Márquez is popularly known as a Lawyer and a long-time Afro-Colombian activist that has spent decades fighting for human and environmental rights. She was elected into office as Colombia’s vice president on June 19, 2022.
When she was 13 years old, Márquez started the fight for human rights to protest the construction of a dam that threatened her community, but officially in 2010 when she became President of the Association of Female African Descendants of Yolombó (la Asociación de Mujeres Afrodescendientes de Yolombó). She served in this position until 2013.
She continues working tirelessly over the years till 2018 when she was awarded a prestigious recognition in environmentalism, in San Francisco, California which is known as the Goldman Environmental Prize. Fast forward to 2019, Franca according to the UK’s most popular news network “BBC” was named one of the most influential women in the world. In 2020, Franca obtained a law degree from the University of Santiago in Cali (la Universidad Santiago de Cali).
Her succession as the vice president of the third-largest country in South America, Colombia is historical because she is only the second woman of African descent to hold this position in a Latin country.
History has it that the first woman to hold such a position in a Latin country was Epsy Campbell Barr who became Costa Rica’s first female vice president of African descent in 2018.
Credit: Blacknews.com
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