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BOGOTA: As Colombia’s voters put apart a longtime antipathy to leftists and selected one as their new president, in addition they carved out one other milestone — electing the nation’s first Black vp.
When former leftist insurgent Gustavo Petro takes workplace as president on August 7, a key participant in his administration will probably be Francia Marquez, his operating mate in Sunday’s runoff election.
Marquez is an environmental activist from La Toma, a distant village surrounded by mountains the place she first organized campaigns towards a hydroelectric mission after which challenged wildcat gold miners who have been invading collectively owned Afro-Colombian lands.
The politician has confronted quite a few dying threats for her environmental work and has emerged as a strong spokeswoman for Black Colombians and different marginalized communities.
“She’s utterly totally different than any one other individual that’s ever had a vice presidency in Colombia,” mentioned Gimena Sanchez, the Andes director for the Washington Workplace on Latin America, a human rights group.
“She comes from a rural space, she comes from the angle of a campesino lady and from the angle of areas of Colombia which were affected by armed battle for a few years. Most politicians in Colombia who’ve held the presidency haven’t lived in the best way she has,” Sanchez mentioned.
She mentioned Marquez will doubtless be given the mandate to work on gender points in addition to insurance policies affecting the nation’s Afro-Colombian inhabitants.
In a number of interviews. Petro has mentioned making a Ministry of Equality, which might be headed by Marquez and would work throughout a number of sectors of the economic system on points like decreasing gender inequalities and tackling disparities confronted by ethnic minorities.
Gracias Colombia.
¡El pueblo no se rinde carajo!
Empezó #LaNuevaHistoria
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