Francia Márquez, the country’s first Black vice-president, opens up about the strains in her relationship with the president and the obstacles she has faced: ‘The Colombian state is a racist state’
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n the historic centre of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, a gallery of portraits at the vice-president’s official residence displays the faces of all former vice-presidents since the country became a republic in 1886. All of them are white.
When the current president and vice-president leave office in August, the wall will include an Afro-Colombian face for the first time: Francia Márquez, 44, the first Black woman to become vice-president in a country where at least 10% of the population is Afro-descendant.
Elected in 2022 alongside the leftwing president Gustavo Petro, Márquez also became one of only three Black women to have served as second-in-command in the Americas, following Epsy Campbell Barr in Costa Rica in 2018 and Kamala Harris in the United States in 2021.
