Environmental activist Francia Elena Márquez has been at the vanguard of an awakening among Colombia's long-marginalized Afro-Colombian community.
Still, many didn’t take Márquez’s chances seriously last year when she announced her bid for the presidency. But, in a March primary of the leftist Historic Pact coalition, she garnered almost 800,000 votes.
She has weathered threats against her life, racist taunts and denied allegations of links to armed guerrillas.Internationally, Márquez has developed a kind of rock-star following as a fearless crusader for environmental, racial and gender justice, climate change and other timely issues. “It’s very convenient for her and her followers to construct a defensive wall that characterizes as racist or classist any type of criticism,” Luis Guillermo Vélez, an opposition politician,campaign. “Francia Márquez’s personal story may be admirable.... But that doesn’t exempt her from responding to questions about her political ideas.”
The region’s breathtaking beauty belies a harsh reality: It is a largely lawless, conflict-ridden zone where narco-traffickers harvest swaths of coca and marijuana, wildcat miners poison waterways and fell forests, and sundry armed groups — guerrillas, killers for hire, paramilitaries, criminal bands — hold sinister sway and grab landColombia perennially ranks among the world’s most perilous places for activists protecting land and water resources. Scores are killed each year.
“The struggle in my territory, in my community ... has passed from generation to generation,” Márquez wrote. The rising price of gold eventually drew the interest of multinational companies and others keen to cash in on the area’s treasures. Márquez became a plaintiff in a 2010 lawsuit alleging that Colombian authorities had awarded mining rights in La Toma without soliciting community input, as required by law. Colombia’s highest court agreed and suspended the concessions, a major victory — and a signal to Márquez that the legal system could be an ally.
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