For the first time in its history an Afro could be vice president of Colombia, these are the five candidates

After it was confirmed that Francia Márquez will be the vice-presidential formula of Gustavo Petro and Luis Gilberto Murillo, that of Sergio Fajardo, the country began to highlight the participation of Afro-Colombians in politics. However, three other presidential candidates also have members of the Negritudes on their teams, who probably went unnoticed.

Sandra de las Lajas Torres will be the vice-presidential formula for presidential candidate John Milton Rodríguez, who seeks to reach the Casa de Nariño for the Christian party Colombia Justa Libres. Her vice is a professor from the department of Nariño, in the city of Tumaco and has experience in several corporations such as the Government of Valle del Cauca, the Ministries of the Interior and ICT, and even in the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (DAPRE).

In the case of the former governor of Antioquia, Luis Pérez, he also elected an Afro member to accompany him in his career for the presidency of Colombia. This is Ceferino Mosquera, a native of Buenaventura, a law graduate from the Universidad Santiago de Cali; moreover, it is not the first time he has tried to reach a popularly elected position, given that in 2014 he competed for a seat in the Senate of the Republic, for the Green Alliance party.

Regarding his studies, Ceferino Mosquera is a specialist in administrative law, criminal law, commercial law and constitutional law; he is even known to have a master's degree in administrative law.

In the case of the former mayor of Bucaramanga, Rodolfo Hernández, the Afro-Colombian quota in his candidacy is represented by educator Marelen Castillo, who has an emphasis on organizational leadership. La Caleña has extensive experience in several educational institutions in the country such as the Indo-American Polytechnic, the Digital University Institution of Antioquia, the Central University, the Lumen Gentium Catholic Foundation, and several others.

The presidential candidate of the Centro Esperanza Coalition, Sergio Fajardo, announced his vice-presidential formula. A far cry from what was believed, the former governor of Antioquia announced that he elected Luis Gilberto Murillo, former Minister of Environment and former Governor of Chocó.

Murillo has been immersed throughout his life in academia and has a great political career in the country. In addition, he is a native of Andagoya, department of Chocó. Thanks to his academic performance, he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study mining engineering at the Moscow State University for Geological Prospecting and there did a master's degree in the same area.

In 1993 he returned to Colombia when President César Gaviria appointed him director of the Corporation for the Development of Chocó (Codechocó). He then worked with Antanas Mockus, during his mayor's office, where he was in charge of planning and budgeting for the Administrative Department of the Environment of Bogotá (DAMA) between 1995 and 1997, as well as being its director in charge.

In 1998 he was convicted of the crime of embezzlement for a different official destination, because he invested five million pesos in a work other than the one that had been approved. Instead of doing environmental sanitation to a mine, the then governor decided to repair a school in poor condition.

Perhaps the one that has been most publicized in this list of black candidates for the Vice-Presidency is the formula of the Historical Pact, lawyer Francia Márquez. The social environmental leader was not only the third most voted candidate in the consultations held on March 13 with more than 783,000 votes, but she has consolidated herself as a political phenomenon in Colombia.

Born in the village of Yolombó, in the district of La Toma, in Suárez, a small Caucan municipality, traditionally hit by armed violence, Márquez stood out from a very young age for the defense of the environment, leading a movement against mining, both that executed illegally and that executed by the big ones multinationals.

Her constant activism earned her recognition, in 2018, with the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018, one of the most important awards awarded in the world to environmental defenders, in which she was described as “a formidable leader of the Afro-Colombian community”.

All of the above-mentioned candidates already have a place in the first presidential round on May 29 and, it is expected that over time they will continue to learn more about the negligence of Colombian politics, since according to the national census of the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), there are 2 in Colombia .982,224 citizens who, as of 2018, were conceived as afros.

KEEP READING: