The impact of Francia Marquez: The political participation of indigenous women in Latin America.

In June this year, Francia Marquez became the first Afro-descendant woman vice-president of Colombia, the first Afro-descendant woman to hold this position in the country. She describes herself as a woman of struggle, dignity and justice, and assures that her mandate will focus on issues such as social, gender, racial and environmental justice and the protection of human rights. The impact of Francia’s new vice- presidency transcends borders and makes the personal struggle of indigenous women politically relevant across the Latin American continent.

Francia Marquez has been involved in social activism, the defense of territory and human rights since she was very young. She has been president of different associations and has participated in the framework of the peace dialogues between the Colombian government and the FARC in which she supported the participation of ethnic peoples, resulting in the “Ethnic Chapter of the Havana Peace Agreement“. Her leap into national politics and her split as vice-president of Colombia represent a turning point for the political participation of indigenous women in the continent, as their presence on the continent is still minimal.

The Colombian political system shows that it is a colonialist, chauvinist and racist system in which minorities have hardly any voice, let alone participation in institutional politics. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, various affirmative action measures have been promoted with the aim of increasing women’s representation in politics, such as: equality programs, women’s spaces in the executive sphere and quota, or parity laws for electoral processes for positions of popular representation. Yet, in all these actions, the incorporation of the indigenous issue or an ethnic approach has been an unusual circumstance. According to ECLAC data (2014), between 2010 and 2015 there was indigenous participation in legislative bodies in only six countries, not including Colombia among them. And when we talk about indigenous representation by women, we are relegated in most cases to the municipal level. They are instituted as symbolic “representatives” of the survival of their Peoples, before their own and before the majority society in which they are inserted, as Ivanna Gigena (2019) points out. It is important to underline that indigenous women’s struggle for representation has in many cases taken second place, as it is, they themselves who priorities the defense of the collective rights of the people over that of the women themselves. In the words of the Ecuadorian indigenous leader Ana María Guacho “we didn’t want feminism, we fought for gender equality, men and women, the people to go out, to be able to speak face to face”.

The struggle of these women to be heard is difficult outside and within the indigenous movement itself, because being a woman and being indigenous is already a double discrimination. Francia herself pointed out in front of her people: “It is difficult as women to reach this space of political representation. But if we are black, indigenous, peasant, impoverished women, the struggle is much more difficult”. This is why it is moving and admirable to see Colombia’s new vice-president, who brings together almost all the vectors of contemporary oppression, pushing forward all forms of resistance. Angela Davis herself sees her as an example of political and life struggle. The strength of Francia brings hope for the future of the country, as well as for the continent. Names such as the young indigenous Brazilian deputy Célia Xakriabá, who aspires to a seat in the National Congress of Deputies in these elections, give us hope for a diverse, anti-racist and feminist political settlement on the continent.