The strength of my ancestors and the women who gave birth to freedom and taught us the path of dignity motivated me to start on this road to the Colo… - Francia Márquez

I have been proposing a program of agroecological productive projects and with the idea of food sovereignty being the top issue. There’s more than 21 million people in Colombia who don’t eat enough, who go to bed hungry every night.

That is a history that is repeated day after day. Mothers go to work in the homes of other families, and they come home to bury their children. That is the history of our country.

Colombia is a country that has traditionally been run by wealthy families. When Black and Indigenous communities demand that large-scale mining be removed from our communities and we ask for protection under the rule of law, the ruling families say that we’re posing a hurdle to economic development. That’s when I ask, what kind of development are they referring to, especially when Indigenous and Black communities lack basic utilities? The community I live in has no drinking water, and our river has been polluted with chemicals used for illegal mining. Furthermore, the Colombian state does not invest in social projects. Their idea of economic development is to extract ore and territories from ethnic communities. This move is a sheer example of structural racism, and every time a social leader’s voice or mine is lifted up to demand rights enshrined in the Constitution, then we end up being military targets by armed groups in our territory, particularly right-wing paramilitaries.