Elections in Colombia: Upsetting ‘politics as usual’

Elections in Colombia: Upsetting ‘politics as usual’

Colombia is experiencing a major political reset. For the first time in its history, an Afro-Colombian woman from the southwestern Pacific region is close to becoming the Vice President this June 19th in the run-off election. The VP candidates are Francia Márquez Mina and Marelen Castillo Torres. In this piece, I offer a Black feminist geographic analysis of Colombian elections to think about power and the possible reconfiguration of political space in Colombia. Although Márquez and Castillo have contrasting political views, what would be clear in this Sunday’s election is that Afro-Colombian women are acknowledged as key political subjects, and both are reshaping the political structures that have long excluded non-elite, racialized women from the upper echelons of state power. I introduce this discussion to stress the historical significance of this wave of feminisation of politics in the region undertaken by Black women that have received little attention in Anglophone geographic analysis.

Overview of Colombia’s inequalities and Reconfiguration of the political space

In Colombia, at least 4.4 million self-identify as Black, Afrodescendiente, Raizal or Palenquero/a, meaning 9.34% of Colombia’s total population is of African descent (DANE, 2020). Afro-Colombians, alongside Indigenous and campesino populations, are amongst the most affected groups by state violence, in a country that is still trying to heal old and fresh scars of a conflict that is still ongoing, despite the official peace agreement signed in 2016. Racial and class vulnerability is also gendered, as Afro-Colombian women face multiple exclusions. According to data collected by Colombia’s Victim Unit (2022), Black women have been the most affected group by Colombia’s conflict through forced displacement, sexual violence threats and homicide. Their life expectancy is also ten years less that non-Black women. Also, it is not a coincidence that 21.5% of Afro-Colombian women experience unemployment, the highest level across all groups (DANE, 2022). Those employed are overwhelmingly represented in the lowest socioeconomic strata, largely providing domestic work, or selling food as street vendors. This is a reality that hits close to home as many of my Afro-Colombian aunties and cousins have had or are providing their labour as domestic workers to wealthy white families in the southwestern city of Cali, as they could not pursue higher education while young.

Currently, there is an important debate opened during Colombia's elections about the exclusions of racialized, classed and gendered bodies from the political space, an expression of how structural racism manifests. Colombia has a gender quota law since 2000 with a threshold that states that at least 30% of public positions must be occupied by women. Although women are underrepresented, this change has only gradually opened the doors in the last four years for the increasing participation of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women who have for decades mobilised in grassroots movements. Such changes and intense political mobilisation have enabled women such as Francia Márquez Mina and Marelen Castillo Torres to rise to the political arena.

Black women at the epicentre of Colombia’s elections

Francia Márquez is a lawyer from a working-class background. She is an award-winning grassroots environmental and human rights activist from Suárez, Cauca, who is the running mate of Gustavo Petro, the leftist presidential candidate for the Historical Pact Party. Márquez is pushing a Black feminist, anti-capitalist and anti-racist agenda that critiques how the state and multinationals profit from racial violence and displacement of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations. Márquez has promised to enact changes that addresses gendered, socio-racial, and environmental disparities. This is a message that has resonated with thousands. Intersectional inequalities are topics that Márquez focuses on not only through drawing attention to her experiences but also through theorising, together with grassroots movements such as Colombia’s Proceso de Comunidades Negras and active engagement with intersectional and transnational academic Black feminist circles and former Black Panther figures such as Dr. Angela Y. Davis in the US.

Márquez’s lucid analysis about how structures of racism operate in Colombia are compellingly woven into her political discourses as the daughter of miners, a teen mom, and former domestic worker whilst pursuing her degree in law in Cali and mobilising against water pollution, environmental degradation, and deadly land displacements. She faced death threats in her hometown La Toma, Cauca. For the first time, a discussion on the need to grapple with the colonial legacies that still organise Colombia’s social order is at the centre of Colombia’s political debate. Racism and patriarchy have never been topics in a political campaign in a country that has historically preserved white and white/mestizo elite men’s hegemony. Márquez is the figure who has held the spotlight of these elections and has drawn the votes for Gustavo Petro. Their Historical Pact Party, is leading the polls, despite the relentless mockery, misogynoir (anti-Black misogyny) and the ‘angry Black woman’ trope that have erupted since Márquez dared to step into formal politics.

The second, Dr. Marelen Castillo Torres from Cali has shattered racial and gendered barriers through academic achievement. As she had emphasised that despite opportunities, ‘[as] Afrodescendientes we have it harder’. She has also received a share of negative attention on social media that questions the authenticity of her academic achievements. Dr. Castillo has a background in STEM fields (biology, chemistry, and engineering) and became a scholar specialising in Education, the field where she earned her PhD in the United States. She is the former Chancellor of the Catholic University Foundation Lumen Gentium and the Vice Rector of the University Uniminuto (Minuto de Dios University Corporation). Castillo promises to work for women’s rights, although she has a ‘pro-life’ position in discussions of abortion and does not explicitly reject environmental extractivism. Dr. Castillo is the running mate of real estate mogul Rodolfo Hernández and his Anti-Corruption Rulers’ League Party. She was not originally on Hernández’s ticket. Paradoxically, she is fading into the background, as Hernández faces corruption charges, and stumbles with a long history of xenophobic, anti-poor, misogynist views and political gaffes. Yet Colombia’s far-right is closing ranks around Hernández’s party to prevent the possibility of Colombia’s leftward turn.

Hernández and Castillo were unknown to each other until recently, when she put her CV forward earlier this year after a friend encouraged her to submit her CV because she fitted every single part of the description when Hernández put a call out for a running mate on social media. ‘I am a woman, I am Caleña (from Cali, the Pacific region), I am Afrodescendiente, scholar, not a politician and with community work experience’ recalled Castillo in an interview. Unlike Márquez, Dr. Castillo has been disciplined in defending Colombia’s narrative of racial democracy. She said when interviewed in April 2022 by Colombia’s W Radio: ‘I have not experienced racism’ contradicting her earlier statement. To Castillo, racism is the by-product of racist stereotypes that should be overcome with respect, and multicultural education, rather than a structural phenomenon, as she expressed in the Vice-Presidential debate. She has dangerously mentioned in an interview that there is a need to ‘stop the victimisation’ narrative, which leaves the Colombian state, its actors, networks, and practices off the hook for reproducing and sustaining the structures of a deeply racist and unequal status quo.

Although Castillo’s positioning can be read as an eerie tactic to counter the Historical Pact allure due to the Petro-Márquez focus on progressive public policies, the fact that two Black women with contrasting experiences and political agendas are running is remarkable in a country whose elites have carefully insulated their power by controlling state structures, implementing racial projects, and dictating who has power and agency. Unpacking who wields state power makes us think about how the state is gendered and masculine and kept as white as possible. So, what would the election of a Black VP tell us about power and the reconfiguration of the political space in Colombia?

Space is full of political meaning. Although a major political recognition for Afro-Colombian populations occurred in 1991 with the constitutional recognition of Comunidades Negras, which conferred lands and political rights to Colombia’s Black Communities, Afro-Colombians have waited 31 years to finally see visible political representation in this Presidential election. This representation has come as the by-product of decades of political mobilisation, the opening of political structures, and the mass exhaustion with the political system as usual, which imploded with 2021’s social unrest, whose epicentre was Cali. Young, Women, LGBTQIA2S+, Campesinos, and structurally excluded populations have demanded an overhauling of previous political leadership which has enabled new, underrepresented leadership to emerge, as the cases of Castillo and Márquez illustrate.

The argument is that Colombia’s elections are opening spaces of possibility or offering an opportunity to think spatially and intersectionality about politics. Although there is no guarantee whether and how their presence would ensure meaningful changes to address racial and gendered inequalities, the push and pull forces of conservative pushbacks and the entrenched neoliberal nature of multiculturalism in Colombia is mixing with a moment in which VP candidates speak directly for the first time about racialized historical exclusions because of their positionalities. One of the most alarming issues in this political campaign is how the politics of representation of both women is being used to not only contrast competing definitions of Black womanhood, but also, to allure voters through contrasting how the state would envision public policy by either confronting (Márquez-Petro), or continuing, a colour-blind/universal approach (Hernández-Castillo) to pressing inequalities. Still, is important to recognize the historical nature of this moment, as two Black women who have dared to step into the political arena.