In an exclusive broadcast interview, Democracy Now! speaks with leading Afro-Colombian environmental activist Francia Márquez Mina, who has just been picked by Colombian presidential front-runner Gustavo Petro to be his running mate. Petro has promised to ban all new fossil fuel exploration if they win in May’s election, and Márquez would become Colombia’s first Black female vice president, in a country where Afro-Colombians make up nearly 10% of the population. Márquez says Colombians have a chance in this election to empower communities who have been left out of decision-making in the past, including Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ, and other historically marginalized people. “Today we need to put forward the nobodies, the people who’ve never had a voice, to step into the state so that we can write our own history,” says Márquez. If elected, Petro and Márquez would form Colombia’s first leftist government.

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