Many in Colombia are wondering where Vice President Francia Marquez is, as she has been virtually absent for several months.
The historic 2022 victory of the left-wing coalition, the Historical Pact, promised an unprecedented transformation in Colombian politics. With Gustavo Petro as president and Francia Marquez as vice president, the country seemed to be entering into an era of inclusion, social justice, and representation for traditionally marginalized sectors.
However, less than three years later, the relationship between these two emblematic leaders has cooled noticeably, while Marquez’s presence has completely faded from the national media and political scene.
This distancing is not merely personal–it reflects the deeper tensions between political idealism and the complex machinery of institutional power.
‘Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez’: A symbolic yet dissonant duo in Colombia
Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez each represented, in their own way, a profound change to Colombia’s traditional power model. Petro, a former guerrilla with decades of experience in institutional politics, brought a critical vision of neoliberalism and structures of inequality.
Marquez, for her part, embodied the voice of the regions, the Afro-descendant movement, and environmental and feminist struggles. Their presidential ticket became a symbol of hope for thousands of excluded Colombians.
Nevertheless, beyond the rhetoric of unity, differences between them quickly became visible. While Petro focused on structural reforms like labor, health, and pensions, Marquez was relegated to a secondary role, with no clear functions or decisive prominence.
The truth is that the role the Colombian Constitution assigns to the vice president is largely symbolic and impractical. However, the distancing between the two politicians who achieved the left’s first victory in Colombia became more evident when the president distanced himself from the Ministry of Equality.
This portfolio, conceived and tailored for Marquez, was meant to give the vice president more visibility but ended up becoming a failed and disorganized project.
The failure of Marquez’s Ministry of Equality
The Ministry of Equality, created with great expectation as an instrument to fight racial, gender, and territorial inequities, has been one of the most criticized aspects of Marquez’s tenure.
Despite its creation being seen as a victory for the social movement, the ministry has lacked a solid structure, qualified technical staff, and a significant budget—one that was scarcely utilized even then.
Its operation has been erratic, and the absence of concrete public policies has fueled the perception that it was more of a symbolic gesture than a real tool for transformation.
This is compounded by management marked by internal conflict, allegations of ad-hoc decision-making, and a leadership style that has failed to translate activism into governance. Francia Marquez, a community leader accustomed to social mobilization, has struggled to adapt to the codes of institutional politics, which demand negotiation, technocracy, and measurable results.
In a bureaucratic and centralized environment like the Colombian state, she has become isolated, lacking a clear space or real decision-making power.
Petro’s dominance and Marquez’s fading role in Colombia’s Government
Gustavo Petro, with an increasingly centralist presidential style, has tightened his control over the government and sidelined figures who don’t fit his strategic logic.
Petro is a complex leader: deeply convinced of his historical mission, distrustful of those around him, and prone to absorbing the spotlight for all major decisions.
This style has clashed head-on with Márquez, who has been marginalized not only from spaces of power but also from the government’s political narrative.
In recent months, the vice president has almost completely disappeared from public debate. Her media presence is sporadic, and her interventions lack the political weight they once carried.
While Petro travels the country defending his reforms and confronting the opposition, Márquez seems confined to the background, with no room for maneuver or clear political backing.
This media blackout is no accident: it is the result of a strategy where the president concentrates the legitimacy of the progressive project and minimizes space for dissenting voices within his own cabinet.
Petro never wanted activist Francia Márquez as his vice-presidential running mate, but her strong results in the coalition’s internal primaries forced her designation. Today, the masks of necessity have fallen.
Personalism and ‘caudillismo’ in Colombia and Latin America
The case of Francia Marquez illustrates the difficulties alternative leaderships face when entering institutional politics.
The transition from activism to governance requires different skills, and the state, with its inertia and resistance to change, doesn’t always offer fertile ground for projects of deep transformation. Marquez, like other figures emerging from social struggles, has been a victim of a system that co-opted her image but denied her the real tools to govern.
Simultaneously, Petro’s figure reveals the limits of progressive ‘caudillismo’ (strongman leadership). His inability to build solid teams, delegate power, and integrate diverse voices into his project weakens the promise of collective change. The distancing from Marquez is also a metaphor for the disconnect between the rhetoric of inclusion and the practice of power concentration.
To all this must be added the traditional way of doing politics in Colombia and Latin America, where the ‘caudillismo’ of figures seemingly chosen to guide the people has been a constant for decades.
Since independence, this style of leadership has been a fixture–almost as gradual distancing and, often, the final confrontation between former allies.
Francia Marquez: The symbol of silence
Francia Marquez was one of the major symbolic bets of the government of change. Her progressive exclusion from the national debate and the failure of her management at the helm of the Ministry of Equality are symptoms of a deeper crisis: the difficulty of translating social diversity into effective institutional power.
The distancing from Petro is neither merely personal nor circumstantial; it reflects a fracture between two ways of understanding politics. One focused on strategy, reform, and calculation.
The other rooted in local communities, symbolic struggle, and the voice of the excluded. In the clash between them, Colombia loses a historic opportunity to build a truly plural democracy.
Amidst numerous defections and President Petro’s growing isolation, the chapter on Francia Marquez deserves special mention–something the left must study carefully to avoid repeating in the future.
Because institutional politics requires different forms and approaches– certainly distinct from those of an activist who needs a political option of “opposition”– Petro understood this; Francia Marquez, perhaps, was never allowed to.
Related: Appointment of Ex-Porn Stars at Colombia’s Ministry of Equality Spark Controversy.