Colombia will quickly have its first black feminine vp. Will or not it’s Marelen Castillo?

At a resort in Cali, a serious metropolis close to Colombia’s Pacific Coast, a whole bunch of individuals packed a ballroom for the lady on the heart of the stage.

With her hand on her coronary heart and just a little gold cross round her neck, Marelen Castillo, a vice-presidential candidate who till lately was nearly unknown, defined as soon as once more that she was operating for workplace to assist “so many women in Colombia who do not have opportunities.”

Supporters of Marelen Castillo, vice-presidential operating mate of Rodolfo Hernández, encompass her at a rally within the neighborhood the place she grew up. (The New York Times)

A couple of months in the past, Castillo, 53, had been a high director of a non-public Catholic college in Bogotá, the capital. Now she is the operating mate of the anti-establishment politician and businessman who unexpectedly clinched second place within the first spherical of the nation’s most consequential election in a long time.

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On Sunday, Colombians will vote within the runoff, selecting between that candidate, Rodolfo Hernández, and Gustavo Petro, a longtime senator making a bid to be the primary leftist president within the nation’s historical past.

Whatever the end result, the nation is assured its first Afro-Colombian girl vp: both Castillo, an educator and spiritual conservative, or Francia Márquez, an environmental and social justice activist.

The two girls have starkly totally different approaches to a number of the nation’s most urgent issues: inequality, unemployment and the standard of the general public schooling system.

While Márquez has made social justice and inclusion the core of her platform — talking about race and sophistication in a approach hardly ever mentioned in public circles — Castillo has saved her message centered on bettering public schooling and rising financial alternatives, significantly for girls.

In an interview between marketing campaign occasions in Cali, Castillo described rising up in a mixed-race household that blended harmoniously, with kin congregating for each birthday, vacation and first communion. Her father is white and her mom is Black. But race, she mentioned, was not mentioned.

“Maybe because we grew up in that, we weren’t very much inclined to feel that way” about race, she mentioned. “Because of the family togetherness.”

Marelen Castillo, vice-presidential operating mate of Rodolfo Hernández. (The New York Times)

The tenets of Castillo’s platform embody elevating salaries of public schoolteachers, investing in athletic and humanities schooling and incorporating finest practices from universities in different nations. Hernández and Castillo have mentioned that, if elected, she may even change into the minister of schooling.

She has additionally mentioned that she would create a working group to revise greater schooling legal guidelines in Colombia. She didn’t specify what modifications she would make, however mentioned that any revision could be a participatory course of.

Sandra Carrasquilla, 52, a Castillo supporter in Cali, lately began volunteering for Hernández after engaged on the marketing campaign of the right-wing senator María Fernanda Cabal. She was drawn to the ticket largely by Castillo’s “spectacular” resume, heat and message of unity.

“She is a woman who has dedicated herself to education and has a wonderful charisma,” mentioned Carrasquilla, who works for a well being meals distributor. “That’s why Marelen got me hooked.”

Castillo grew up in Cali, the oldest of 5 daughters in a tight-knit, middle-class Catholic household.

Education was paramount of their family. Her father, a former schoolteacher, walked the women to highschool day-after-day and taught them to learn.

“My dad used to say, ‘I educate them because I don’t want them to have to depend on someone later on,’” mentioned Marelen’s sister Milene Castillo, a biochemist.

Castillo took this to coronary heart, securing scholarships and incomes 4 levels, together with a doctorate in schooling. During that point, she additionally labored as a public highschool instructor, and later as vice chancellor of a Catholic college in Cali.

There, Castillo earned a fame as a talented administrator and “a supremely intelligent person,” mentioned Santiago Arboleda, a professor of Afro-Andean historical past on the Simón Bolívar Andean University in Quito, Ecuador, who taught in Cali for years.

Fourteen years in the past, she moved to Bogotá to work at Minute of God University Corp, a Catholic college that caters to low-income college students in distant areas of the nation with little entry to greater schooling. She spearheaded the college’s digital and distance studying program.

Education has continued to hold Castillo as she finds herself within the heart of Colombian politics.

As voters put together to solid their ballots, the vastly totally different marketing campaign platforms of Castillo and Márquez replicate the cultural divide in Colombia of individuals demanding drastic social change on one aspect and those that say such calls for create division when the nation wants unity.

The girls are two of 5 Afro-Colombians who have been named as operating mates to presidential contenders — a document in Colombia, the place high politicians are principally white, usually educated overseas and linked to essentially the most influential households.

For many, seeing two Black girls who’re so near the halls of energy recasts “the narratives of what is the appropriate place for an Afro-descendant woman,” mentioned Aurora Vergara, director of the Center for Afrodiasporic Studies at Icesi University in Cali.

But it has additionally raised questions of candidates who’ve tried to display racially numerous illustration whereas nonetheless avoiding a dialog about racism in Colombia.

On the marketing campaign path, Márquez has cracked open the nationwide dialog about race in a rustic the place the subject stays largely taboo. She attracts 1000’s of devoted supporters to her speeches wherein she calls on Colombians to deal with systemic racism and sexism.

By distinction, Castillo acknowledges the existence of racism and sexism in Colombia, however it’s not a central a part of her message, in contrast to her leftist counterpart. She as an alternative emphasises the concept of making extra alternatives for girls.

“We have to recognise that Colombia is a machista country, and who gives us the opportunity? The men,” Castillo advised The New York Times. “Now we have to give opportunities to other women.”

One of the commonest criticisms of Castillo is that she has no expertise in public workplace and would function second in command to one of many oldest presidents in Colombian historical past. If the 77-year-old is elected, Hernández will serve a four-year time period.

Marelen Castillo. (The New York Times)

As they marketing campaign for workplace, he and Castillo couldn’t be extra totally different.

Hernández is brash, casual and unpredictable, and has made so many offensive statements that one native information outlet lately compiled them in a digital catalog labeled “look how Rodolfo Hernández has offended you.”

Castillo by comparability is measured in her speeches, hardly ever straying from the occasion line. She has defended Hernández from accusations of misogyny after he advised an interviewer “the ideal would be for women to dedicate themselves to raising children.”

But, internally, there have been disagreements.

In an effort to distance himself from the present conservative authorities, which faces dismal approval scores, Hernández has lately launched a sequence of progressive coverage stances, together with saying that his authorities would assist a lady’s proper to abortion.

Ángel Beccassino, an adviser to the Hernández marketing campaign, mentioned Hernández and Castillo had disagreed on the problem, however that Castillo had ultimately settled on the place that “every woman has the right to decide for herself.”

In the interview, Castillo mentioned that she was personally in opposition to abortion as much as 24 weeks, however clarified an earlier assertion wherein she had mentioned she would really like the nation to re-examine a current excessive courtroom choice that decriminalised the method as much as 24 weeks. “I would like to review it. I have not said that I am going to review it,” she mentioned. “My position is that I respect each woman’s decision.”

Visiting the neighbourhood the place she grew up earlier this month for a marketing campaign occasion, no less than one individual recognised Castillo: her cousin Iván Castillo, who occurred to stroll by on a visit to the bakery. He was shocked, he mentioned, when he discovered she was getting concerned in politics, and much more shocked when Hernández moved on to the second spherical.

Like many of the township that features La Base, the 49-year outdated civil engineer voted for Petro.

“Now with the family involved, I don’t know,” he mentioned with fun, of the subsequent election spherical.

“She is very good at her job as a teacher, an administrator,” he mentioned, shaking his head. “But she has nothing to do with politics.”

He added, “A person like my cousin, to get into such a mess. My God!”