Bogota.-The car that Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez usually travels in was attacked with gunfire on Wednesday on a road near the municipality of Suárez, in the southwest of the country, where she is from. Fortunately, the official was not traveling in that vehicle at the time of the attack.
“I have been informed by my security and protection team that the main vehicle of the vice-presidential caravan, in which I normally travel, was hit by a projectile, apparently from a rifle (…) which penetrated the interior of the vehicle without causing any injuries to the occupants,” Márquez said in a statement on Wednesday.
The vice president, who is also head of the Equality and Equity portfolio, said that everything happened following leaving the municipality of Suárez, where she was born, following making a visit with the outgoing Minister of Education, Aurora Vergara, to what will be the new headquarters of the University of Valle.
The attack, he added, occurred “when I was already in the city of Cali (capital of the department of Valle del Cauca), attending to another commitment.”
“This time we have nothing to regret, but I cannot help but express my enormous concern for Cauca and for the permanent tension that my people are experiencing every day throughout the region. We came to bring the public university to Suárez and we will not give up on this effort for the future of our people,” added Márquez.
Likewise, the Colombian vice president asked the groups that operate in the region, where the actor that usually commits these attacks is the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissident group of the FARC, to “silence their guns and allow Cauca to live in peace and allow the university to advance in the territory.”
In June, the vice president’s father, Sigifredo Márquez, was the target of a similar attack when he was traveling with the high-ranking official’s six-year-old nephew between the towns of Timba, where today’s attack occurred, and the hamlet of Robles, a rural area of Jamundí, in the neighboring department of Valle del Cauca.
Meanwhile, in January 2023, Márquez reported the discovery of a “device with more than 7 kilos of explosive material” on the road leading to his family residence in Suárez.
The device “was destroyed in a controlled manner by anti-explosive police personnel,” said the vice president, who described the incident as “a new attempt on my life.”
Before coming to power in 2022 under President Gustavo Petro, Márquez was an environmental activist in her native Cauca department. There she survived an attack with rifle bursts.
Along with President Gustavo Petro, Márquez is part of the first center-left government in Colombian history, which seeks to defuse the six-decade armed conflict by negotiating with an amalgam of armed groups that continue to operate following the peace agreement that disarmed the powerful FARC guerrilla group in 2017.Clarín.
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2024-07-16 18:09:48
