How Colombia erased its first and only president of African descent from history.

“Colombia must admit that there are racial problems in the country and throughout Latin America”, Barack Obama said at a business conference in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, in May 2017. Some years prior to the conference, Obama had been elected as the first African president of the U.S. While the U.S. celebrated this feat and its citizens showed how proud they were to have their first African leader, Colombians had kept their first African leader hidden for decades.

Colombia is one of the South American countries still struggling with racism. Before the passing of legislation in the country to represent its multi-cultural background, many African people were invisible under the law. Afro-Colombians, numbering about 3 million, can be stopped from enjoying basic amenities and denied access to opportunities as compared to other ethnicities in the country. And that is how it has been throughout history, making the story of the country’s first African president not surprising.

Juan José Nieto Gil, a Colombian politician, army general and writer, became Colombia’s first president of African descent in 1861. For about seven months, he was the leader of the country or what was then known as the Granadian Confederation, which included Panama. Nieto Gil’s legacy as the first Afro-Colombian to hold such an office had been virtually erased from Colombian history when historian Orlando Fals Borda discovered a portrait of him while digging in a palace loft in Cartagena more than 30 years ago.