Easy Podcast - The black president that was erased from Colombia's history - Easy Español

Juan José Nieto Gil was a Colombian writer, politician, and Army general. Most significantly he was also the country's first (and only) Afro-Colombian president for six months in 1861. Intelligent, determined, fearless, Nieto Gil took over the presidency in a time of great social and political unrest in Colombia, which he managed to stabilize despite not being accepted by the country's classist and racist elite. Click play to hear how a poor mulatto boy who learned how to read when he was 14 defied social and class conventions to rise to the highest political office in Colombia.