The Power of the Invisible : Breaking Barriers in the Halls of Power

What does it mean to hold power when you were never meant to? Drawing on her time as Colombia's first Afro-Colombian woman minister, Paula Moreno explores visibility, leadership and the personal cost of being "the first".

At twenty-eight, Paula Moreno became Colombia's youngest-ever Minister of Culture and the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold a ministerial post. Her appointment made international headlines, but it also exposed the racial, gendered and political fault lines running through the country's institutions. In The Power of the Invisible, Moreno weaves memoir, political testimony and cultural reflection to explore what it means to wield power as someone long excluded from it. Moving between her upbringing, her time in office and the global networks of Black and Afro-diasporic solidarity that shaped her leadership, she reveals how visibility can be both a breakthrough and a burden. First published in Spanish and now updated for a new English-language edition, this is a searching, clear-eyed account of race, representation and the unfinished work of equality, written from inside the state, but grounded in lived experience.