Opinion of Eduardo Pilonieta.
There is a very particular thing in people’s lives and that is that their family memories barely reach their grandparents, not even knowing the names of those who preceded them.
Let’s do a simple exercise and try to remember some of the names of the 8 great-grandparents that we all have and thus we can verify what was stated.
This family forgetfulness also occurs at a social level and if not, let’s ask today’s young people, who was Jorge Eliecer Gaitán and why is he known in national history? We will see that very few people know the history of this aspect.
What’s more, without going that far, let’s ask them who Manuel Marulanda Vélez “Tirofijo” was and his historical reason and we will be surprised because an immense majority of young people under 24 years of age do not know him, which proves the statement that “those who do not know the history is condemned to repeat itself”, an issue that those interested in leading us to institutional chaos exploit with astonishing skill.
However, in societies there are people who are dedicated to preserving that memory and who today, thanks to new technologies, can be preserved in many ways and one of them was Edmundo Gavassa Villamizar, who with his 24 published books and taking advantage of the photographic archive inherited from his grandfather, the legendary Quintillo Gavassa Mibelli, he has been able to keep alive the image of the local characters who made the 20th century possible and of whom we have heard about because they were the ones who shaped regional history and that the natural passage of time has them condemned to oblivion.
In his posthumous work, “Club Campestre Bucaramanga”, we can meet the faces of that generation that moved our regional development from 1930 to 1967 and that all of them, almost without exception, are history, but in our memory we preserve them as the generation that made possible the social life we enjoy today.
The cycle of the “image journalist” is closed, but the legacy of the events that happened, the works they left behind, the people who made them possible and that many of us, including our children and grandchildren, still enjoy, remain. as is the case of the Bucaramanga Country Club.
When you leave a legacy like the one Edmund left, you go from mortal materiality to infinite spirituality and whenever we talk about the history of the region he will be present and it will be a mandatory factor to take into account his immense bibliographical work.
Many thanks to his son Giovanni who was kind enough to share the work with me.
This article reflects the opinion of the columnist. Vanguardia is not responsible for the points of view expressed there.
