By: Jorge Ancizar Cabrera Reyes.
The music and dance in the folklore that is part of our history and its traditional festivals of San Juan and San Pedro, unite us as a region. That is why the tribute that the Municipal Council of Ibagué pays to the First Queen of Folklore Betty García Ramírez, this June 27, is timely.
The election of Betty García Ramírez as Queen of Ibagué and later as Queen of Folklore during the celebration of the First Colombian Folk Festival, held in 1959 and which was thanks to an Agreement presented by the councilor of the time Enrique Silva Cabrera, and promoted by the first Director of Folklore, former congressman Adriano Tribín Piedrahita.
At that historical time when the Colombian Folk Festival began, the National Government was chaired by the President of the Republic, Alberto Lleras Camargo; The Departmental Government of Tolima was directed by Governor Rafael Parga Cortés and the Municipal Government of Ibagué was directed by Mayor Luis Eduardo Vargas Rocha.
For the first Queen of Folklore Betty García Ramírez, this was one of her great motivations, to dedicate part of her life to the persistence of holding this event every year and for it to also become a true cultural and folkloric festival of our beloved territory to maintain. ingenuity, creativity, orality, cultural, folkloric and artistic roots are in force.
For several years, Betty García Ramírez has advised the First Ladies of the Department in their different social campaigns. She has served as Head of Public Relations of the Office of the Governor of Tolima. She has integrated and promoted the group of Ibaguera ladies who have worked hard in the Tolima Craft Promotion Committee, where they have managed to hold several exhibitions in Ibagué and in the Capital of the Republic.
In addition, Betty García Ramírez has been a member and President of the Society of Love for Ibagué, from where she has promoted and carried out several civic campaigns in the Musical City, she has been part of the boards appointed by the Mayor of Ibagué, for the holding of the Festival. Colombian Folklore and in 2009 when the Colombian Folkloric Festival Corporation was created, she was a founding member and active member of it. She is the Executive Director and President of the Colombian Folk Festival Corporation, achieving with other members and participants, that this event became the Largest Folk Festival in Colombia.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO, folklore is a very broad word that covers different aspects: culture, customs, dances, music, among others and the Teacher and Folklorist Guillermo Abadía Morales in his masterpiece “Manual of Colombian Folklore” established five key points when understanding what this cultural and historical expression consists of: “1. It is a cultural tradition, 2. Popular (of the people), 3. Typical (not of all humanity ), 4. Empirical (without theory or doctrine) and 5. Live and current.”
In this order of ideas, we do the greatest tribute that can be paid to this Master and Queen of Folklore, Betty García Ramírez, with the phrase of the French novelist and politician André Malraux, when he says: “Culture is what, in death, continues to be life.”
