A man who had all the attributes to remain happy. And yet, “how death comes so quietly / Let no one be deceived, no, thinking that what you expect must last longer than what you saw lasted, since everything must happen in such a way / This world is the way for the other, which is a home without regret. We leave when we were born, we walk while we live, and we arrive at the time we die; so when we die we rest.”
What I transcribe, minimally, from the Coplas of the Spanish poet, Jorge Manrique, on the death of his father, in the middle of the 15th century, the master of Santiago, Don Rodrigo Manrique, although very worthy, due to their saddened nobility, of the human excellences that Dr. Pumarejo Valle had, have become too early to apply to him, unfortunately.
He was a magnificent epigone of both family aspects that constituted him, as an individual and as a very prominent member of both. I fondly and constantly remember my close friendship, since my adolescence, with Luis Juaquín Pumarejo Cotes, Quin, his uncle, set at school and in the ancestral home of his parents, Don Tito and Doña Necta, where, of course, , I also shared that youthful age with Fredy’s father, his namesake, his sisters, and I was enthralled with the tunes, composed and sung, for example, of his own authorship, the “Alazanito” by the troubadour Tobías Enrique Pumarejo Gutiérrez, Don Toba, his great-uncle, also accompanied by his great-grandmother, Mama Go. All those wonderfully good people, servants of others. That house is located on Carrera 5, near the Main Plaza of Valledupar, which in those days was a beautiful town park, flanked by flowered gardens, with paved paths, where our bicycles ran; On the corner, between the houses of the Castro family, there was a beautiful almond tree that served as a parking lot for the “Chiva” of Chiche Pimienta, waiting for passengers bound for neighboring towns.
From Urumita I came to vacation at the house of my friends the Pumarejo, and in that park, without the modernist pretensions of the Plaza today, I and other boys from Valledupar society would ride our bicycles.
Not a little as expressed above regarding his paternal family, his kind nature was also enriched by his maternal heritage. Son of my friend, the charismatic Fredy Pumarejo Cotes and Mrs. Delfina Valle Riaño, and grandson of the magnanimous and scientific doctor of the poor, Dr. Rafael Valle Meza and Mrs. Olga Riaño de Valle, woman leader of noble social causes in our city from Valledupar, and prominent politician. He is the nephew of the cultured rheumatologist and medical scientist, Dr. Rafael Raúl Valle Oñate.
All the family and social background, summarized above, cradled the generous and good personality of whom we say goodbye forever, with our hearts in our hands and our souls in suspense, because if we are proud of something in the old and intimate chambers of traditional society Valduparense, it is our simplicity, tinged with humility, and innocence, that we still preserve, and we regret the scandalous events, disturbing good customs, that we begin to observe with concern.
He graduated as a doctor. Later, seeking to form a family with such provincial roots, loyal to his lineage, he married Dr. María Doris Villazón Castro, founding a home with loving warmth, and his children are the moral heritage of our community. Together they settled in the country of Mexico, having initially lived in the city of Guadalajara, then residing in Mexico City, where he specialized as a rheumatologist, and she attended diplomatic functions. Peace on the grave of her pilgrim and Christian consolation to her loved ones. [email protected]
Rodrigo Lopez Barros
