A written shout
A written shout
Colombia's female writers of 20th century
Rocío Vélez de Pihedrahíta
Medellin 1926
Rocío's childhood was influenced by his grandparents, Camilo C. Restrepo* and Ana Mejia Restrepo, who were always concerned about giving their daughters the best education. Among his childhood memories the image of his grandmother when she shared a room with her on holiday seasons and before anyone had risen, she had the habit of reading books of history, art or music. Once, when someone asked his grandfather a malicious comment referring to having only daughters and no one son, he replied:
"Thank God neither Ana nor I are kings and we do not need heirs."
Rocio was ten years old when she began a music apprenticeship full of passion, under the watchful eye of Ana Maria Penella, who was a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts. But Rocio loved music and several years later, married to Ramiro Piedrahita, she studied again with the professor Pietro Mascheroni. In adolescence, Rocío lived with her parents in a house on Avenida La Playa, in Medellin, where she enjoyed writing short plays and novels with illustrations that she cut out and pasted by herself.
One women that Rocio admired the most was Sofia Ospina Navarro, a respected woman of the Sociedad de Medellín that began writing chronics in a famous book called "Cuentos y crónicas" prefaced by the same Carrasquilla. In that book, the writer praised her critical sense to capture her actual society with a work that would transcend time. Rocío, read Sofía Ospina's works with admiration but without a suspect that some years later she and her would be partners in La Tertulia, a literary movement founded by Dr. Gonzalo Restrepo Jaramillo and Maria Helena Uribe Estrada, which was built as an idea to have someone to share their literary interests.
In Colombia, in the 50s, the female voice was sentenced to confinement and nothing that a woman write worth a chance to be taken into account. And if they were not entitled to vote in political elections, much less could they be recognized as writers. Until then only some of the Colombia's newspapers have a space called The Women's Page where women could publish nondescript and pointless house decoration articles, floral arrangements, recipes, social notes, but nothing in the end, that had a deep reflection, or a political accent, or a bulwark of female thinking.
Colombian novelist and essayist, from Medellin, Antioquia. member of the Colombian Academy of Language. She had published eight novels, including ""el hombre, la mujer y la vaca (1960); el pacto de las dos rosas (1962); la tercera generación 1963; la cisterna 1971; terrateniente (finalista del premio nadal 1978);la guaca (1979) y muellemente tendida en la llanura (1999). She has also published chronics, stories and essays, ; entre nos (1959-1973); breve historia de medellín (1992); el sietecueros de lia (1994); comentarios sobre la vida y la obra de algunos autores colombianos (1977); literatura en la colonia de juan rodriguez-Freyle y francisco josé de caldas (1994); guía de lectura infantil (1983); el diálogo y la paz, un testimonio de la participación en el proceso de paz del periódo presidencial de belisario betancourt.
She has been a columnist for the daily El Mundo, El Espectador and El Colombiano.
Acknowledgements: Antioqueña outstanding year in the area of literature: medal "Pedro Justo Berrio" of the Government of Antioquia as a worker of Culture; "Simon Bolivar" Medal of the Ministry of Education and "recognition of merit" of the Government of Antioquia ".
Piedrahita Velez, R. (2004). Four stories of Rocio Vélez Piedrahita. In COMFAMA Letters rolling (selected works)