In this installment of the Life Stories series, created and produced by Isabel López Giraldo, an interview with the research economist María Teresa Ramírez.
I am an economic and academic researcher, a person interested in learning. I am also shy, reserved, I find it difficult to talk about myself, I prefer to write and individual activities. I am defined by being judicious, rational, my high aversion to risk, being someone who avoids confrontations.
Origins – Paternal Branch
I come from an academic family, from my great-grandparents, and in which the role of women has been very strong since it is a very matriarchal family.
My great-grandmother, Ana Joaquina Montufar, was born at the end of the 19th century and managed to complete secondary education, which was difficult for a woman at that time. She studied internship at the College of the Presentation nuns. He taught kindergarteners to read and write, but also my dad when he was just three or four years old. My great-grandfather, Arsenio Ramírez, was a lawyer at the Externado University, he was part of the first promotions. Ana Joaquina was 27 when she was a mother and Arsenio 30, and contrary to the time they only had two children: my grandfather Manuel and my great-uncle Arturo. My grandfather, Manuel Ramírez Montufar, was born in 1910, he was a conservative and a Catholic, a civil engineer from the National University, worked for the National Railways, taught classes on railroad engineering, and was appointed Emeritus Professor. He also worked at Cementos Diamante. He had a great library with wonderful books that the family still keeps.
My grandmother, Leonor Gómez, was born in 1917, she studied up to the fifth grade of high school, which today is known as tenth, a glass ceiling at the time. He studied at the school of nuns, the María Auxiliadora. She also worked in the National Railways managing the telegraph and while there she met my grandfather, her husband. Leonor was an independent woman who married at twenty-two and Manuel at twenty-nine. She had ten pregnancies, nine children, but two girls died of typhoid and cancer. Thus, she lived through two decades of pregnancies until she was forty-three. A very educated, intelligent woman, a great reader, I remember her reading Agatha Christie’s books. She was not religious, but she was liberal. She kept her family together around the table and gathered for lunch on Sundays because she loved the kitchen, a taste inherited by my sisters who learned from her and from her recipe book. He died in 1999, which allowed me to enjoy it for a very good time, but my grandfather Manuel died when I was seven years old.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsMy father, Manuel Ramírez Gómez, is the oldest of the children. His grandmother had a great influence on him, took care of him and taught him to read, to write. He was a well-known economist, professor of many generations of economists, with doctoral studies abroad, Roberto Junguito’s desk companion who repeated to me: “His father was the most judicious, the one who knew the most mathematics, the one who solved all the problems”. Although he did not like politics, he was an advisor to important technicians. He began studying Civil Engineering in La Javeriana, following in the footsteps of his father, but then he switched to Economics in the Andes when professors from Rockefeller Center arrived. He advanced his master’s degree in Economics, also in the Andes, where he had colleagues like Junguito and Eduardo Sarmiento Palacio. Later he traveled to Yale University to carry out his doctoral studies.
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The academy complemented it with the Econometrics firm that he founded with friends and colleagues, a consulting society that still exists. When dr. Junguito was appointed Minister of Finance and invited him to form the Monetary Board of the Banco de la República, where he spent two years with Carlos Caballero Argáez. He was a formator of several generations from the end of the 60s until the last day of his life both in the Andes and in El Rosario. He was also an occasional professor at the National and Javeriana Universities. He always said that he investigated to teach and taught what he investigated. He died in 2014, at the age of seventy-two, after suffering from cancer that took him away in a few months. This is one of the deepest pains I have ever experienced.
Maternal branch
My grandmother, Paulina Jiménez, was born in 1917, studied up to fifth high school and married my grandfather Ariamiro Giraldo. Paulina was a strong-willed, intelligent, conservative woman with deep-rooted religious beliefs who focused on the education of her three children while her husband lived in the camps where he worked for much of his life.
My grandfather Ariamiro was born in Armenia, he was also a civil engineer who worked in transport infrastructure in the field, he settled in the camps to build the roads, so his family’s vacation trip was to visit him.
My mother, Consuelo Giraldo, is the youngest in her house. Inés, her older sister, married very young and was widowed very early, so she lived with my grandmother. Followed by Hernando, who was a doctor and has already passed away.
Perhaps because of her Paisa upbringing, my mother was strict, but loving and very present, accompanying her daughters to us.
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Fathers
The history of my parents has always been united as the two families have been very close friends. My mother says that my father, six years older, when he met her in the crib said: “With that beautiful blonde girl I am getting married.” My dad never denied the story.
They became boyfriends while she was in college and he was in college. When my father applied for a doctorate in the United States, he wanted to take her away, but his grandfather told him that he had to let her graduate, that he should wait.
They were married immediately, my mom graduated and traveled to New Haven for my dad to study at Yale University. Two years later and in a very cold winter, I was born in New Haven. A year and a half later, María Consuelo was born living in Colombia and at the age of four Marta Lucía. The three of us are very close.
María Consuelo is a lawyer from the Andes with a master’s degree in Political Science of the Andes and contemporary history in Barcelona; works in the Unit for the search for disappeared persons, with victims and human rights. When my daughter turned fifteen, María Consuelo fulfilled her planned dream, that of traveling to Italy together. She is a great reader of literature, she has been a professor at the Universidad del Rosario.
Marta Lucía is a psychologist from the Andes, then she studied a master’s degree in Argentina. She has dedicated herself to working on public health issues, specifically maternal mortality.
When Marta was four years old and I was in the fifth year of primary school, my mother decided that she would go back to school and went to university to study Art and Decoration. She sat down with us to do her homework, she was a great example, and with her talent she supported me in academic projects at school. She used to make drawing plates for me, I was very bad at that.
I grew up in a very close family, not only the nuclear one, but also the extended one. As the two branches are friends, they have always been very present in all life events.
Childhood
I remember my dad telling us the stories of the Greek gods, he told us about ancient history, medieval history. With this, he sowed in me that love for history that my daughter also inherited. He read with intensity, but he took time to talk with us, pass on his knowledge to us. From his travels he brought us very age-appropriate gifts that we had as planetariums that reflected the stars with light.
When I was four years old, when my father went to finish his doctoral thesis, we traveled back to New Haven to the United States. I remember his university, the snow, the nearby beach where he took us to collect shells.
My mother says that my sister María Consuelo and I, because Marta was not born, we did not want to learn English, we refused to speak it, while our friends began to communicate with us in Spanish. So English has been one of my main difficulties.
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I always played my role as an older sister: serious, judicious, studious. As I didn’t like speaking in English, they looked for school options and took one of the nuns who I didn’t like, I felt that I wasn’t learning anything there.
As my aunt Inés was a professor at the National Pedagogical Institute (IPN), it was to this that they transferred us. This is how I studied in a public school when its quality was foolproof. I was very happy in the school of which I am very proud, it gave me a vision of a different world, in it I made great friends with whom I studied from fifth grade to graduation and who are now very successful professionals and I still retain their friendship.
How not to mention Carolina Villamizar, today a psychologist with a master’s degree in organizational psychology; Henry Gallardo, director of the Santa Fe Foundation; Mario Romero, a civil engineer professor at Purdue University in Indiana and María Clara Gómez, an excellent engineer. But also many others, with whom I maintain frequent and close contact. At that time the IPN was characterized by obtaining the highest scores in the ICFES, the demand and the competition was high, sadly it is something that has changed.
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Career decision
I knew what I did not like, for example, nothing that had to do with health issues, not architecture, I ruled out engineering because I have not been good at drawing, it was my mother who made me the models because I could not draw a straight line. But I did love history, also mathematics, very much, thanks to my dad.
As social issues have always moved me, I opted for economics and studied it in the Andes, where my father taught.
University of the Andes
Arriving in the Andes from a public school and A calendar, I felt what that meant in an elite and private university, but I adjusted easily. I liked the economy from the beginning and it was made easier for me perhaps because I had heard my dad talking about these issues all my life.
I had the fortune to find a group to which I adapted very well, today some are great friends and work colleagues and with whom I have walked my personal and professional life, such as Ana María Iregui, with whom I studied my entire career and then we entered At the same time we went to the Banco de la República to study for a doctorate, although in different countries, we returned to the Bank after finishing our studies in the same year and now we are co-authors. I was also a college classmate of Jesús Otero, who is her husband, and of Jaime Bonet, a great friend and also a co-worker, Patricia Camacho, who is now dedicated to literature in the United States, and of Héctor Prada and Isabel Crizon.
I took advantage of this stage of life very well in which I concentrated on studying, I did not go to parties or boyfriends or many hobbies, although I liked going to the movies. My challenge was very great because my teachers were friends of my father, like Álvaro Reyes, Eduardo Sarmiento and he was too. I must thank my dad for not making me feel any kind of pressure, it was I alone who exerted it. I also had a great teacher: Carmen Elisa Flórez.
Master in Economics
I took one more year of career to obtain the master’s degree in which my dad taught me for a year with the subjects of Microeconomics and Econometrics. Fortunately, he did not do individual evaluations, but group evaluations through workshops. I remember that my friends went to study at the house, where they met him.
When my husband was my boyfriend, he did a master’s degree in which my dad was also his teacher, which was even more complex, Carlos did have a lot of pressure.
It was a less quantitative faculty than it is now, it concentrated heavily on economic development issues, which I like a lot.
I graduated at the time of the Pablo Escobar bombs. I remember that, with my friend Ana María and with Jesús, we went to the DAS to process the judicial record for the Banco de la República, and two days later the bomb exploded that destroyed the building. On the Avianca plane, the sister of one of my best friends from school died. All this marked me a lot. It was a very hard time, I was very afraid to go out.
Bank of the Republic
They called me from the Banco de la República and invited me to an interview with Alberto Carrasquilla and Roberto Steiner and Hernando José Gómez. I remember that it was a very difficult interview, they were young and had just arrived from their studies abroad. I was twenty-two when I started and I still work at the Bank today.
I started in the Currency and Banking section, despite not liking the subject so much. It was 1991 when the first Board of Directors was formed as mandated by the Constitution of that year, and of which Miguel Urrutia, Roberto Junguito, Salomón Kalmanovitz were part, to whom I keep a lot of affection, admiration and gratitude. I worked hand in hand with Miguel Urrutia, who included me in his research papers as a co-author despite my age and my lack of experience, Dr. Urrutia was a great mentor.
At that time Roberto Steiner, Alberto Carrasquilla, Hernando José Gómez, Martha Misas also worked at the Bank, later J. Uribe entered, who had just arrived from studying abroad and encouraged me to do research; working with Martha I learned a lot of econometrics. With them I encouraged myself to present myself to advance my doctorate in Illinois, a university that they recommended to me.
Carlos Pombo – Husband
I met my husband, Carlos Pombo, in 1991 when he worked in National Planning with Jaime Bonet.
When my parents were married for twenty-five years, I gave them a party, since I was already working, and the next day Jaime had his birthday and celebrated them with a barbecue in La Calera, to which he invited me. Jaime had already told me about Carlos, but I didn’t want to be introduced to anyone because I had just broken up with a doctor boyfriend. It is curious because Carlos had just ended a relationship that was already five years old.
A year later we got married, when I was twenty-four and Carlos was twenty-seven.
Carlos is an economist from the Javeriana with a master’s degree from the Andes, together we traveled to Illinois, where we graduated from the doctorate and now he is a full professor at the Los Andes School of Administration. He is serious, reserved, judicious, disciplined, homelike. I share the same interests with him and he has been my life partner for almost three decades.
Doctorate
Carlos and I studied economics PhD scholarships from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I had a grant from the Banco de la República and Carlos had a grant from Fonade-DNP and Colciencias.
Doing a PhD is very challenging, especially the first year. We were only two women in my course, all the professors were men and the only female professor in the faculty did not teach me. Fortunately I had Carlos, who made this process more pleasant, also, because initially I did not like the place, I only saw cornfields, and I am very urban.
This was my first out of the country. Initially we arrived in Denver, we took a bus to Boulder-Colorado, since we were going to take some courses in English and mathematics. Denver seemed like a metropolis to me and Boulder was a very beautiful university city surrounded by mountains, like Bogotá. For this reason, when I arrived in Urbana (where the University of Illinois is located), it was very hard for me to find that it was surrounded by corn plantations and to see that it was completely flat. I cried for a long time, for the same reason, every time we had a chance we would go to Chicago, a city that I adored and that is two and a half hours from the University. However, living in Urbana has many advantages, it is a not so expensive city, it offers facilities for students and the environment forces them to concentrate on studying and save money and then go for a walk. I learned to love her.
While there we traveled through the United States, we took a car to any destination. We take the opportunity to meet and walk. We were also able to go to Europe, we met my parents and my sisters in Barcelona, where my sister María Consuelo was studying for a master’s degree, so we traveled around Spain in a van with my family. This is the most wonderful trip I can remember doing in my life.
During these years I grew in age, as a person, as a couple and as an economist. We opened ourselves to a new world, we shared with people from many parts of the world, our best friends were a couple, she from India and he from Bangladesh. Immersing ourselves in those cultures was exciting and very enriching.
Thesis
He was not so clear on what to do the thesis. I knew that I liked topics related to economic growth, economic history, until one day Jota Uribe wrote to me to say: “María Teresa, why don’t you read Robert W. Fogel’s book on railroads in the United States”.
So I did, I loved the book, it was a wonderful discovery of that literature. So thanks to Jota I decided that I would advance a thesis on transportation infrastructure, especially railways, and its impact on the Colombian economy from a historical perspective. The most exciting thing was that, studying the subject, I discovered that this led me to my grandparents. My two grandparents civil engineers worked in transportation infrastructure, my grandfather Manuel from the chair and my grandfather Ariamiro from road construction.
I came on a vacation that I dedicated to researching at the Luis Ángel Arango and reviewing the magazines of the society of Colombian engineers, I found mentions and photos of my grandfather Manuel.
I came to the subject without intending to and this was a very emotional experience that led my mother to remember her experience in the camps with my grandfather during his childhood vacations and my father to tell me stories of Grandfather Manuel’s work.
It is sad to see that after twenty years since I wrote my thesis, not much progress has been made in terms of transport infrastructure, we need to invest more in ways to achieve greater economic growth and development of the regions. It is very strong to see children moving along paths that imply a very high risk for them because of the trails and rivers that are swollen through a cable.
I have just finished a joint article with several authors entitled Investment in transportation infrastructure and the Colombian economy, taking up a topic that I started in my thesis, there it is evidence that we continue with the same delay, that I found in my thesis.
My conclusion is that it is not so much the geography of the country that impedes the development of infrastructure, although it obviously raises costs, since there are countries that have achieved it because they have quality institutions and invest more resources in infrastructure.
Back to the country
Since we studied on scholarships we had to go back, but we also always wanted to. I found a Board in the Bank of which several economic historians such as Dr. Junguito, Salomón Kalamanovitz and Dr. Urrutia was the General Manager. Dr. Urrutia began a series of books on the economic history of Colombia in which I participated in the company of Adolfo Meisel, Bank executives, such as the current manager Leonardo Villar, and several researchers, always counting on the great support of my direct bosses. Hernando Vargas and Jota Uribe. So I was able to continue working on the topics that I like, learning from great economists.
With Adolfo Meisel I have worked on various issues of economic history mainly related to quality of life, people’s stature, and industry, among others, and we have edited several books together.
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Another facet of my life is in the academy as a professor, something that I enjoy immensely, especially since there have not been many women who teach with a doctorate and family, since this implies taking time to prepare the classes of your free time.
Since I was a young economist, I accompanied Miguel Urrutia as an assistant to his classes, I was his monitor in the Andes. When I returned from my doctorate, he invited me to take a course on Colombian Economic Policy and some seminars on Colombian economic history. Later, I taught alone a course in Colombian Economic History .
With Adolfo Meisel we took a course on quality of life from a historical perspective through an exercise very similar to the one you propose to me today. We asked the students to interview their grandparents and parents so that they could tell them their memories and accompany them with figures from the economy of the time. It was evident how grandparents with elementary school studies had ten or more children, while their parents with university and postgraduate studies had only one or two.
I also taught Quantitative Economic History at the Universidad del Rosario. In short, I really like teaching.
Family
After eleven years of marriage, Juana was born. She is a teenager who loves history, researching life, writing and telling stories, creating characters, and recreating them.
When we travel to seminars and conferences we take it with us, we take the opportunity to visit museums and cities. He loves traveling with us and learning about new cultures. It has always been exposed to the academic and cultural. She is a calm, serious and loving young woman.
Projects
I like a quiet life, as a family, the academy and that is why I would also like to study history formally one day and also be able to continue traveling.
Reflections
What reflections do you make after this journey through your life?
I recognize myself as a very fortunate person for my family, for my studies, for my work, for my friends and for the feminine strength that has influenced me from my family.
What has been the greatest adversity you have faced?
The time it took us to be parents, because I would have liked to be a mom at a younger age.
How do you overcome frustration?
I unburden myself crying, but I persevere, I don’t give up.
How do you like to be remembered?
As a family person, as a friend they can count on and trust, as someone kind to whom they can approach, and as someone who contributed a little to the literature of Colombian economic history.
What is the time in your life?
He worries me, he questions me, I think if I have done enough. I fear dying young.
What is the reason for your existence?
First my family, cultivate in my daughter her potential so that she can do what she sets out to do in life and be happy in whatever she sets out to do. Through my research and studies, I may be able to show young women economists that if they put their mind to it, they can break the glass ceilings that they find along the way.
What should your epitaph be?
Risk-averse woman . Or something like He lacked more street , in a good way, I say it for being judicious.
