Francisco Javier Lopera Restrepo (June 10, 1951 - September 10, 2024)

Abstract

The life of Francisco Javier Lopera Restrepo, Pacho, could be summarized in the lyrics of a French song, in the verses of a local poet or in a few invented aphorisms. That cold Sunday of June 10, 1951, in the village of Aragón, municipality of Santa Rosa de Osos, towards the north of Antioquia and on the banks of the first stretch of the Rio Grande riverbed, Francisco Javier, son of Blanca Elena and Luis Emilio, was born. He was the fourth child born to Blanca Elena and was the eldest of the boys. The Lopera-Restrepo family, a typical Antioquian peasant family of 13 siblings and Aragon, a frozen land, with scarcely 700 inhabitants at that time. Between wooded mountains and the whistles of the blackbirds, at more than 2600 meters above sea level, the fog and the cold were persistent. In spite of the very low temperatures, snow did not fall, only frosts that covered the orchards with hail and destroyed the potato crops, in the dry season, and from one day to the next, ruin came.