Jorge Roa Martínez, Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas (Public Improvement Society) and civic virtue in Pereira

Abstract

This paper aims at undertaking a historical analysis of one document which is paramount to understand the logics of the city of Pereira during the second half of the 20th century: the administrative decision No. 24 of April 18, by means of which the Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas (Public Improvement Society) of Pereira paid tribute to the memory of Jorge Roa Martínez a day after his death. This research study relies on the historical-critical method, through four methodological stages: heuristics, doxography, etiology and synthesis. The study results are discussed in terms of two dimensions: an internal dimension (the document) and an external dimension (the context). Firstly, the content of the decision is analyzed as a historical document. Secondly, the coffee industry and the modernization of Pereira are analyzed from the year 1920 on as well as the phenomenon of civil virtue, as an obligatory background to achieve a better understanding of the context in which the administrative decision took place, during the middle of the 1960s in the city of Pereira.

Keywords

• pereira
• civic virtue
• sociedad de mejoras públicas (society of public improvements)
• modernization
• coffee
• urban history