Your surname was Russian, your Russian Jewish ancestors migrated and you were born in Argentina. Maybe it was your classmates in primary or secondary school in Mendoza who nicknamed you “el Pojo”. It wouldn’t be strange, but that’s how I knew you and what we all called you. You called me “la Figueroa”, I guess to be symmetrical, and you always honoured me with your tremendous friendship.
Because you were one of those friends you had forever. Even though you also migrated a lot. From Argentina you went to live for years in Venezuela, nobody would have foreseen that you would later come to Chile, go to London and from there you would try to settle in Spain. When we talked about it, about your being a migrant, many years after, you told me that you had finally found your “home”, your place in the world, your definitive dwelling. It was the Toledo Park of Study and Reflection, where you were the caretaker when yesterday’s death met you.
You were a person of action, with projects to attend to, great adventures, social odysseys, varied constructions. You liked challenges. Lately, you were into Universal Basic Income, no less! That tendency to defy the possible seemed to me to have always defined you in some way.
You were, in fact, the ideal companion to show up, for example, at the Sol encampment during 15M, because all the different assemblies and commissions knew you, they trusted you, you got me interviews and you made your way in the midst of that fervour. Your availability was amazing and many are those who highlight it as your main virtue.
Others talk about your humour, your generosity, your loyalty, your ability to reinvent yourself and think big. In fact, your being rescued yesterday from Toledo Park by helicopter to take you to the hospital seemed to me to be very you. An image perfectly in keeping with your ways, even though it was the last we would have heard of you before you passed into the Light.
Now that you are leaving, memories of various moments come flooding back, but I especially remember you as a father, since you were a father before me of your three children and many times, I consulted you on how to face the various stages of upbringing. On one of those occasions, you commented that the main thing you were trying to teach them was that “it is more important to agree than to be right”.
I don’t know if your children or mine learned that, but I did. It seemed to me the best expression of the Golden Rule, that rule that says “Treat others as you want to be treated”, which you made so much your own and applied whenever possible, at least with me.
Thank you Pojo, thank you very much!
