Tribute to Jorge Carrillo. Sigfrido Ramirez

We will miss this solid and permanent pillar of our GERPISA community
Sigfrido Perez Ramirez (collaborateur scientifique Université Libre de Bruxelles)

I am also devastating by the sudden passing away of our amigo Jorge. Like all of you have already written, he was a kind person which was always attentive to others' opinion and had an eternal smile even in moments of personal tensions or scientific disagreements. He was a great scholar and with the humility of those social scientists who are able not just to present its field work with enthusiasm and detail, but also to understand and be genuinely interested in the work of others and provide the theoretical and empirical insights of a veteran social scientist. 

I am very proud of the dedicatory he wrote to me in his co-edited volume with our dear Lourdes Alvarez and María Luisa González (El auge de la indusria automotriz en México en el siglo XXI: Restructuración y Catching Up (UNAM 2014):  "Para Sigfrido: Gran compañero y amigo, de quien sigo aprendiendo..."). This says a lot about his scientific curiosity to learn from a younger generation of scholars but also passing the fire of scientific comradeship and passion to learn.

I enjoyed a lot of his friendship and he was an example for me as scholar. Thanks to Alex Covarrubias and his initiative of ITIAM (the Mexican Gerpisa, which was also  an initiative that owned a lot to Jorge's support) I have the great chance to know him much better and enjoy of the events organised in various locations in Mexico. I remember in particular the meeting  in Hermosillo organised by ITIAM on the USMCA negotiations where he and Ludger Pries intervened with Mexican authorities and where he remained very critical and always wary to defend that public policy must take into consideration its impact on workers and communities.

The GERPISA conference in Puebla was also quite an adventure and a great moment for most of us (Lourdes driving by car from DF and the visit to the sanctuary in Puebla with European colleagues),  in spite of some misunderstandings with Robert Boyer and Michel Freyssenet that Jorge was trying to solve (together with Elsie Charron), with his talents of an academic diplomat and senior scholar from el Colegio.

He enjoyed a lot coming to Spain and Europe to discover the plurality of languages and cultures with the gaze of an anthropologist. I remember how proud he was that her daughter has chosen France to continue her research trajectory coronated with working in this centenary institution in charge of veiling for a fairer world for workers of the world. 

He loved also  to participate in meetings in Madrid and Amsterdam during the Society for the advance of Socio-economics (SASE) conference, where we both joined the successful network of Spanish-speaking scholars coordinated by Santos Ruesga from the University Autónoma of Madrid.

No doubt he was a global scholar with solid intellectual networks, but also quite influential in Mexico and in the Spanish speaking community, even if he never made any ostentation of his reach and capacity to support the career of younger scholars as an evaluator of national and international scientific programms. 

We will miss this solid and permanent pillar of our GERPISA community,  and I hope that our scientific board will be able to honor him as he deserves in our future conferences in Paris, Venice, Mexico or whenever Alex Covarrubias or Tommaso Pardi would consider the most adequate format.

Que la tierra te sea leve Gran amigo y Compañero Jorge!