Virginia Gutíerrez de Pineda: Google Doodle Celebrates Colombian Anthropologist’s 98th Birthday

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda’s 98th Birthday, the acclaimed Colombian anthropologist and teacher whose pioneering research reshaped customary family structures and community culture of Colombia.

Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda was a Colombian anthropologist who pioneered work on Colombian family and medical anthropology.

Born in the town of El Socorro on this day in 1921, she was among the first generation of Colombian ladies permitted to pursue higher education. She got her education at the National Pedagogy Institute, the Escuela Normal Superior of Colombia and the National Technology Institute, where she acquired her degree in Anthropology in 1944.

Subsequent to studying at Bogotá’s Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Gutiérrez then went to go to the University of California, Berkeley (1953-1954), where she earned a graduate degree in Social and Medical Anthropology before coming all the way back to Colombia to finish her Doctorate of Social and Economic Sciences. She got her Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Economics at the National University of Pedagogy.
Benefiting as much as possible from her educational opportunities, Gutiérrez proceeded to writer twelve book-length studies about that spread out a basic comprehension of the lives of Colombia’s kin, including women and children of lower social and economic status. Her study of the road children of Medellín prompted an enthusiasm for solving social issues by concentrating on the family unit.

In books like La Familia en Colombia, Gutiérrez investigated different cultural nuances within the different communities of the Andean, Santandereano, Antioqueño, and coastal-mining regions. She additionally attempted academic reviews of popular medication in Colombia and customary remedies known as curanderismo.

Other than studying families, Gutiérrez additionally raised her very own group after wedding individual anthropologist Roberto Pineda Giraldo, whom she met at university.

For her significant contributions to Colombian culture, she was named Woman of the Year in Colombia in 1967 and, after a year, she won the Alejandro Ángel Escobar Award. In her career, she has likewise gotten two medals respecting her merits, the Camilo Torres medal (1963) and another medal awarded by the Interamerican Congress of Family (1983). Within her numerous achievements, she has additionally worked for the Guarnimiento foundation in two events.

Recently, in 2015, the Colombian Bank of the Republic picked her picture to show up on the $10.000 peso bill out of appreciation for every one of her merits. The new bills will be accessible before the finish of 2016.