Paz Ramírez was despedida this Tuesday in the Church of El Golf after dying in Providencia in a hit-and-run that still has no suspect in custody. Her family and friends gathered while the search for the driver who struck her at the corner of Manuel Montt and Andrés Bello continued.
That is why her name is being read and searched now: the farewell is happening while the investigation remains open, and the man who hit her has not been found. For a family already forced to wait for the delivery of her remains at the Servicio Médico Legal, the day carried both grief and the absence of answers.
Manuel Barros said his brother Santiago Barros is devastated, and described the relationship between the two as one of the purest loves he had seen. He said Ramírez was “the most wonderful woman in the world, the bravest and the most generous,” and added that they drew people around them with long meals, shared food and a life built around gathering others close. He also said the family is still unable to make sense of what happened.
Ramírez was 39 and had built a career across the audiovisual world as a screenwriter, director, producer and manager. She directed the short films Helechos and Proyecto de Verano, with Helechos premiering at the Festival de Tribeca and Proyecto de Verano co-directed with Rocío Huerta and shown at SANFIC. She also directed music videos for the Colombian artist Lido Pimienta.
The most painful gap in the story remains the same one that shaped the family’s mourning: while the farewell moved forward, the driver who caused the atropello was still prófugo. Fiscalía is carrying out steps to find him, and the case now turns on whether investigators can close the distance between a public goodbye and the accountability her family is waiting for.
Santiago Barros had proposed to Ramírez in June during a trip to Turkey, on the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul. That detail now sits beside Marta, her dog, who survived the crash and is being cared for by a friend of the filmmaker, a small sign of life in a story that has otherwise been defined by loss.
