Cúcuta, with tradition in the manufacture of footwear and well -gained national prestige in the field, has the craftsman of that trade in the shoemaker who is in charge of removing those worn out therefore walking and by the storm that is usually given when thestep.
They are characters that are in any corner or there, almost unnoticed at the common look, dresses with apron or apron and armed of their iron leg, mounted stretches, tirapié, wood wheal, remede hammer, needles, Lezna, Lezna, Pita, Wax, Betunes and the infallible shoemaker knife.
They fulfill the delicate task of replacing the soles, gathering the broken leather, paste and shine to those shoes that although old nobody wants to throw in the trash, for the love that is taken to those who have been so faithful companion.
On Avenida 1 between streets 14 and 15 of the La PlayEight years in Aguachica (Cesar) where he had a comeback, preferred to sit in a small stool to repair what at first glance seems to have no arrangement.
Remendons shoemakers continue to wear old tools to repair footwear.(Photo Luis Alfredo Estévez /La Opinion)
Jorge Enrique, who is 64 years old, is one of those shoemakers recalls that still remain in this capital, exercising an office that over time and the progress of modernity has been disappearing.
The office, as he calls the small metallic car where he keeps the tools and materials, opens it at 8 in the morning and closes it at 5 in the afternoon, always at the same point where he has been located for almost three decades, inThe sidewalk of the 1, in front of a parking lot and under the shelter of a nim tree.
There in his business 'Footwear repair JJ', he serves the exclusive clientele, which has been cultivating for so many years and provides the daily sustenance for him and the wife with whom he lives in Los Olivos (Atalaya), "because alreadyThe three children of marriage were obliged and left the house, "he says.
He also receives friends, with whom he usually talks about politics and current issues, catching up with those who stop seeing a time, reviewing in those times about things of the cucuta before, "when the money was seen more and reachedEven for the Eagles ".
"The shoemakers are used for an emergency, because we lose the lid anywhere and they stick it to us," said a woman who required her service with a spicy smile.
"Put new covers to a couple of shoes costs between $ 4.000 and $ 5.000, depending on the heel.That is what I do most daily and women are always my best clients, "Mojica confesses.
The price of a complete comeback is $ 30.000, which includes putting crepe or grounts, and if necessary to sew them, to deliver the pair of well -polished shoes, which are generally leather and good brand, those who send to repair.
The machines replace the work of the old footwear artisans.
Footwear clinics
Currently, well -constituted footwear groockers have taken strength, with modern machines that replaced the manual tools used to restore footwear.
These sites are true clinics for shoes, as Rosalba Contreras Quintero says, owner of the 'comeback and locksmith third avenue', who has been in the business for 19 years, opened by her husband Luis Felipe Santander, already deceased.
She offers at their premises change of plants, change of tapas, vulcanized, change of heels and meshes, tinture, change of languages to sports shoes, reinforcements when they are broken, widening, lining and even the entire chapter, in addition to makeup when theclient needs it to go to a party.
It is a variety of services for shoes, boots, ankle boots, sandals, guayos, sports, moccasins, casual, nautical, dancers, desalonados, clogs and even espadrilles.
"Here comes the rich and the poor, on foot, by bicycle or by car, but everyone arrives with their damaged shoes and they take them shiny," says Rosalba, while looking on a shelf and in the middle of dozens of pairs alreadyrepaired, red shoes that came to claim one of its clients.
She remembers the characteristics of the footwear that bring her as color, model and the type of arrange, take them, put them in a plastic bag and deliver them to the owner with a smile and a word of love, attention that he says is the one that keeps the business and captivates his clientele.
*By: Luis Eduardo Bautista |Sup
