The Pedagogical Institute of Caracas began its work as a teacher training establishment on 30 September 1936. It has seen, therefore, over 80 years of uninterrupted work. Its creation responded to the need to promote secondary education in the country, which until then had been neglected. As Don Mariano Picón Salas said: "the idea was not only to train high school teachers, but to create a centre for the development and cultivation of the humanities and science." The year 1936 marked a milestone in the country's historical process. It was a time of transition due to the physical disappearance of the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, who had stayed in power for 27 uninterrupted years. It was a time for great changes ...

Chela's academic work encompassed other facets: participation in the reforms to secondary education programs; dictation of conferences, short courses and workshops for the improvement of teachers; writing notes for Mathematics courses; directing degree studies; works such as his 'Algebra Course' (1957); publication in various journals of his thoughts on the Didactics of Mathematics. Also in various interviews he explained his ideas about the teaching/learning of Mathematics.

When Marcos Pérez Jiménez became dictator, the dreams of Venezuelan education dissipated and vanished. However, despite the repression, the College of Teachers of Venezuela continued to promote its academic doctrine through documents and even created a subsidy fund to help exiled teachers, whose purpose was to defend the teaching career and also the institution, highlighting the solidarity of Venezuelan society.

Chela had been one of the actors in the creation of the College and having deep social convictions, he had dreamed of a College integrated into national life. The first time I heard him speak was as Orator of Order in the Act of Creation of the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Venezuela, in the year 1958. It was an Academic Act of great solemnity, presided over by the Rector Francisco de Venanzi. Without a doubt, this act marks a milestone in the history of Mathematics in Venezuela, it was the first Faculty of Sciences in the country and soon the first Mathematics graduates in Venezuela would graduate.

I am a mathematician, what I want is to study.

This paper is part of a Ph.D. thesis submitted this year to the University of London. I wish to thank my supervisor Dr A Fröhlich for his guidance and encouragement, the Universidad Central of Venezuela for the grant and the Department of Mathematics of the King's College for the facilities which enabled me to pursue my course of study.

I have been received with signs of affection by everyone here. They have invited me many times to eat, former students, friends, professors, deans, etc. Tomorrow, for example, I am going to have lunch at the house of Isabel my sister and at night with the teachers of the Pedagogical Institute.

Upon my return to Venezuela in January 1962 I was appointed Head of the Department of Mathematics and I found that the organisation of the studies of the Mathematics Degree corresponded to those of a Graduate School, but without the previous base that graduate students have in developed countries such as England, the United States, France, etc. It was evident that under these conditions the number of graduates that the School would produce each year would be very small; but it was argued we should sustain this state of affairs, since the graduate's field of work would be university teaching, in the same Faculty of Sciences or in other Faculties. However, this is not how developed countries proceed, where some of the mathematics graduates are integrated into the plans, at a certain level, of industrial development, secondary school teaching, scientific journalism, etc., and only a minority go on to the doctorate with aspirations to pure scientific research and university teaching ... [This is of] such importance not only to raise the scientific level of the people, without which scientific activity eventually becomes impoverished and may even die, but also to gather understanding and support from vast sectors of the population.

... in the cafeteria of the Faculty of Humanities, behind Engineering, Raimundo Chela shared a table with several students from the School of Mathematics: José Masón, Federico Martin and myself. We drank coffee, sometimes several, and we talked. Chela recounted the emotion that the end of 'The Song of the Earth' produced in him, how the music slowly faded away and the mezzo-soprano sang softer and softer Ewig, Ewig, Ewig, ... I noticed how the hairs on his arm bristled as he spoke. I heard 'The Song of the Earth' for the first time some eight years later and I vividly remembered that conversation with Chela; at that moment, I shared his feeling. Whenever I listen to it, the memory of Professor Chela comes back to me.
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After jokes, comments about music or poetry and discussing politics (always politics for hours), the conversation would move to Mathematics: Number Theory or Galois Theory, most of the time. Also, frequently, stories and anecdotes about famous mathematicians. Chela's mathematical culture was very extensive and he could talk about many topics not related to Algebra. ...
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These conversations in the cafeteria played a very important role in the formation of many of us. They were motivating, many times we would leave the cafeteria to study something new or to review topics that we thought we had understood. They were also conversations of great spiritual and cultural depth. Apart from two or three jokes, which were never lacking, Chela was a very serious, upright man, with strong convictions and not at all willing to negotiate, much less to betray his principles. This character led, in the following years, to a notable change in his attitude, to a certain degree of visible bitterness and a distance from many of his students and fellow professors at the Faculty of Sciences.

... he filled with his vast knowledge, with his works and with the zeal in caring for, increasing and defending, mathematical science in Venezuela, the void left in the University with the absence of a Department of Pure Mathematics ... But in this task he was practically alone for many years. I imagine him captain of a ship with a very small crew, moving to all the places where his presence and scientific generosity were needed.

From the first grades we badly condition the students in front of us. This occurs because small errors in learning mathematics are penalised in a severe way as it is not done with other subjects.

I do not believe that is the case. Gauss, who together with Archimedes and Newton is part of the great universal trilogy of mathematicians, was about to dedicate himself to philology.

It is that we can no longer think that this field can be promoted in isolation from the world surrounding the University. We must establish an active connection between the mathematics that we teach and the centres that are going to use it.

This country owes a debt to Professor Chela that it will never be able to repay, not only because of his forty-two uninterrupted years of teaching or because of the depth of his knowledge displayed with the most genuine modesty, but also because of the international credit of his professional research, one of which won the honour of being reproduced in the London Journal of Mathematics, where he did a brilliant postgraduate degree, by the way.

He had a special talent for music and played the piano with singular sensitivity, wrote poetry and participated in the literary and musical groups of little Caracas at the time. He saw no discord between everything he did and felt, and above all he delighted in being a mathematician ...

I remember your father very well and I thoroughly enjoyed having him work under me, and seeing his delight in learning and doing Mathematics.

Chela left behind an indelible mark on those who had the pleasure of knowing him and sharing his wisdom, his deep knowledge and his gift with people. On 9 May 1985, at the National Pedagogical Institute, a heartfelt tribute was held to this distinguished Venezuelan, which was attended by relatives, former students, friends and colleagues who recalled and highlighted various aspects of the work and life of Raimundo Chela.

I wish to all Venezuelan educators primarily the following two objectives:

i) that daily work is always aimed at achieving an ever-increasing understanding and mastery of the topics that they have to teach;

ii) maintain union unity to obtain better working conditions that allow them to deploy an intense and creative teaching effort.

Do not despair if you cannot solve certain problems. The greatest difficulty consists in not forgetting the problem, without despairing. Those two qualities constitute the most powerful weapon. In the culture of mathematics there is a true spirit that will never die because it has the wonderful quality of renewing itself, of changing its fundamental conceptions, whenever the reality of things requires it.