AUTHOR’S NOTE Over ten million people live in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. There are only nineteen libraries. There was no library in La Nueva Gloria barrio until 2000, when José Alberto Gutiérrez took matters into his own hands. A lifelong Bogotá resident, Gutiérrez is a former garbage collector who is known as the Lord of the Books. Early in his career, Gutiérrez found a discarded copy of Anna Karenina on his route. He describes that discovery as the “little book [that] set the flame and this snowball that never stopped rolling.” Today, in addition to running his library, Gutiérrez directs the foundation he established, La Fuerza de las Palabras (The Strength of Words), which provides reading material to schools, organizations, and libraries across Colombia. His efforts have earned worldwide recognition, including features in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo and U.S. News and World Report, on BBC News, and more. Gutiérrez has also addressed global audiences—twice at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, and at the Austrian Literacy Association’s annual conference. Gutiérrez himself went back to school in his fifties. It took him three years to earn his high school diploma, but in building his library, he empowered himself as well as others. “Lots of people mocked me,” he says. “They would laugh when they found out about my project. But now, twenty years later, they are amazed. My dream is to exchange my garbage truck for a truck full of books and travel the country. I am sure I will pull it off.”
José on his nighttime route
Children browse the library in José’s home
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