New use for discarded books in home library
Print Edition
EMPTYING the bins of Colombia’s capital, Jose Alberto Gutierrez one day found a copy of the classic novel “Anna Karenina,” and kept it.
That was 20 years ago — and the garbage man continued to collect Bogota’s discarded books, amassing 25,000 in a free library, swelled by donations.
“I realized that people were throwing books away in the rubbish. I started to rescue them,” Gutierrez, a stocky, grey-haired man of 54, said.
He never got past primary school as a student, but is now dubbed “The Lord of the Books,” in demand from schools across the country.
That first copy of Tolstoy was soon joined by “The Little Prince,” “Sophie’s World,” “The Iliad” and various novels by Colombian master Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Gutierrez’s neighbors started coming round to borrow books to help their children with schoolwork.
“There was a lack of them in our neighborhood, so we started to help.”
Now a whole floor of his house, on a hill in the working class Nueva Gloria district of the capital, is taken up by stacks of books.
Along with wife Luz Mery Gutierrez and their three children, Gutierrez opened it as a free library in 2000.
Volunteers joined in, word spread, and the garbage man found himself invited to international book fairs in Santiago, Monterrey as well as in the capital.
Where once he supplied the library by rescuing books from the street, now most his stock comes from donations. Aside from donations, Gutierrez covers any further expenses from his own pocket.
“We have a blessed curse upon us,” he said. “The more books we give away, the more come to us.”
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