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The story of José Alberto Gutiérrez reveals how discarded books on the streets of Bogotá found a new destination by forming a free library for children, families, and poor communities, in an initiative created during collection work and maintained with family support.
José Alberto Gutiérrez, a former garbage collector in Bogotá, Colombia, transformed discarded books on the streets into a free library aimed at children and families from poor regions, gathering about 25,000 copies from materials found during work.
Known as La Fuerza de las Palabras, the initiative led the Colombian to be called the “Lord of the Books” and gained international attention by showing how abandoned works could recirculate in communities with little access to reading.
During a collection route in the Colombian capital, Gutiérrez found a copy of “Anna Karenina,” a classic by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, and decided to take the book home instead of letting it go to waste.
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From that find, the worker began to repeat the gesture whenever he saw discarded works, gradually creating a home collection that would later become a reference for residents of the Nueva Gloria neighborhood.
The movement gained momentum when neighbors began to seek out the family in search of books to help children with schoolwork, expanding the reach of a practice that had started as a personal decision during the work routine.
According to the Agence France-Presse, in a report reproduced by NDTV on June 6, 2017, the free library was opened in 2000 with the participation of his wife, Luz Mery Gutiérrez, and the couple’s three children.
Free library was born inside a house in Bogotá
In the family’s house, located in a popular area of the Colombian capital, piles of books began to occupy an entire floor, while residents sought school materials, novels, children’s literature, and classics that were not easily found.
Over time, the collection grew not only with works rescued from the streets but also with donations, strengthening the library’s role as a community point of free access to knowledge.
Among the titles mentioned in the report were “The Little Prince,” “Sophie’s World,” “The Iliad,” and books by Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, names that helped bring readers closer to different eras and literary styles.
This variety allowed the space to go beyond lending school books, enabling children and adults to have contact with works that would hardly reach many families without cost or without major travel across the city.
By addressing urban waste and lack of access to reading, Gutiérrez’s efforts highlighted two challenges present in large cities, especially in regions where public libraries and bookstores are not part of many residents’ routines.
The La Fuerza de las Palabras Foundation states that it operates as a non-profit community organization, donating books to rural schools, community libraries, prisons, children’s homes, and cultural spaces in Colombia.
La Fuerza de las Palabras expanded access to reading
According to the foundation itself, the project was founded in Bogotá in 1995 by José Alberto Gutiérrez and his family, with the proposal to rescue discarded books and turn them into educational and cultural opportunities.
This institutional milestone coexists with AFP’s record that the free library was opened in the family’s home in 2000, when the demand from neighbors had already transformed the domestic collection into a community service.
Despite the achieved projection, the simple origin of the initiative remained linked to Gutiérrez’s personal history, who did not advance beyond primary school as a child and was familiar with the barriers imposed by the lack of educational opportunities.
According to what he reported to AFP, his contact with reading came from his mother, who read comic books to him during his childhood in a simple house in the countryside, creating a bond that would later become community action.
Explaining the initiative’s beginning, Gutiérrez told the agency that he noticed books being thrown in the trash and decided to rescue them, in a statement that summarizes the logic of the work maintained over the years.
The phrase “I started to rescue them” expresses the central point of the project, created without an official campaign or large structure, but sustained by the daily observation of a worker facing objects treated as urban waste.
With the growth of the collection, the family even promoted reading sessions for children within their own home, but the lack of space forced them to stop these activities in the property.
Even so, the work continued through the free distribution of books in hundreds of poor communities and remote regions of Colombia, expanding the reach of a library that had been born in family rooms.
Rescued books reached distant communities
Outside the neighborhood where it all began, the circulation of books led Gutiérrez to events related to reading, including invitations to international book fairs in Santiago, Monterrey, and Bogotá, according to the AFP report.
For a project created without a formal large-scale structure, this projection showed how the initiative surpassed the limits of the family home and came to be recognized as a community mobilization experience through reading.
The reach also extended to people in the process of social reintegration after the peace agreement signed in Colombia in 2016, when members of the Farc were gathered in demobilization zones.
As reported by AFP, a member of the group requested books for members who would need to study and prepare for the transition to civilian life, yet another example of how the collection began to circulate beyond the neighborhood.
Gutiérrez told the agency that the books transformed him and, for that reason, he saw them as a symbol of hope and peace, a statement that gained strength from the journey built from works retrieved from the trash.
By returning these materials to circulation, the former collector helped bring children, families, and communities closer to educational opportunities, showing that reading can also depend on simple gestures repeated consistently.
The story remains relevant because it shows how an individual action, maintained over the years, can change a community’s relationship with knowledge and transform discarded materials into educational tools.
Instead of seeing only trash on the streets of Bogotá, José Alberto Gutiérrez saw books, readers, and educational opportunities for children who needed access to the basics to learn.
How many libraries could still be born from discarded materials if more people saw the books thrown away as a chance for a new beginning?
