Just A Car Guy: Standing ovation, and I begin a slow hand clapping of admiration for Martin Murillo, a book cart pushing amazing guy in Colombia, who had transformed the cart he used to sell water and sodas into a rolling library: La Carreta Literaria.

Monday, January 01, 2024

Standing ovation, and I begin a slow hand clapping of admiration for Martin Murillo, a book cart pushing amazing guy in Colombia, who had transformed the cart he used to sell water and sodas into a rolling library: La Carreta Literaria.

Seventeen years ago, Martín supported himself by selling water and soft drinks in Cartagena. One day, a stranger spotted him reading a novel The Double, and promised that he would bring him more books.

Within four years, Martín had transformed the cart he used to sell water and sodas into a rolling library: La Carreta Literaria.

By 2007, he decided to collect 120 books from his own room and take them around the city for anyone who wanted to stop and read for awhile. “In a book you find all the applications that a man needs to learn, to pry, to entertain yourself, to investigate,” he explained.

Later that year, Murillo found a patron who gave him the funds to continue promoting his literacy project. Since then, he has been able to operate in rural and urban areas alike with the help of sponsors for the past twelve years. This has also allowed him to attend Latin American book fairs across places like Argentina, Mexico, and Bogota.

It is the only cart in Cartagena that transports books . He doesn't sell books, he lends them to the readers he finds in the squares, in the parks, in the universities.

He is one of the unique cultural changes in Cartagena in recent years.

Though he has a brother that is a geologist, and one that's a professor, and a sister that is a nurse.... he outshines his siblings by his unique dedication to the literacy of his people and their children. That is very noble.

One day the Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Gabriel Márquez saw Murillo pushing his cart of books and he saw among the books an original edition of the book he wrote in 1985, Love in the Time of Cholera. He autographed it: “For Martín Murillo, with all the love of the person who wrote this book.”

5 other Nobel winners have autographed books for Martin. That is awesome

The cart lends books to readers in squares and parks, schools and universities, it does not sell anything in return, it only promotes the pleasure of reading. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, for three hundred and sixty-five days. In all this time, Martin has been the founder, manager and messenger, and the initial 120 books have become 3,500 books.