These days I read a thought-provoking phrase by Benjamin Franklin that says, "To lack one's own books is the height of misery. I remember that the first time I had a book in my hands that was mine was at the age of 6. I was going to school and they had bought me a reading book that my mother had lined with beautiful green paper. My new book smelled so good, unreleased, with no marks or bent ends. I had had books in my hands before, but they weren't mine: they belonged to my parents or my older sister. So I took it and put it in my blue backpack as if it were a great treasure, not knowing that in time, that book would open the doors for me to other treasures and other worlds.

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As Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature, put it: "Learning to read is the most important thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I learned to read quickly and in my first school year I read three books. My teacher, impressed by my dedication and enthusiasm, made me read daily, aloud, in front of the class. I read in front of the young audience and it was like dancing, traveling, dreaming. At the end of each reading I was exhausted, smiling, inspired, and very proud of my progress. At that time I read to learn, to acquire knowledge. Because reading is a learning process, we are not born as readers, we learn to be readers. We can acquire skills to begin to read, but good readers are made because they manage to become reading habits, because they enjoy reading: they find pleasure in what they read.

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I am clear that for some people it can be annoying to read a book, a waste of time; but I am also clear about the advantages that reading good texts can provide. For example, it makes us question our ideas and those of others, it teaches us to be critical, it enriches us culturally, it allows us to develop cognitive skills and, especially, it makes us freer: reading opens a door that never closes again. Saint Teresa of Jesus said: "Read and you will lead, do not read and you will be led". Reading allows us to leave behind the bonds of ignorance, evil that make us easy targets for the predators of totalitarian governments. This is how we read to grow, to change, to be better, to conquer, to never be the same again.

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As I grew up, I also grew as a reader. Then I could see another of the benefits of reading: pleasure. Reading gives pleasure. We read and with each reading we laugh, we cry, we submerge ourselves in distant and implausible worlds, real or fictitious. That is why I can say, looking back, that reading created in me an early fascination, something that came from within and was inexplicable. I could spend hours, and hours, locked in my room, reading any book that fell into my hands. From books on physics, astronomy, history: the beauty of knowledge and pleasure I found in the least apparent places. At that time I borrowed from an aunt, without her noticing, the romantic novels I kept in the closet. What I read stimulated my imagination. I felt that books were my home: it made me forget the cold, the heat, the hunger, the problems. Reading fed me.

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Then I began to build a modest library with authors from my country: Gallegos, Andrés Eloy Blanco, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri. I remember that the first book I bought at a fair, aware that I wanted to create my own library, was a collection of poems by Andrés Eloy Blanco. Many of the poems I learned by heart and still resonate in me. Later, I began to build a more extensive library with universal authors: Neruda, Borges, Whitman, Saint-John Perse, Pessoa, Vallejo, Rulfo, Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Storni, Sylvia Plath, Machado. Like any library, mine is made of testimony of passions and searches, of deficiencies and unknowns. It is full of books that were given to me, bought, and even more than one that I borrowed and never returned. My library is alive, breathing and invasive, according to my family. It's the open path of a journey that's not over yet.

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When I was a little girl, I remember my grandmother liked me to read the newspaper aloud. She sent me to read opinion and event articles every afternoon. That evening exercise served as practice to perfect my reading and to find out everything that was happening in my country and the world. Once, as I walked around the block, I saw an old woman, holding a book in her hand, reading to her grandson who was sitting at her feet. That touching image made me jealous and I ran home like crazy and told my grandmother that I would like her to read to me. My grandmother was illiterate so she said no to me. I didn't take no for an answer, so I started teaching my grandmother how to read and write.

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At the end of her days, my grandmother knew how to write her name and could read a few words, but she always asked me to read aloud to her. That experience, perhaps, was what motivated me to be a literature teacher. Hence I believe in the need to promote reading and libraries. You have to transmit the love for books, the passion for reading and that children grow up reading. That must be our concern and our commitment.

In short, I have always thought that when we read, with each reading there is a search for oneself and I can say with certainty that with some readings I have found myself and I have even managed to invent myself.

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