A Memory from My Window in Bogotá

Dear Friend, 

I grew up in Colombia during one of the most violent times in the country’s history. From my apartment window in Bogotá, I used to watch people coming and going in the restaurant across the street.

Jaime Garzón, Colombia’s most beloved satirist, was someone I often saw there. He was a popular TV comedian who spoke truth to power with a razor wit. I never met him. He was simply a familiar face in the neighborhood.

Then, on August 13, 1999, Jaime Garzón was assassinated on his way to work.

I have thought about that window many times since. About how ordinary the world looked the last time I saw him at the restaurant, and what a comforting illusion that was. About what happens to a society that allows the people who tell the truth to be silenced. 

The forces that silence dissent move quietly at first. In Colombia and everywhere. But writers and artists perceive them years, sometimes decades, before they surface. I think of Octavia Butler and her parables. Margaret Atwood and her handmaids. Orwell. Huxley. Bradbury. The list grows longer every year. Today, these fictions no longer read like fiction.

These writers didn’t just warn us. They showed us that the freedom to imagine is not a luxury. It is an act of resistance, but even more, it is how a free society continues to be free.

Writers and artists are the imagination’s front line. Often, they are also the last barrier. I think of Václav Havel, who went from playwright to prisoner to president. I think of Wole Soyinka, who suffered imprisonment and exile—even after winning the Nobel Prize—and never stopped writing. History has shown us that when creative voices go silent, all else follows.

In 2026, similar forces are converging again, closer to home than I ever expected. Freedoms that were taken for granted for generations are being questioned, tested, eroded.

The pressure to silence dissent is no longer hidden under the surface. We are beginning to feel the quicksand of self-censorship beneath our feet. I catch myself hesitating before saying certain things. Many people tell me they do, too, wondering whether it is safer to say nothing, do nothing.

I am concerned. And you probably are too.

There is a writer living here in Pittsburgh whose name must remain anonymous. They need City of Asylum because they face a very real risk of becoming the next writer to be silenced. The writer is still writing, working on a new book. City of Asylum has made it possible for them to continue doing critical work on an important and dangerous subject.

When I look out my window here in the Northside, I sometimes remember that restaurant in Bogotá and the assassination of Jaime Garzón. The difference is that here, we have created a place for the Jaime Garzóns of the world to keep working, writing, and telling the truth.

Endangered writers cannot do it alone. Nor can we, as individuals, create a safe place for them. City of Asylum has been and continues to be effective because we have built a community that believes freedom of creative expression is necessary, and that civil discourse and engagement across differences define who we are and are central to our democracy. 

At City of Asylum, these beliefs are practiced every day: in our sanctuary for exiled writers, in the free programs at Alphabet City, and in the conversations among artists, audiences, and neighbors who might never otherwise have found each other.

But I want to be honest with you. This space is fragile. 

Shifts in the political landscape are making our work harder each day. And at a moment when writers and artists around the world are under growing pressure to stay silent, the need for places like City of Asylum is only becoming more urgent. Like the democratic values we embody, City of Asylum should not be taken for granted. 

Our resilience comes from a community of people who believe that freedom of creative expression is worth protecting and celebrating. And there are many ways to become part of that community.

Awareness is a first step. You can share our story with friends and colleagues who may not know that the largest residency program for exiled writers in the world exists right here in Pittsburgh. Or you can visit us at Alphabet City for one of the 120+ free arts and humanities programs we present each year.

I still think about that window in Bogotá, and about the writer here in Pittsburgh who is at their desk right now, writing, because a community refused to let their voice be silenced.

We have met difficult times before because our community has shown up when it mattered. I trust we will again.