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• Fernando Garavito Awarded 2006 Cultural Freedom Award

Fernando Garavito awarded 2006 Cultural Freedom Award

“Fernando Garavito”:http://www.fernandogaravito.com/, now residing in the United States, is a journalist, writer, and professor who was forced into exile after being threatened for speaking out against government corruption in his native Colombia. In 2002, Garavito was a full-time professor in the department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Rosario in Bogotá when he wrote about Colombia’s drug cartels and right-wing paramilitary groups. He left for the United States with his family and found work teaching in Maine. Later, he was invited to join the International Cities of Asylum project, which provides refuge for threatened writers and their families. With help from PEN New Mexico, Garavito and his family relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He worked at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as a lecturer and Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Latin American Studies.

Garavito is currently a Master’s candidate in Spanish, with an emphasis in Hispanic Literature, in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico. He writes a weekly column for the The Santa Fe New Mexican on politics and current affairs, and teaches Spanish to elementary school students.