An artist in Culiacan, Mexico—which has the highest rate of gun deaths in the country—has found a way to transform the agents of death into seeds of life.
In 2008, artist Pedro Reyes started running television ads urging locals to exchange their guns for food coupons to be redeemed at local stores.
The campaign—Palas Por Pistolas, or “Shovels for Guns"—collected 1,527 guns, which Reyes publicly smashed with a steamroller.
Palas por Pistolas initiated in the city of Culiacán, a city in western Mexico with a high rate of deaths by gunshot. The botanical garden of Culiacán has been comissioning artist to do interventions in the park and my proposal was to work in the larger scale of the city and organize a campaign for voluntary donation of weapons.
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