Palas Por Pistolas, or “Shovels for Guns" Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 1 2007

Location: 

Culiacan, Mexico

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.

The flattened guns were shipped to a foundry where they were melted. A hardware factory ultimately forged the gun parts into 1,527 shovelheads.

Since then, Reyes has been distributing the shovels to art institutions and schools in San Francisco, Vancouver, and Paris, where the tools are used to plant trees.
--Salvatore Cardoni

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