In Culiacán, Mexico, the city with the highest rate of gun deaths in the nation, many people know the devastating consequences of guns. That’s where creative activist Pedro Reyes comes in.

Reyes — from Mexico City — is an inspired artist who likes to focus on the failures of modern culture in a positive light. He doesn’t believe in failure but instead believes that failure is the outcome of a certain perspective.

With this unique perception, he transforms things people see as broken and models them in a new way.

Concerning guns, he felt that something positive could be transformed from their matter, and, therefore, started a campaign asking residents to hand over their guns in exchange for a coupon they could use to buy electronics or household appliances.

After Pedro collected 1,527 guns for the project, Palas pro Pistolas, he had them melted down and transformed into 1,527 shovel heads.

These new shovels were then distributed to art institutions and public schools, where people in the community are now using them to plant a minimum of 1,527 trees.

“If something is dying, becoming rotten and smelly, I think there is a chance to make a compost in which this vast catalog of solutions can be mixed in an entirely new way,” he told BOMB Magazine. In Palas por Pistolas he was aiming to show “how an agent of death can become an agent of life.”

After the collection, they all were transported to a military base and publicly smashed with a steamroller. Then, they were melted and recycled into shovels with wooden handles.

Now they exist solely for the purpose of planting trees and creating life!

Some of the shovels have even made their way to the Vancouver Art Gallery, the San Francisco Art Institute, Maison Rouge in Paris and other locations around the world.

A shovel, like a gun, can be used for a productive purpose or a hateful one. But with inspired intent, may these tools always be utilized for the purpose of optimizing land and creating space for something new to flourish.

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com. Photos by PEDRO REYES.

Isaiah, Chapter 2:

4 And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

ד וְשָׁפַט בֵּין הַגּוֹיִם, וְהוֹכִיחַ לְעַמִּים רַבִּים; וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים, וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת–לֹא-יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל-גּוֹי חֶרֶב, וְלֹא-יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה. פ

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