cesar lopez is a colombian musician turned activist. it began with the innitiative to play music on the fresh sites of violence or killings in his home town. one day he was playing and the police were standing by and it hit him- "i don't look much different with my guitar than him with his gun." his creative grass-roots campaign against violence in south america had begun. he transformed the escopeta (shotgun) into a guitarra, calling it the escopetarra. soon the colombian government began to donate confiscated guns. the bad news? fender is working on their model to mass produce 'em- read more here.
4 comments:
This is really fascinating...I hope that with all this support for this guy that they are able to end violence in Colombia. I just wonder, though, if gun/guitars are a way to end violence...Maybe.
How great is it that Fender is picking this up? That way any retard can have a gun/guitar in their hands for the right price...God bless the capitalist way!
catorce- as far as christians being involved in social issues and activism, i think we have tended to err on extremes: either we are paralized and un-involved (because we sing "this world is not my home, i'm just a 'passin through), or we are "religious extremists" (bombing abortion clinics and having anti-gay ralleys)
the problem that i see as large is the motive for christian activism. some christians want to hold the world to christian values and use the bible as a source of authority or leverage ("because i have encountered christ, i will force others to abide by these standards") when a far more hopeful rout is seeing the good news as the call for me to do good for the world. the world may join in or not- but are we living the gospel? the the word of god is only "authoritative" in someone's life if that person has had an encounter with the person behind the text. otherwise it remains only as a fine piece of literature and not "the holy scriptures."
another "monkey wrench" as it were, that i'd add to your list is the german theologian dietrich bonhoeffer who was executed by the nazis for being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate hitler. where do you go with that?
Hey, didn't El Mariachi have one of those things? Phnil, could you shed some light on the Latin American facination with guns and guitars? I guess they are both pretty sexy when you think about it.
i think you named it well pedro. they are two sides of the macho coin- the ability to conquer by force and the ability to conquer by wooing.
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