200,000 bronze keys for tallest statue in Argentina

Buenos Aires, May 16 (IANS/EFE) Argentinean artists are collecting over 200,000 bronze keys to cast the tallest statue in the country in honour of indigenous people.

Bronze items including over 200,000 keys are being collected to construct the tallest monument in Argentina, which will stand 10 metres high and will pay tribute to the “native woman”, historian Osvaldo Bayer and sculptor Andres Zerneri have said.

The proposed monument would replace a statue of former president Julio Argentino Roca (1843-1914), who led a military campaign against ethnic Indians.

It will be the image of an indigenous woman in her natural surroundings, “intimately linked to Pachamama (Mother Earth),” Zerneri said.

The campaign is inviting people to contribute bronze keys to this “independent initiative in which money is not involved”. Already 30 percent of the 200,000 estimated keys needed to create the bronze statue have been collected.

“We’re not asking for publicity or money in this project. The idea is to melt down the keys that people bring to the 61 collection centres set up in Argentina for the project, said Zerneri, who will craft the sculpture.

The statue will be placed in downtown Buenos Aires, where currently the monument to Roca stands, a work that has been criticised by artists and leftist groups.

Roca in 1879 led the “Conquest of the Desert” military campaign against indigenous people to get control of the Argentine Patagonia region.

“It’s necessary to recognise our native people with a work that expresses the will of the people through each key,” Zerneri said.

The sculptor in 2008 crafted a gigantic statue paying homage to Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in his native city of Rosario. The work was created by melting down over 75,000 keys.

The organisers want the initiative to serve as an opportunity for the public to select to whom to pay homage in their monuments, instead of having the state make the decision.

“This initiative breaks tradition,” the artist said.

–IANS/EFE