Beating guns into guitars

It was an immediate hit, with Colombian rock stars lining up to use it and youngsters' adopting it as an antiwar symbol. So far, only five such instruments exist because, explains López, of the difficulty in procuring the arms. The authorities often need to hold on to the weapons for evidence in potential trials.

It is estimated that 2 to 3 million illegal weapons are floating around Colombia. The FARC, Colombia's largest and strongest guerrilla group, has refused to negotiate with the government or to disarm. Furthermore, it is generally believed that even those groups who do disarm – such as the paramilitaries – do not hand in all their weapons. Perhaps most significantly, the billions of cocaine dollars a year streaming into the country means that the groups can easily rearm.

"Regardless of massive efforts on the parts of governments, embargoes, and UN efforts ... if you have money, you can get arms," says Moises Naim, author of "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy." "Top members of the organization ... have access to cocaine money, and can easily place a new order for anything from bullets to rocket launchers."

The FARC are "rich terrorists," says William Wood, US ambassador to Colombia. "They don't steal weapons, they buy them. The number of weapons turned in is important. But still, we all know the bad guys have money to buy more."

Many of these new arms, says Marta Lucia Ramirez, a former Colombian defense minister, stream in through the porous borders of Venezuela and Ecuador. When Salvatore Mancuso, commander of the country's largest and most brutal right-wing paramilitary group, disarmed last year his personal pistols were traced back to Venezuela. The US last month announced it planned to stop selling arms to Caracas because of such reported transfers.

In this context, it is clear the invention of the escopetarra will have little effect on the number of arms in circulation, admits López. But, he stresses, symbolism is a strong weapon, too.

The UN has commissioned an escopetarra to display at its upcoming UN Conference on Arms scheduled later this month. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has shown interest in purchasing one, and Colombian rock star Juanes recently auctioned off his personal escopetarra in Los Angeles for $17,000 to benefit victims of land mines. López meanwhile has just been made a UN goodwill ambassador and in January he received two AK-47s that will be turned into escopetarras for the musician Shakira and Mexican pop artist Juliet Venegas.

And in light of the growing wave of international appreciation for the escopetarra project, the military seems to have changed its tune about "hippies." This week, it is scheduled to give 12 AK-47s to López. "Progress is slow," he admits, putting down the escopetarra and getting ready to go home, "...but at the end we will have a whole escopetarra rock band strumming."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.

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