Come and help us lift the Palacio de la Moneda and move it 4.6 km. We will pause in front of major monuments en route: The O’Higgins Park, República 517 (the CNI headquarters where people were tortured and held), the former headquarters of the Unión de Trabajadores Ferroviarios (the starting point for Luis Emilio Recabarren’s funeral cortege), etc. Anyone can make a speech from the president’s balcony, and historical speeches will be re-enacted. What would you proclaim as President of the Republic?
In Chiloé, when a family needs to move, they organise a minga: they lift their house off its foundations and move it to the new location with their neighbours. While the men underpin the building and tie up the oxen to pull it along on rolling tree trunks, the women prepare food for the improvised camps where they will rest, having first celebrated the event with a great party.
In Displacement of the Palacio de la Moneda, we’re celebrating its demystification and re-appropriation, allowing it to be occupied and literally taking it closer to the neighbourhoods.
We need your help to rediscover the history of the places it will cross, to contact neighbours and non-residents with a historic or ideological connection to these locations, invite normal citizens to prepare the various ‘presidential’ speeches and contact the groups in the various neighbourhoods to make sure that there’s music, dance and singing to accompany the caravan and make the route a celebration. We also need your help to raise and move La Moneda.
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This project requires all kinds of people, from architects to cooks, historians to lorry drivers to come forward. On August 16th Roger Bernat and Txalo Toloza will be at the Centro Cultural de España (Spanish Cultural Centre) in Santiago at 4.00 pm to explain the project in more detail. If you are unable to attend but interested in the project or would like to receive more information, please contact us at:
yo-tambien-soy-presidente@rogerbernat.info or
yo-tambien-soy-presidenta@rogerbernat.info
If everything goes according to plan, the project will be presented as part of the SantiagoaMil 2014 Festival.