Location: La Chascona House Museum, Santiago, Chile.
Date: October 21, 1988.
Event(s): Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, 1988.
Documentation: Francisco Barrenechea
Other People/Associations: Raúl Zurita, Maura Brescia
Institution: Fundación Pablo Neruda
Description: On October 21, 1988, during the awards ceremony presenting the Pablo Neruda Prize to the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, which took place in La Chascona (the house and museum of Pablo Neruda located in the Bellavista neighborhood), the Yeguas de Apocalipsis coronated the poet with a symbolic Crown of. They aimed to simultaneously provoke and seduce the artistic and literary worlds: in citing the religious image of Christ’s coronation during his crucifixion, Francisco Casas and Pedro Lemebel signalled the Christian undertone implicit in the poet’s work. The newspaper La Época covered the event, publishing a photograph of Raúl Zurita wearing the crown of thorns and citing both Lemebel and Casas as claiming the action. The name “Yeguas del Apocalipsis” was put into circulation for the first time.