A new episode of vandalism hit one of the deep-rooted traditions in La Plata. In the early hours of Saturday, members of the La 25 group discovered that several of the New Year’s Eve dolls they had built for the New Year’s burning had been damaged by unknown persons in Area 25 and 525 in Tolosa and are now working against the clock to try to recover them.
The group consists of at least a dozen children, mostly ages 9 to 18, who have been making figurines inspired by classic Looney Toons characters like Coyote and Roadrunner, the Tasmanian Devil and the Wildcat for weeks. There was great sadness when they returned to the site to find that some of the creations had been destroyed.
According to the members of the group themselves, the attack occurred after city staff informed them on Friday afternoon that the dolls could not be displayed on public streets until Tuesday the 30th. “We kept the dolls and left them on the sidewalk. That was the only night we didn’t stay,” explained Santiago, one of the boys, who pointed out that this absence was taken advantage of by the attackers.
According to the statement, the uncle of one of the boys observed a group of young people near the doll and thought they were part of the group. However, when he realized what was happening, he tried to intervene: “He told them to leave them and they attacked him. They grabbed the pine cones. They broke several dolls and now we’re repairing them.” The man did not suffer any serious injuries.
Many of the figures have been damaged and now the group is faced with the challenge of repairing them in time. The main costs are time and materials, as they have to re-wallpaper with homemade paste and buy paint to refinish the details. For this reason, they have submitted a request for financial cooperation to complete the dolls and keep the tradition alive, hoping to take part in the burning planned for early 2026. Anyone interested in helping the cause can communicate via the Instagram account “Grupo_la_25”.
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