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170 5 LOCATION: AV. DR. RICARDO BALBÍN, AV. PARQUE ROBERTO GOYENECHE AND AV. GARC ÍA DEL RÍO TRANSPORTATION: BUSES: 29, 41, 67, 71, 93, 110, 130. TRAIN STATION: L. M. SAAVEDRA (MITRE LINE). G r a l . M . A c h a Achira Besares Correa Av. Dr. R. Balbín D o n a d o E s t o m b a G a l v á n Av. García del Río H o l m b e r g Jaramillo L u g o n e s M a c h a i n Manzanares A v . M e l i á n M i l l e r A v . . R . N a ó n Núñez Paroissien Ramallo Crisólogo Larralde Ruiz Huidobro T r o n a d o r alderrama Vilela W a s h i n g t o n Est. L. M. Saavedra 135 F C G B M SAAVEDRA 135 . Mothers of the White Scarf Plaza In 1996 a group of residents from the neighborhood of Saavedra took over the empty space left by the abandoned Highway 3 project and transformed it into a plaza using all recycled materials . They named the space the Plaza Madres del Pañuelo Blanco in reference to the headscarves worn by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo . Neighbors built a seesaw from poles discarded by the cable television companies, and made tables out of the cable spools left by the telephone companies . In 2008 Buenos Aires City Council officially designated this space Plaza Madres del Pañuelo Blanco . The diaper as symbol The white headscarves worn by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (see “Plaza de Mayo, ” p . 3) have become one of the key symbols in the fight against state terrorism in Argentina . When the Madres began to organize, they realized they needed greater public exposure to strengthen their demands that the military government release information about the whereabouts of their children . They decided to take part in the yearly Catholic pilgrimage to the Basilica of Luján, one of the few events that continued to bring thousands of people together during the dictatorship . To keep sight of each other during the procession, they decided to cover their heads with a white diaper , an everyday domestic item typically associated with motherhood . In time they exchanged these for white headscarves and, in the process , transformed a practical gesture into a symbolic one . The Madres now use the headscarf as a symbol 171 of identity in public ceremonies . White headscarves have also been painted on the stones around the central Pyramid in the Plaza de Mayo, where the Madres have marched weekly every Thursday since they began to meet in April 1977 . The headscarf makes the resistance efforts of victims and their family members visible . The figure of the mother with her diaper/headscarf came to symbolize the forced absence of her children . By identifying themselves with motherhood, a value undisputed even by official ideology, the Madres transformed women’s place within politics and the meaning of motherhood itself . Each Madre’s headscarf carries the embroidered name of the child she is seeking . In the 1990s headscarves were also used by the organization representing the children of the disappeared, H .I .J .O .S .* (the acronym, a play on the Spanish word for “children, ” stands for Children for Identity and Justice Opposed to Forgetting and Silence) . Many H .I .J .O .S . members wore headscarves around their necks during public demonstrations and shaming protests (escraches*) in front of the homes of known repressors and torturers . The AU3 The Plaza’s location is particularly significant . In 1977 the military government expropriated over eight hundred homes to build the AU3, one in a series of new freeways proposed in the Urban Freeway Plan (Plan de Autopistas Urbanas) designed by architect Guillermo Laura and partially implemented by the city government controlled by Brigadier Osvaldo Cacciatore . Others included the 25 de Mayo freeway (see p . 99), the Avenida 9 de Julio, and the Perito Moreno highway . Expropriations for the AU3 began as soon as the plan was adopted, and demolition began at the project’s north end . Then it was suddenly abandoned and, gradually, the expropriated homes were taken over by squatters . For more than thirty years the neighborhoods of Saavedra, Coghlan, and Villa Urquiza have shared the scar of these demolitions, the wound left by an act of power that robbed so many families of their homes . The...

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