Mafalda first appeared in a comic strip in 1964 when she was six years old. Despite her age, she was a child with a big heart and an awareness of the world in which she lived, she cared about humanity and world peace and, in her own way, she fought against the problems she saw around her.

Sometimes it takes the innocence of a child for people to realize their own folly. The apparent naivety of youth is easy to dismiss…but it often reveals a worldview that is not burdened with the twisted and ambiguous ideologies of adulthood.

Quino gave his country a curious and ingenious girl who used humor and irony to ask for greater democracy in a country prone to crises. She died at the age of 88, a mind extrapolated into the alter ego of a paper heroine, because the world sometimes demands the creation of a new world to try to change the one we live in.

She also liked The Beatles; but we suppose that everybody liked them at that time.

For ten years Mafalda appeared in Argentine newspapers until the cartoonist Quino stopped the series. In those ten years he had only gained five years of age, but he had a large number of followers in Latin America.

Readers were attracted to it in a way that had never been seen before in this region with a caricature. She spoke to a community that needed to question the state of the world, but lived in an era when it was safer for a fictional child to do the questioning.

She looked beyond the usual elementary school problems of muesli bars, jump ropes, and child germs. She addressed the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons and the meaning of life.

Mafalda’s influence grew over the years as it was published in Argentine newspapers (and in vignettes) and in other South American countries, so much so that it was even influencing children’s eating habits.

Two years ago a life-size statue of her as a child was installed in the neighborhood of San Telmo in Buenos Aires, in front of the old house of the cartoonist Quino; It has become a popular tourist attraction in the city and every day, no matter what time it is, there are always people waiting to take a picture with her; who will always be there waiting for adults to understand the life of children; Just as the little prince of Saint Exupéry tried.

Fuente: Time Travel Turtle

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