As if he had not wanted to ruin the birthday of his most beloved character, the Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known as Quino, died this Wednesday, September 30, a day after Mafalda turned 56 years old.
The protagonist of this cartoon is a curious girl who was always concerned about humanity and whose sentences make the reader think, even decades after its first publication.
And it is those messages and phrases from Mafalda that we at BBC Mundo want to focus on to honor the cartoonist who knew how to accompany generations of readers from childhood to adulthood.
Here we leave you a selection of 7 symbolic phrases by Mafalda, which you may consider more current than ever:
1. “Dad, could you explain to me why humanity works so badly?”
Through Mafalda, Quino always wanted to launch questions or reflections on the country, the world or the human race.
This is a clear example of this, in which the curious girl repeatedly interrogates her father about the mysteries of humanity.
In 2014, Quino received the Prince of Asturias Award for his career as a cartoonist. 2. “We sound guys! It turns out that if you don't rush to change the world, then it's the world that changes you!”
And perhaps because of those same messages and questions from Mafalda that let the reader think, the popularity of this reflective and nonconformist girl who first of all hated soup transcended Argentine borders and her comics became well known in Latin America and in many countries of the world. world.
3. “As always: the urgent leaves no time for the important”
When Quino received the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, coinciding with Mafalda's 50th anniversary, the jury described the girl as “intelligent, ironic, nonconformist, rebellious and sensitive.”
4. “Since changing the structures is so much of a hassle … can't you at least give them a little paint? Or even that?”
The same jury for the Prince of Asturias Award said that she dreams of a world “more dignified, just and respectful of human rights” and the “lucid messages” that Quino transmits through her character are still “valid” decades after your birth.
Quino criticized the vanity, greed, arrogance of power and the extreme inequality of the Latin American countries through Mafalda. 5. “In the end, what is the matter like? Does one go forward with his life, or does life take him forward?
While Quino made his character reflect, he said that when he drew the Mafalda comics he had a hard time.
“It's that I traced Mafalda from one painting to another because it didn't come out the same and then I suffered,” the cartoonist told the newspaper Página 12 in an interview in 2012. And to trace the drawing, he used the window of his house. 6. “Since loving each other doesn't work, why don't we try loving each other?”
While Mafalda was translated into multiple languages and movies were even made with her, Quino published her comic books where she criticized the vanity, greed, arrogance of power and the extreme inequality of the countries of the region.
But above all, Mafalda never lost her humor. 7. “Embarrassing situations … does the stork bring them?
And humor was always in the heart of Mafalda and in Quino's creations.
“What Mafalda would say today would be the same as what I'm saying in my humor pages. Because I never really made a difference between my strips and Mafalda. For me it's the same thing,” Quino said in an interview years ago with the BBC World.
