When I was little, my mom used to call me Mafalda, after a popular comic strip.
Mafalda was first published on September 29, 1964 — 60 years ago this month. Created by Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known as Quino, the comic focuses on an outspoken, precocious child living with her middle class family in Buenos Aires. She has a tortoise that is named Bureaucracy.
Even though I grew up in Naples, the Argentine protagonist’s popularity had crossed the Atlantic.
Not only was I opinionated from an early age, just like 6-year-old Mafalda, but whenever something displeased me, I would go into comic-like wide-open-mouth cries, screaming for whatever I disliked to end immediately. In Mafalda’s case, her deepest hatred was soup!
It is maybe because of this early-day identification that I feel a deep connection toward Mafalda. Or maybe because I later studied international relations, developing similar concerns around humanity and world peace. Or maybe it is because I spent a long time in Latin America, and even married an Argentine, making Buenos Aires my home for several years. It could also be that I now write a lot about early childhood, and Mafalda’s innocent but serious attitude toward world problems is an excellent example of how engaged children can be with their surroundings.
Like Charles Schultz’s Peanuts and the famous Charlie Brown, the comic focuses on a group of characters — but Mafalda is much more political and cynical, but also hopeful.
Mafalda came at a time when Latin America was going through political censorship, with U.S.-supported military dictatorships taking over in several countries over the years when she was published.
Feminism, war, consumerism
Quino, who died in 2020 at the age of 88, managed to overcome the censorship and continue to be published, in part because the censors considered Mafalda to be intended for kids. Yet he stopped publishing in 1973. He said he had run out of ideas and wanted to respect his readers and his creation.
The paramilitary organization known as Triple A raided Quino’s home in 1975, when he refused to let its director use Mafalda for a political campaign. He fled to Milan with his wife in 1976, when the military dictatorship came to power, and only went back to Argentina when it returned to democracy in 1983.
The strips were translated into dozens of languages, especially in Europe. She was quickly distributed in Italy, for example, where I grew up. She is also very popular back in Argentina, where a statue was erected in her honour in San Telmo, the Buenos Aires neighbourhood where she lives in the comic stories. Two of her friends, Manolito and Susanita, were added later. The statue has become a popular tourist attraction, with fans lining up to sit on the bench next to the girl.
What surprises me most is that Mafalda feels incredibly modern and to the point — not only when it comes to the topics she comments on, but also what she says. Feminism, the media, communism and consumerism, war, inequality — Mafalda addresses all these issues with fresh, simple irony.
A Netflix series
According to Spain’s climate-focused magazine Climática, Mafalda could be considered a precursor to the young climate activist that is a mainstay of today’s generation.
There are strips that talk about air pollution and overpopulation as challenges to the world. In another one, she comments on the “sad panorama” of an oil-rich region she is traveling through by train. There is one where she is presumably in Patagonia — a beautiful lake surrounded by evergreens — and she says: “My god! This is so beautiful that men will look at it in postcards in order to spoil it!”
There is also a famous one when she opens the door to her friend Felipito, telling him someone is sick at home and he should be quiet. She then leads his friend to a small bed, where a globe is lying down — and the kids look pensively at it.
She could also be a fourth-wave feminist. She pushes her mother to stop being a housewife (“Mom, what would you like to do if you had a life”, she asks after seeing all the housework her mom does) and tells her friend Susanita that having children is not the only thing a girl should wish for.
Or a peace activist — her questions around the Vietnam War are probably quite similar to the questions my 5-year-old son Lorenzo asks about what is happening in Ukraine and Gaza. And, just like Mafalda’s father struggles to respond, who says children would not understand what war is about, I have a hard time answering, too.
Or a global South activist. In one strip, she realizes how the southern hemisphere is depicted in the globe and says: “But then … we live upside down!” “My word! I think from now on I’ll feel more attached to this ground!”
Given how modern and relevant her outlook is, it is no surprise that Netflix has announced it will launch an animated series directed by Oscar-winning Argentinian director Juan José Campanella (The Secret in Their Eyes), who has been a Mafalda fan since his childhood. Campanella has said he wants to “reconnect new generations who didn’t grow up with Mafalda” and “bring her wit and acuity to kids growing up on digital platforms today.”
Natural questions
What I love most about Mafalda is how she epitomizes children’s natural ability to ask questions, and how revolutionary questioning can be. In one strip, she talks to her baby brother, Guille, who starts by asking why their father is not at home.
“Papa is at work, Guille.”
“Why?”
“Because when people grow up they need to work.”
“Why?”
“Because if they don’t, they can’t buy food or clothes or anything.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s how our world works, Guille.”
“WHY?”
“One and a half and already a candidate for tear gas,” she replies.
*An earlier version of this essay appeared on Worldcrunch, the online news magazine I work for.
What I’ve been reading
This is a great story in Psyche that looks at children’s temperament — you know, something that adults who spend a lot of time around children never cease discussing. The whiney boy versus the active girl, the pensive toddler versus the reactive baby. Samuel Putnam, a developmental psychologist at Bowdoin College in Maine, U.S., together with colleagues, linked differences in temperament to country of upbringing — trying to show that temperament might be shaped not only by one’s DNA or the habits of one’s parents, but also by the broader culture in which a child is raised. The research found some differences between regions, especially when it came to how parents perceived how their children expressed negative feelings, such as fear, discomfort or sadness. In the story, Putnam explains that societal differences, such as individualism vs collectivism, can affect how parents interpret their children’s negative emotions — but that family income also plays a role. It is a great subject that I will tackle in a future newsletter!
What I’ve been listening to
This brief report on NPR’s Goats and Soda looks at children of sex workers, and how invisible their lives are across the world — some are not even registered at birth. In Nigeria, reports Gabrielle Emanuel, sex workers usually have no access to prenatal care, which leads to a lot of health issues. “The issues are overwhelming. I think I’d actually call it a state of emergency,” says Dr. Patrick Ezie, medical director of Silver Cross Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria, which houses a programme for pregnant sex workers and their children, which started in 2023. For example, for mothers who are HIV positive or have syphilis and don’t get access to prenatal care, avoiding transmission to the baby is difficult. “These babies are born struggling,” says Ezie, and their struggle often continues into childhood.
What I’ve been watching
This is a heartbreaking report that gets unprecedented access to major landfills in Syria. After 13 years at war, most of the country’s services have collapsed — trash collection among them. And as people struggle to survive, trash picking is a way to get a livelihood, especially for young children — 43% of whom are not in school. The short film focuses on 11-year-old Abdullah, who spends 12 hours a day in a landfill in Idlib to support his family, mostly searching for copper. But as he searches among old engines, or picks aluminium and plastic, there are also old weapons and medical waste that are particularly hazardous. In 2020, an avalanche of garbage killed three children. In another landfill, outside of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, a family with young children pick among the trash to find food.
What’s been inspiring me
I will not presume the right
to give you a name
but I can, at least, recognize
that you once had one.
I am an avid reader of Sapiens, an editorially independent anthropology magazine, and I really appreciate some of the work they published. This excerpt is from a poem by Jenny L. Davis, a poet-anthropologist of the Chickasaw Nation, who honoured the infant remains historically used in teaching collections at the University of Illinois.
📸 Gustavo Sánchez on Unsplash, The image shows two statues of cartoon characters sitting on a white, slightly worn bench. The character on the right has a round face, black hair with a bow, and is dressed in a green outfit. The character on the left has large, fluffy yellow hair and a more casual look, with a black vest over a white shirt. In the background, a person on a motorbike and a street with shops and restaurants are slightly blurred, giving a city atmosphere. The statues appear playful and are likely part of a public art display.
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