"We came for the vaccination against despotism, please,″ Mafalda
"I draw because I speak badly," Joaquín Salvador Lavado,
Joaquín Salvador Lavado, an Argentine cartoonist who was the creator of the socially aware comic strip Mafalda has died aged 88.
Mafalda was read and loved not only throughout Latin America
but in Europe and beyond. The Italian writer Umberto Eco introduced Europe to
Mafalda.Lavado and his creation Mafalda was one of the most international
cartoonists in Spanish. Mafalda was translated into 27 languages a feat that
only Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and Ernesto Sabato all Argentine authors
achieved. Mafalda has a loyal following in Finland.
Mafalda″ was first published in 1964. The Argentine had a
cult following throughout his career. "Quino" was a thorn in the
Argentine ruling elites side, and it was through Mafalda that he attacked them
with a large dose of acerbic humour.
In an interview, he said "I do not think my cartoons
are the sort that make people laugh their heads off. I tend to use a scalpel
rather than tickle the ribs. I don't go out of my way to be humorous; it's just
something that comes out of me. I'd like to be funnier, but as you get older,
you become less amusing and more incisive."[1]
Mafalda, who was only six years old, but had more political
nous and wisdom than most adults. This knowledge led her to ponder the world's
problems. Her parents never really understood her. Mafalda, although from a middle-class
Buenos Aires family had a keen sense that the world was full of injustice and
had an eye for social and political hypocrisies and a mordant sense of humour.
The comic strip has been compared to Peanuts and Blondie,
but none of these carried the political or social commentary found in Mafalda.
Through Mafalda Quino "said things that could not be
said". Mafalda was published and read during the time Argentina was under
a military dictatorship the 1970s and 1980s. Although Mafalda's social analysis
was originally directed against the military junta, Mafalda has a pearl of deep
wisdom that still resonates today. Lavado said "She is a girl who tries to
solve the dilemma of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this
world,"
The comic strip only ran for six years. Lavado said he did
not miss the character when it ended saying "Even though the books
continue to sell very well and people ask me for more, I think that I made the
right decision when I stopped doing Mafalda, and I don't miss her at all,″ he
said.
He did relent a few times she was brought back in 1973 to
promote as one writer puts it "humanitarian projects (mostly UNICEF), and
focused on illustrated albums like Quinoterapia (Quinotherapy), where he broke
down in comic book format the structural and personal elements that allowed
inequality to persist all over the world, either with ad-absurdum of liberal
concepts or by leaning into surrealist imagery -- like the police shooting down
protestors with Valium".
As Lavado said in one of Mafalda cartoons shows an adult standing with Mafalda as she points to the rotating globe with a map of the world on a desk. "You're leaving? And this? Who's going to fix this?″. The same could be said of Lavado now that he has gone who is going to fix the world.
