On a bench in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, there sits a statue of a beaming six-year-old girl in a lime-green dress and a ribbon in her bell-shaped hair. There’s another one like it, wearing ruby red this time, in a park in Oviedo, Spain. The girl’s name is Mafalda, and between 1964 and 1973 she was Argentina’s most beloved fictional character. Admirers of Mafalda and her creator, Quino, included Gabriel García Márquez, Charles M. Schulz, and Umberto Eco, who called her “a hero of our time.”
Half a century later, “Mafalda” remains the world’s most popular Latin American comic strip. In Argentina, her face adorns mugs and T-shirts alongside those of Che Guevara and Evita. Abroad, she is an emblem of mischievous dissent, popping up on placards at political demonstrations and in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. Last year, she presented the kids’ categories at the International Emmy Awards. A collection of the best strips, newly translated into English, will be published in April, and a Netflix animated series is in the pipeline. Mafalda lives.
