In my youth, I came a few times across a comic strip with a little heroine called Mafalda. At that time I didn’t really know the meaning of this precocious girl, she had been nothing more to me than the heroine of a comic strip like Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Later I learned from an Argentinean friend how well-known and popular Mafalda was there. But only a vacation in Buenos Aires and an analysis of Mafalda in the form of a political and socio-historical investigation brought me closer to the comic strip and its significance for Latin America.

If one strolls through the streets of Buenos Aires, one cannot overlook the amount of Mafalda drawings in the city. On a small square between the streets of Defensa and Chile there is a queue of people at any time of the day, patiently waiting to take a picture with Mafalda and her friends.

The statue is located opposite the house where the cartoonist and inventor of Mafalda and her friends Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known by his stage name Quino, lived. Since the statue was erected, this area of the San Telma district has become a tourist spot. Every weekend an artists’ market is held along Defensa.