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The Argentine idiosyncrasy between Maradona and Mafalda

2021-09-06T02:38:02.473Z


In just two months, Quino, the father of the unforgettable girl from the comic strips, and the soccer idol left. A book talks about the national mourning for the ill-fated golden kid


Every Argentine remembers what he was doing and where he was around noon on November 25, 2020. At that time the country's greatest soccer star died: Diego Armando Maradona.

The player who managed to make the Albiceleste team champion of the world in 1986, the one who with his two unforgettable goals against England in that World Cup symbolically avenged those who died in the Malvinas war four years before, the one who transcended the beautiful game to become one of the great popular idols of Argentina and also one of the best known figures outside its borders.

Only two months before, the Argentines and their most famous and rebellious girl, Mafalda, had also been orphaned with the death of the cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón,

Quino

.

Two myths that describe a country that clings to football, culture and humor to resist the economic debacles that drag it a little lower and lower.

Mafalda's couch

“There are five minutes to ten at night on November 25, 2020. This morning Diego Maradona died.

Or maybe he died a long time ago.

Or possibly he will never die ”, starts

Mi Diego.

Sentimental chronicle of a dribble that defied the world

(Malpaso, 2021) by the journalist Alejandro Duchini.

“I haven't stopped thinking about it for 10 hours.

I go outside and there is humidity and there is loneliness and sadness is perceived.

At this time there are people who applaud from balconies or from the sidewalks as a tribute.

Drivers join in through the speakers.

Someone, on a bicycle, makes a tribune shout: “Dieeegooo”.

There are many of us who applaud.

We are the Argentines, the Neapolitans, the Syrians, the Mexicans, the poor, the rich, the football fans, the non-football fans.

The big ones, the boys.

Men.

Women.

Nobody can achieve something like that, except Maradona ”, he continues.

Tribute to Quino in the San Telmo neighborhood (Buenos Aires) where the figures of some of his characters can be found: Mafalda, Susanita and Manolito.

AGUSTIN MARCARIAN / Reuters

Since that noon his death was reported throughout the country, nothing else was discussed and the idea of ​​remembering him at ten o'clock became popular. At 10. At 10. At that time - and also before and after - a flood of people, like Duchini, took to the streets and for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic they hugged strangers without fear of the coronavirus.

In the neighborhood of La Paternal, the doors of the Argentinos Juniors stadium, the club with which he debuted in first class, opened that night to make way for a crowd that cried and sang, celebrating the miracle that Diego had allowed them recover the ritual of returning to the field for the first time in more than half a year. Its surroundings became a makeshift shrine where crowds knelt to leave balls, photographs, messages, flowers and candles as offerings to their revered idol. In the Plaza de Mayo, thousands and thousands of people lined up throughout the morning to see him off at the headquarters of the Argentine Government regardless of the color of their shirts. There, shortly after dawn on the first night without Diego, a Boca Juniors fan and a River Plate fan, staunch football rivals,They consoled themselves in a hug that went around the world.

In a country accustomed to cracks, Maradona was an artist who divided waters, but this pandemic night united them in a single river of feelings

Ariel Scher, journalist

“In a country used to cracks.

Maradona was an artist who divided waters, but this pandemic night united them in a single river of feelings, "writes journalist Ariel Scher in the book's foreword.

More than eight months later, sitting in front of a bar, Duchini is excited again when he remembers that day.

“I felt like everything stopped.

That childhood was wearing me.

It's like what I wrote, which was like a train loaded with too many memories wanting to be suddenly braked: it is impossible for it to stop ”, he points out.

"They help us to live"

Argentina is a myth-building country and also in need of them. "Popular idols are people we love and who help us to live a little better, especially in a country like Argentina, which is a disaster economically and politically," reflects Duchini.

During the dictatorship, a Maradona who was beginning to make himself known allowed Argentines to scratch the joy in a gray country, in which the military kidnapped, tortured and disappeared opponents and imposed fear and silence on the rest of society. “In 1986, when the national team won, that is where the post-dictatorship euphoria ended for Argentina, a hope that was never experienced. The military left, we began to breathe a little more, the best Argentine rock bands appeared, pornographic magazines, forbidden books ... There was a lot of hope and Diego was the last thing that happened to us in that beautiful period. Then the crisis returns, ”says the journalist.

The country that Quino portrayed through the eyes of Mafalda and her inseparable Felipe, Susanita and Manolito is still valid in many aspects.

His cartoons are reissued non-stop and children and adults laugh - sometimes for not crying - when reading them.

"Mom, what would you like to be if you lived?" Mafalda asks her mom in one of them.

"Look, this is the world, you see?", He says to his teddy bear, pointing to a world map.

"Do you know why this world is beautiful?

Because the original is a disaster, "he tells her.

"Of course, the bad thing is that the woman instead of playing a role has played a rag in the history of mankind," says the rebellious girl in another of her remembered comic strips.

Mosaic in honor of Maradona prepared by fans shortly after his death.Agustín Marcarian / Reuters

“Quino, one of the greatest artists in the history of our country, left us.

He made us laugh, made us think and always called us to reflect on Argentina, to which he was committed like few others.

Goodbye, teacher ”, the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, said goodbye to him through social networks.

Without knowing that both Argentine idols would die less than two months apart in 2020, Joaquín Sabina joined them two decades earlier in one of the songs in which he shows his love for the country and for its inhabitants - real and imaginary -, so passionate : "Twenty years of poorly cured myths / drawing Dieguitos and Mafaldas / 20 lives it would have taken me / to count the moles on his back."

It will take Argentines for much more than 20 years to forget them.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2021-09-06

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