Profiles: Joaquín Lavado, Quino story in the July 2010 Issue of Explore TACA

Profiles: Joaquín Lavado, Quino

By Jenny Acosta-Horta

“Quino exists and Mafalda is his prophet!”—Fernando, el Sendra (cartoonist).

If we say that Joaquín Salvador Lavado was born in Mendoza, Argentina on July 17, 1932, surely some people would find the information of little interest, possibly even thinking “why should I care about the birth date and place of this Joaquín what’s-his-name?” But if we say that Quino was born in Mendoza, Argentina on July 17…. etc., etc., an entire generation (or perhaps two or three generations) would immediately recognize that we’re talking about one of the most renowned, beloved and influential Latin American cartoonists of the last 40 years, none other than the creator of the unforgettable Mafalda.

Quino discovered drawing at the age of three, when he spent the night with his uncle Joaquín—a commercial artist—who drew a horse for him with a blue pencil. At that epiphanic moment, Quino discovered “something marvelous” that forever left its mark on him, and he’s been drawing ever since. Although he registered at the Mendoza School of Fine Arts after finishing elementary school, he grew “tired of drawing vases and other objects” and left the institute determined to draw comic strips.

This proved to be harder than he expected, however. He moved to Buenos Aires, where he visited the editors of every newspaper and magazine he could find, but got no job offers until 1954, when the weekly Esto es published one of his comic strips. From that time on, several Buenos Aires publications began running his drawings, and in 1958, he began to illustrate advertising campaigns. While working on a campaign for the Mansfield factory in 1963, he created a promotional comic strip of characters whose names all began with the letter “M”. The main character of the strip was a little girl named Mafalda. Although the characters were never used in the campaign, he still filed them away. A year later, Mafalda made her debut in the comics section of Leoplán magazine, which published three different strips featuring her. On September 20, 1964, the Buenos Aires weekly Primera Plana began to publish the Mafalda strip regularly.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mafalda was soon published in daily newspapers, magazines and once again in weeklies, until it formally disappeared from publications on June 25, 1973. The witty, clever and disturbing reflections of this very mature little girl, who dissected the world with childish innocence and candor, were forever embedded in the collective consciousness of Latin America.

Fortunately, Mafalda is still alive and well, thanks to the regular publication of books that compile the almost 10 years of the brilliant strip. And Quino continues doing what he likes to do the most: drawing and reflecting the unsettling realities of our world in his illustrations.

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