It all started in his family home, a mansion with a garden, patios, chicken coop, pets and fruit treesin Ramos Mejía, province of Buenos Aires, where María Elena Walsh was born in 1930.
His father Enrique was a railroad worker, the son of Irish and English immigrants, a widower with four children, who had married Lucía Monsalvo, of Creole and Andalusian descent, a marriage from which Susana and María Elena were born.
In 1947 he used all his savings to publish unforgivable autumn, his first book of poems, which was awarded and celebrated by the greats: Borges, Pablo Neruda and the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who invited her to spend some time at his house in Maryland, USA, so in 1949, already with the title of Professor of Drawing and Painting, María Elena landed in that country where He took some classes at the university and received the tutelage of the poet laureate.
Upon returning to the country, he published a new book of poems: Ballads with angel and taught English. Until his differences with Peronism and The pettiness of the local literary world decided her to embark on a new adventure.accompanied by the Tucumán artist Leda Valladares, with whom she also began a long romantic relationship.
The two traveled through Latin America and in 1952 they went to Paris, where they formed the vocal duo Leda y María, dedicated to singing folk songs.
By 1956, Leda and María returned to Argentina with a well-earned fame that allowed them to record albums, act in theater and television, and tour. María Elena began to write her first poems for children in which she spoke to them intelligently. and always appealing to absurd humor.
She also met another pioneer, the television director María Herminia Avellaneda, who encouraged her to write scripts for teletheaters and children’s programs.
An all-round artist
Those were very prolific years for Walsh: premiered plays and shows, published books and released albums with songs as Mona Jacinta y The world upside downwho became famous.
Although her definitive consecration as a writer of children’s literature came with the publication in 1964 of The Upside Down Kingdomand in the following years of crazy zoothe novel Dial Kifki and the Gulubu storieswhich also records on disc.
At the same time, he published Handmadea book of poems for adults and later, in 1968, when the country suffered from the civic-military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía, he premiered the show Let’s play in the worldwhere It included protest songs and others that touched on conflictive topics such as exile and Peronism.
The show went around the interior, America and Europe, it was transformed into a record and a film.
In 1979, showing signs of civic courage, he published in Clarion Misadventures in kindergarten-land, an article in which he challenged the dictatorshipquestioning their mechanisms of repression and censorship.
It was also in those dark days when like the cicadaone of their songs, It was transformed into a hymn of resistance to the dictatorship.
In 1981 María Elena fell ill with cancer and had to undergo long and painful treatment. But in 1983, for the return of democracy, she was already able to actively participate again in different political and union projects, and she also returned to television as a host.
Partnered with the prominent photographer Sara Facio, Walsh continued writing and publishing books, giving their opinion with determination on fundamental issues such as equal marriage or the death penaltyand receiving numerous recognitions and awards.
In 2011, at the age of 80, he died, leaving us with his songs that continue to be transmitted from one generation to another of Argentines.
