Little Woman

Not far from the seat of presidential power in Buenos Aires sits an incredulous six-year-old girl who questions everything. “What democratic sector do cats fall into?” she asks her mother. “Papa, what does ‘Fortune favors the brave’ mean??” she wants to know. “Can you explain why humanity is a disaster?”

Skeptical, inquisitive, and inherently decent, young Mafalda is a tourist magnet, posing on her shaded bench with visitors from around the world who pour into her neighbourhood of San Telmo, many of them from the cruise ships that dock nearby. With her dark hair and trademark bow, she is an opinionated beacon, a mouthpiece for difficult but necessary questions: “Who got us into this mess, huh? If I get my hands on him I’ll give him what for!!” As Umberto Eco once put it, she is “a hero of our time.”

Mafalda, of course, is a comic-strip character, a Latin American answer to Charlie Brown or Blondie. Originally conceived as part of a home-appliances...