Latineos - Latin America, Caribbean, arts, culture

Her music travelled across the Spanish speaking world celebrated by renowned latin artists such as the Cuarteto Zupay, Mercedes Sosa, Rosa León and Joan Manuel Serrat.
María Elena was born in1930 in Villa Sarmiento, Ramos Mejía (in Greater Buenos Aires) to an English railway worker who played piano as a hobby and a half Argentinean half Spanish woman.  She grew up in a big country house surrounded by books, music and popular British culture such as the nursery rhymes her father would sing to her, which inspired her for her own creations later in life. Her education was rather liberal compared to the middle-class tradition at the time, as she explains in the song Fideos finos and her first novel Novios de antaño (1990).

When she was 12 she joined the Fine Arts School Manuel Belgrano in Buenos Aires where she became friends with the now applauded photographer Sara Facio who would become her life partner and with whom she lived from the early 80s until the day she passed away. Shy but also a rebel, María Elena had a passion for literature from a very young age, and by the time she turbed 15 already she had some of her poems published in the magazine El Hogar and the newspaper La Nación. Following her father’s death, in 1947, she published her first book Otoño Imperdonable, a critically acclaimed collection of poems. Despite her youth, the book earned praise from some of the most important Latin American writers of the time like Juan Ramón Jiménez, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda.

After graduating from art school in 1948, she visited Spanish writer Juan Ramón Jiménez’s house in Maryland (US), where she stayed for sixth months. She’d later describe the experience as complex and destructive, since he disregarded her needs and humiliated her. Following this, she moved to Paris where she spent four years and performed Argentinean folklore in concerts with fellow Argentinean singer Leda Valladares. They formed the duo Leda & Maria and also became emotionally involved.

María In an open letter she criticised the regime comparing Argentina with a preschool country calling it "Desventuras en el Pais-Jardin-de-Infantes"Elena returned to Argentina in 1956 after the Revolución Libertadora and wrote numerous television scripts, plays, poems, books and songs, mostly for children. Some of her most emblematic songs are ‘Manuelita la Tortuga’ (Manuelita the Turtle) and the ‘Twist of the Monkey Mono Liso’. During the military censorship (1976-83) her song ‘Oración a la justicia’ (‘Prayer for Justice’) became a civil rights anthem. In an open letter she criticised the regime comparing Argentina with a preschool country calling it ‘Desventuras en el Pais-Jardin-de-Infantes’ (‘Misadventures in the Preschool Country’). She also succeeded as a performer, singing her children songs onstage as well as holding shows for adults in which she condemned the censorship.

María Elena recorded more than 20 albums and wrote more than 50 books in all. Some argue that even the themes apparently intended for children contained an underlying political message, such as in the song ‘El Pais del Nomeacuerdo’ (‘The Country of Idontremember’), which was later used as the theme song for the 1985 film The Official Story.

Also in 1985 she was named Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires and in 1990 she received the title of Doctor honoris causa of the National University of Cordoba. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner honored her in 2008 for her remarkable contribution to the country’s culture.

In a rare 2008 interview with the newspaper Pagina12 she expressed her desire to be remembered as someone who tried to bring joy to others: “I never thought it was necessary to add a moral to the end of a song, nor tell the children to behave themselves. I was never interested in taking on the job of a mother.”