2023-07-18 03:01:00
There was the smell of aunt
brick sidewalks with grass
and, behind the lattice,
un viejo organillero con monito.
there was a whole sky
where the hammocks sailed
and milk than the milkman
He brought, not in a bottle but in a cow.
There was rain in tubs
and patios with fortune-telling frogs,
and a mother hen
looking at us with doll eyes.
there was every time
a cat sailing in a shoe,
and there was in the kitchen
a mom playing with flour.
Maria Elena Walsh
María Elena remembered all of this that was in her childhood home, and she told it that way and sang it in “Fideos finos”, which she recorded in Juguemos en el mundo. The letter welcomes the visitor to the brand new María Elena Walsh house-museum, located on February 3, 547, in Villa Sarmiento, Morón, exactly where the great Argentine author was born and lived until she was 10 years old. The place was recovered in a joint effort between the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, the Municipality of Morón and the Cultural Institute of the Province of Buenos Aires, which allowed it to be acquired, restored and turned into a museum. A museum that has many details that recreate the writer’s childhood there, some interactive, designed for audiences of all ages. Yesterday it was inaugurated in an act with the songs of María Elena as protagonists, interpreted by León Gieco, Teresa Parodi and Los Tamborcitos from ECuNHi.
The work progressed from January 2020, when the project began to be dreamed of, and May 2021, when the house –which was going to be demolished to build a building– was finally able to be acquired (with funds from Cultura de Nación, and ceded as part of Morón’s patrimony). Yesterday at noon there were still workers giving the final touches, who throughout the act would receive recognition “for their commitment and for having put love to advance.” Meanwhile, the numerous officials present at the event were arriving: the minister Tristán Bauer, the mayor Lucas Ghi, the director of the Buenos Aires Cultural Institute, Florencia Saintout, the director of Anses, Fernanda Raverta, the president of Acumar and former mayor of Morón, Martín Sabbatella, the undersecretary of Cultural Policies of the province, Victoria Onetto, the director of Tecnópolis, María Rosenfeld, the director of the Malvinas Museum, Edgardo Esteban. Also Maximiliano Walsh, María Elena’s great-nephew, and representatives of the María Elena Walsh Foundation. And Raúl Rigo, Secretary of the Nation’s Treasury (his management of him was key to quickly obtaining the funds for the real estate operation, they told on the spot). And Pablo Zurro, the mayor of Pehuajó, the city of Manuelita, who especially stopped to take photos in the bathroom of the house: that is where the universe of the emblematic song of María Elena is recreated.
Think of a project with love
“I feel a very particular admiration for María Elena, she accompanied us as a child and left us a deeply transforming work. We have come month by month, and recently week by week, to see the progress of the work. And today to see everyone celebrating in this patio, at the foot of the jacaranda tree, is a very great emotion. We owe a lot to María Elena. We are giving her back just a little bit,” said Minister Tristán Bauer in dialogue with Página/12.
The first idea and the first contacts with the owners date from February 2020, before the pandemic (the house no longer belonged to the Walsh). “It was a long negotiation, with the logical objections of the owners for establishing a commercial relationship with the state. When we asked Tristán for help, he immediately said yes and arranged the funds for Culture to buy the house, and then we write the deed. added the province with the equipment and content of the museum”, relates the mayor Lucas Ghi to Página/12.
With the street blocked off, a large crowd of people, the stage set up and the AM 750 mobile broadcasting live, the event began with the national anthem performed by Leonardo Pastore and the national flag carried by ex-combatants from Morón’s Malvinas. It culminated with many and many moved to tears, when Parodi and Gieco performed, together, “Serenata para la tierra de uno” and “Como la cicada”. Before, Los Tamborcitos del ECuNHi showed, with the voice of Lula Parodi, rhythmic versions of “Canción del jardinero” and “El adivinador”-
“To make this museum, a lot of work had to be done on the details. And the States are sometimes not prepared for that. Working to generate the mechanisms to achieve each detail is also a political decision. It can be done when the State has a popular government who can think of these projects with love”, expressed Florencia Saintout.
The political in María Elena
The official highlighted the importance of the fact that in this act and with this house-museum the name of María Elena is being raised, almost as a flag: “Of her, who always fought for all freedoms, who through beauty built a That from the most deeply political places, as a woman, as a lesbian, she went to sing for children, from the place of what had been condemned to the periphery, she went to put it in the center. more radically political and transformative, without being a pamphlet, a drop in the line”.
“The songs that we listened to were Arroz pudding, I want to get married, they were the songs of the patriarchy. María Elena arrived with her music and her poetry and changed us all. And truly, it was a ray of light,” said the minister who told her said her sister Gabriela, remembering when they listened to the songs on the wincophone as a family. The anecdote portrays one of the many transforming aspects of María Elena’s work, which is also highlighted in the museum.
What would you like to happen to the boys and girls who come to this museum? “I would like them to rediscover or discover the figure of María Elena, and that a seed be planted in their hearts with that revolutionary, transformative, feminist spirit, capable of conceiving such beauty. And that that seed grows in the way of each boy or girl Bauer says.
“May that tender, warm, lucid, endearing, provocative work by María Elena flood this space. And may the new generations allow themselves to be moved, questioned, generate curiosities, awaken vocations”, adds Ghi. “María Elena was always from the town. What we are doing is creating the conditions to continue democratizing her work. Opening the doors of her house so that we can enjoy it even more.”
Photo: Ministry of Culture of the Nation.
imagine her girl
The announcement was made during the presentation: Sara Facio, the director of the María Elena Walsh Foundation, and who was María Elena’s partner, called to say that in the house-museum there will be a permanent exhibition with part of the personal archive kept by the foundation. But, in addition, in the house there is already a whole museological development that invites you to imagine María Elena as a Girl, in addition to highlighting different aspects of her work.
Each room in the house is designed around a concept or an aspect of the life or work of the writer, singer-songwriter and playwright. And everything is restored respecting the “period” environments. The bathroom, as was said, is for Manuelita. “She told that she was taking a bath and she began to remember the turtle that her friend Susana Rinaldi had in her house, and that is how this song was born. That is why we thought of the bath for the most famous turtle,” says Maribel García, museologist in charge. the design of the script and the museographic realization.
Photo: Ministry of Culture of the Nation.
The kitchen includes an interactive table dedicated to the feminist texts of María Elena and a sideboard that reproduces the letter that the writer, without being a Peronist, wrote to Eva Perón when she died, acknowledging her legacy. There is the “non-recipe” for peach candy, the fabric, the song that her mother sang for her plays.
“María Elena was born here (in her birth certificate it appears that her mother gave birth in this house) and lived here until her father retired, at the age of ten. She remembered it as ‘the big house’, a place with a double patio , full of green, where he could have a dog, a cat, a turtle. When he moved home, he underwent the change and there he began to write the first poems of Unforgivable Autumn”, says the museologist.
Lula Parodi sang with Los Tambocitos from ECuNHi.
And here and there, details and references: There is the picture with the diploma signed by his classmates that his father received when he retired from the Western Railway. A letter that María Elena wrote to her brother with a lot of humor, when she was a girl. The Kelito chocolate (from Noel) that she ate. The radio chapel (“from the time when radios had the name of churches,” said María Elena) where the family listened to the operas of Colón. The limericks are taken to automatons made by the group Todo fits in a jar. One refers to a nearby place: “If suddenly finding a shark in the sea causes a terrible impression, it is much uglier to see it for a walk one day, through the Plaza de Morón.
In the patio, a being has remained alive, for a century: the jacaranda tree that comes to occupy a central place in the house-museum, so iconic in the work of María Elena. Officials, workers and visitors who saw this house being transformed, celebrated and posed for photos in front of him until it was ready to receive everyone.
Lucas Ghi., Tristan Bauer and Florence Saintout.
“Like the cicada” and “Still ship”
AM 750 took its mobile studio to broadcast the inauguration of the María Elena Walsh House Museum, with the program Here, there and everywhere, hosted by Nora Veiras. Invited to the studio, León Gieco and Teresa Parodi told about their relationship and admiration for the author, and even sang fragments of her songs: “La cigarra”, which Gieco turned into a classic in his repertoire that everyone sings with him, and the moving “Barco quieto”, which Parodi recorded on his album Corazón de pájaro.
“María Elena wrote in a unique way, with absolute freedom. She was able to say things in very difficult times, that no one dared to say. She said it with all the letters. She was luminous, she was a tremendous teacher –even without having trained as a teacher– and she handled the language with a very fine irony. She was daring,” Parodi defined her. He remembered the moment when she took over in her place in Sadaic, and María Elena left her office in the institution to him.
“One day María Elena sent for me when I was part of the Sadaic board, she hugged me, gave me a kiss and told me that she had heard a version of ‘La cicada’ that I was doing at Luna Park, where I had managed to get everyone to sing,” Gieco said. “I made it rock, I took the tones out of it as if it were James Taylor, and I gave it a rhythm. What’s more, I’m thinking of trying to sing it with James Taylor. Well, I spent fifteen years saying: I’m going to sing this song with Sandro , until I did it, why can’t it be now?”, he said with a laugh.
Photo: Ministry of Culture of the Nation.
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