Early years (1930–1944) , 1947. María Elena Walsh was born on 1 February 1930 in a house at 547 Calle 3 de Febrero in
Villa Sarmiento,
Morón,
Greater Buenos Aires,
Buenos Aires Province, as the second daughter of the second marriage of Enrique Roberto Walsh (1882–1947), a railway employee of Irish descent who played the piano, from
Brandsen, and Lucía Elena Monsalvo (1895–1961), a housewife from
Merlo, of Spanish descent. Her father was a widower and had five children from a previous marriage to María Maroñón: Carlos, Zulema, Mario, Arturo and Enrique. Her sister was Susana Beatriz Walsh (1925–2000), known as "Babe", with whom she had a difficult relationship throughout her life. As a child, she lived in a big house, where she greatly enjoyed reading and listening to music in a cultural environment. The Walsh family belonged to the educated
middle class. Her paternal grandparents were
British and had migrated to Argentina in 1872, while her maternal grandparents were
Andalusian and Creole. Her grandmother Agnes Hoare (1852–1898), from
London, married an
Irishman, David Walsh, and had a notable influence on her life, particularly through the letters she left behind, which were later compiled in her book
Novios de antaño (1990). María Elena described her as "a great reader... she became desperate when she did not receive the newspaper from England. Those letters revealed to me that she was tremendously interested in Argentine politics at the time." From English popular culture, María Elena adopted the habit of entertaining herself in her early years with
nursery rhymes and traditional children's verses sung to her by her father, such as "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Humpty Dumpty", and developed the habit of verbal constructions that characterize British
nonsense, one of the main sources of inspiration in her work. Walsh learned to read and write at the early age of four thanks to the teaching of a neighbour. She was also influenced by classical music and opera. Her father often played the piano, especially
waltzes by
Moszkowski,
Waldteufel and
Toselli, and the young Walsh was particularly attracted to the
music halls shown in neighbourhood cinemas. She defined herself at that time as a "rather difficult, unruly" child who felt "very lonely, melancholic, and suddenly abrupt, sullen". The authoritarianism and severity that her father showed toward her mother marked Walsh's lifelong defence of women. Walsh entered General Manuel Belgrano Primary School No. 21 at the age of seven and joined third grade directly because she already knew how to read and write. She showed interest in subjects such as Spanish, dictation, calligraphy and drawing, and in her leisure time enjoyed playing statues,
tag and trading cards. In literature, Walsh read works by
Jules Verne,
Charles Dickens and
Saturnino Calleja, as well as magazines such as
El Tony,
Pif Paf and
Billiken. In entertainment, she admired
Ginger Rogers,
Fred Astaire,
Jeanette MacDonald and
Nelson Eddy. The expansion of the neighbouring La Chapelle asylum and the culverting of the
Maldonado Stream led the Walsh family to move in 1943 to a more modest house on Calle Gaona in
Ramos Mejía, which she would describe decades later as "the end of childhood". At the age of 12, in order to perfect her knowledge of painting and drawing, she enrolled on her own initiative at the
Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón, where her teachers included
Fernán Félix de Amador, Hernán Lavalle Cobo, Luis Borraro and
Tilda Thamar. Her father distrusted that institution and had instead previously suggested Technical School No. 6 Fernando Fader. The atmosphere of the school was deeply affected after the
1943 Argentine coup d'état, which was reflected in Walsh's earliest writings. Years later, she graduated as a teacher of drawing and painting. with whom she had an intimate relationship and to whom Walsh dedicated a poem in
Otoño imperdonable, which was her first book, a collection of poems published in 1947, before graduating from art school. It was critically acclaimed and received recognition from important Latin American writers. The psychiatric illness later diagnosed in Fábregas deeply affected Walsh. Walsh also published poems in the
La Nación newspaper. Fábregas had advised her to speak with Augusto González Castro, an
Ecuadorian poet who worked as editorial secretary of
El Hogar, and who decided to give her an opportunity. Following
Elegía, her verses began to be published every month, giving Walsh relative financial independence and the possibility of becoming a poet, which translated into a form of rebellion and rejection of the social conventions of her time. In 1946, Walsh, then 16 years old, published
Oda del estudiante muerto in
La Vanguardia, the
socialist newspaper of
Juan B. Justo, where she expressed her outrage over a strike in which two students had died. Many of the poems published in
El Hogar and
La Nación later formed the core of her first book,
Otoño imperdonable (1947), for which she received the second municipal prize. From then on, she began to associate regularly with the Hispanic American literary world. According to her biographer
Alicia Dujovne, "Buenos Aires went crazy" with the publication of her first book of poems, while
Sergio Pujol noted that "her first verses were crossed by melancholy and the pain of a poetic 'I' that lives with emotion and in contact with nature through a series of absences". She befriended Jorge Vocos Lescano,
Mario Trejo, León Bouché—the director of
El Hogar—Hugo Lezama,
Horacio Armani,
Roberto Juarroz,
Horacio Rega Molina,
Ricardo Molinari,
Francisco Luis Bernárdez,
María Alicia Domínguez and
María Granata. She also attended literary gatherings at the
Jockey Club, the hall of the Peuser bookshop, the
Richmond confectionery and the Van Riel Gallery. Walsh had tried to publish her first book through
Editorial Emecé, which she reached through a letter of recommendation from
Eduardo Mallea—who directed the literary supplement of
La Nación, where Walsh contributed—but for economic reasons the publisher refused to undertake the edition. Finally, after several failed attempts, she decided to publish it herself and finance it personally. Five hundred copies were printed, which at first were distributed in bookshops in
Ramos Mejía and on
Florida Street. Walsh left the copies on consignment, accompanied by her friend
Mario Trejo, and later collected the commissions. The largest payments came from the Society for the Protection of Popular Libraries, which purchased copies at retail price. On one occasion she even met
Pablo Neruda, who invited her up to a small apartment in the
Galería Güemes, where he hosted all kinds of artists. Neruda read her book and made complimentary comments about it. In this regard, Dujovne commented that "great figures praise the author, but the author keeps looking at them pensively", and added: "She was still at the moment of hollowing out her voice.
Otoño imperdonable is an extraordinary pretentious book, lacking the little bells of grace that in the next room sprang from the author like gentle, natural water." A review in
La Nación stated:
Eduardo González Lanuza of
Sur commented: "What relief and what oasis-like happiness there is in this certainty of poetry, whose freshness overflows from the fullness of this small book by María Elena Walsh", and regarding the poem
Esencia, added: "Who has revealed to her our terrible relationship with poetry?" One of the most complimentary reviews came from Javier Fernández of the weekly
Ética: "She is a poet of classical spirit, in the sense of a sober and reflective creator, free from sudden intoxications or pompous dazzlements. If we wished to seek—an old mania—some literary affiliation in María Elena Walsh, we should recognize a beautiful example of multiple and rich assimilations... That transcendent flash of
Saint John of the Cross. The sorrowful dreaminess of
Antonio Machado. The hazy charm of ancient ballads and an atmosphere pleasing to the spirits of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Let us emphasize: there is no imitation; there is transfiguration." After the favourable reviews, Walsh developed a friendship with Fernández that consisted of sporadic telephone calls, frequent visits, exchanges and loans of books, and later trips to the diplomatic offices where Fernández carried out his professional life. The architect
Carmen Córdova Iturburu also read the book and contacted Walsh by mail, beginning a long friendship.
Juan Ramón Jiménez and trip to Maryland (1948–1949) in 1956. After graduation in 1948, she traveled to
North America at the invitation of poet
Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Communist intellectuals enjoyed enormous prestige in the
postwar period after the defeat of
fascism. In that context, numerous writers visited Argentina, including Pablo Neruda,
Jorge Guillén and
León Felipe. The poet
Juan Ramón Jiménez, author of
Platero y yo, had been "amazed by her expression, her naturalness in the simple and the difficult" after reading Walsh's book. Determined to award scholarships each year to two young people and receive them at his home in
Maryland, the offer was directed to Horacio Armani, Carmen Córdova and Walsh, who stood out as major young promises of Argentine poetry. The first two, unable to make the trip for personal reasons, did not accept. Walsh, meanwhile, tried to collect a municipal prize she had won for the book, but was told that the money would not be available soon. Finally, she received a scholarship from the Williams Foundation of the United States Embassy, intended to encourage stays in North America by people connected to science, culture or education, which enabled her to pay for her passage. The five-month stay was very important for Walsh, who regularly attended concerts, shows, museums and exhibitions, and allowed her to connect with
American culture, especially with
consumer society. However, living with Jiménez and his wife
Zenobia Camprubí was not easy for her, and she ended up feeling great personal frustration. In later interviews, Walsh stated that "if Juan Ramón was capable of exerting such a profound influence, it was because I was very impressionable and was placing in him a series of perhaps mistaken expectations. Perhaps I expected a kind and affable teacher, not a figure who could be so categorical and aggressive." Despite this negative aspect, through Jiménez, Walsh met
Ezra Pound and
Pedro Salinas, and learned from his literary art. Jiménez insisted that she take university courses and seminars in the United States, but Walsh declined because of her language difficulties and aversion to formal education. Instead, she preferred to attend the
Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C., on her own, where she discovered authors such as
Emily Dickinson and
Amy Lowell.
Yvan Goll, a French poet, had published a book under the same model with his wife years earlier. According to Gabriela Massuh, Walsh's book "seems less mature, less elaborated than the previous one". In a 1987 interview, Walsh told
Diana Bellessi and Martín Prieto that "that book is a product of repression in the personal and social sense. Of a sinister time that I recommend to the nostalgic. A context of political censorship in which we also had a little boyfriend who lectured us."
Héctor A. Murena of
Sur wrote in a review that "I do not like this poetry full of decorum and happy discoveries, this poetry so well dressed, so perfectly educated, although it has left me with the desire to read what seems to me to come closer to true poetry." The personal crisis triggered by the harsh experience in Maryland, the negative reviews of her second book and the problems with Bonomini, whose courtship ended in 1952, according to her biographer
Sergio Pujol, caused a "shift toward a religious feeling, until then completely unprecedented in the young woman". The presence of topics such as God and death in poems such as
Balada de esperanza was an indication of personal change in the writer. In fact, a lyrical prose text titled "El delirio", addressed to a certain "Hermana Francisca", was published under her authorship in an edition of
La Nación on 6 November 1952. Walsh taught English at
Colegio Ward and another institution in Ramos Mejía during those years, Although the initial purpose of their meeting was not to form the artistic duo that later emerged, the success they had when singing for fun on the deck of the ship encouraged them to form a performing partnership. Valladares had a repertoire that included
bagualas,
vidalas and
chacareras, and always travelled with her instruments, including the
criollo guitar, the
bombo, the
charango and the
caja. The stimulus Walsh had received from the poet Jiménez, who adored
folklore, was fundamental in the singer's assimilation of the folk genre. As Ilse Luraschi and Kay Sibbald observed, "folklore was the germ and driving force of the two activities that gave her the greatest pleasure and success: paraliterature (that is, children's literature and popular song) and performance in theatre and television." While in Paris, Walsh performed in concerts featuring
Argentine folklore with fellow Argentine singer
Leda Valladares (born 1919), forming the duo "Leda & María" and recording for
Le chant du monde. Some of these recordings were exchanged with "Topic Records" in England in the late 1950s. Lodged in the neighbourhood of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where both Valladares and Walsh led an austere life, their first impression of Paris was unpleasant. In Walsh's words, "everything seemed dark, cold, sinister, medieval. The people, harsh and unfriendly", and she was appalled by the high levels of poverty she saw in the streets of France as an aftermath of the postwar period. However, she was dazzled by the atmosphere of freedom she perceived, without atavisms or social prejudices. They performed for the first time in a Scandinavian restaurant on rue Gay-Lussac and later at L'Écluse, where Léo Noel, Francis Lemarque,
Gilles Ségal,
Marcel Marceau and
Jacques Fabbri sang. They also performed at the Scandian Club, Chez Pasdoc—where
Charles Aznavour began his career—and the
Crazy Horse cabaret. On one occasion, the duo won a competition at the
Paris Olympia and were offered the chance to sing in the same show as
Édith Piaf, but for very poor pay and forty performances a week, which meant the contract did not go ahead. Finally, they chose to appear in a television cycle at the
Maison de la ORTF at the end of 1954. Although they were successful in Paris, the duo's intransigence and refusal to make concessions in their repertoire generated fear among impresarios, who doubted the success of their shows. Valladares and Walsh came to perform in four places a night during some seasons, especially at La Guitarre, where they carried out the repertoire of
Canciones del tiempo de Maricastaña, and at the cabaret La Canne à Sucre. They were called by a recording company,
Le Chant du Monde, which released folk music and distributed records in other countries, and they performed gala programmes in theatres that were broadcast on radio as part of selections of the best
music hall numbers. They also performed in different cities in
Belgium and recorded a series of radio programmes in
London and
Cologne, Germany. , 1956. In Paris, they associated with other artists such as
Violeta Parra—whom Walsh described as "jealous, gloomy and sullen"—
Lalo Schifrin,
Barbara and
Blossom Dearie, and recorded their first albums,
Cantos de Argentina (1954) and
Bajo los cielos de la Argentina (1955), with songs from the oral tradition of Argentine Andean folklore such as "Dos palomitas" and "Huachi tori", and also with songs by
Atahualpa Yupanqui—then based in Paris—such as "La arribeña" by
Jaime Dávalos, "El
humahuaqueño" by
Rafael Rossi and "Viva Jujuy" by
Rolando Valladares. The vast majority of them were presented in
Los sueños del Rey Bombo, a show that premiered at the Teatro Auditorium in Mar del Plata in February 1959. The press noted of the work that "the author tells no story; she only speaks poetically of some beings" and, in general, reviews were negative or focused on the acting work of
Roberto Aulés.
La Nación wrote that "nothing is serious in this piece and nothing calls upon the realistic and rational position of the everyday world... Birds speak, dreams materialize, frogs sing with human voices; suburban mice walk while tracing tango-like quebradas, in the manner of the 1900s; the whole world is informal, childlike, plastic, fluid, poetic". At the end of the summer, the work moved to the
Teatro Presidente Alvear and, in 1962, was revived at the
Teatro Cómico. A record with material from the work was also released in 1960 through Plin, a record label founded by Valladares and Walsh, which had no impact. It included the first four Walsh songs to be recorded: "La vaca estudiosa", "Canción del pescador", "El reino del revés" and "Canción de titina". She returned to Argentina in 1956 after the
Revolución Libertadora. In 1958, she had been invited to work on
Buenos días, Pinky, a programme starring
Lidia Satragno, where she served as a scriptwriter. The programme lasted only three months, but achieved notable success, earning two
Martín Fierro Awards. Walsh, for her part, received the
Argentores award for best scriptwriter and described her work as "arduous, difficult, but also extremely gratifying" and "a great workshop for me". The scripts of one of the programmes starring Pinky were later reworked for
Dailan Kifki, a children's book about the adventures of an elephant, published in 1966. From 1958 onwards, Walsh wrote numerous TV scripts, plays, poems, books and songs, specially dedicated to young children. She was also a successful performer, singing her own songs onstage and recording them later in albums, like
Canciones para mirar,
Canciones para mí and
El País de Nomeacuerdo.
Juguemos en el mundo, also an album, was a satirical show for adults, which was made into a film of the same title, albeit with a story unrelated to the original stage show and songs recording. The film was based on her characters
Doña Disparate y Bambuco and was directed by her partner at that time, María Herminia Avellaneda (1933–1997).
María Herminia Avellaneda, who had seen her presentation of
Tutú Marambá, proposed in 1959 that she make a children's television programme, which eventually led to the premiere of
Doña Disparate y Bambuco, performed by
Lydia Lamaison,
Osvaldo Pacheco,
Pepe Soriano and
Teresa Blasco. There, Walsh performed her first children's songs, but the experience lasted four months. In this work—one of the last in which Valladares and Walsh participated together—Mono Liso appeared and, above all,
Manuelita the turtle, the best-known character in the children's universe created by Walsh. The work resembled the
dreamlike atmosphere of ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', In July 1978, at the age of 48, Walsh informed the press that she would no longer compose or sing. In response to Olga Pinasco, who asked why she was leaving the stage at the height of her career, Walsh replied: "With
Chau Ejecutivos I close a stage that I feel is exhausted, and I need to end it this way. When I no longer feel like doing something—I find it indecent to do something without desire—I know that stage is over." In essence,
Chau Ejecutivos was her final recital, but she did not cease her public interventions as a critic of culture and politics. Her partner,
Sara Facio, said: "In '78 we spectators felt a great void. But living with her, I was able to understand it: María Elena is the kind of person who never takes sufficient advantage of success. I have known only one artist with that characteristic:
Astor Piazzolla. He put together and dismantled his quintet without caring about success, leaving his followers bewildered." Indeed, Walsh's voice showed some signs of weakness and her ingenuity for composition seemed to be running out. Her last album,
De puño y letra (1976), had premiered songs that, except for "El valle y el volcán" and "Sábana y mantel", had no impact. On the other hand, censorship pressures between 1976 and 1978, after the
coup d'état, became unbearable for Walsh, who was virtually unable to sing without omissions a repertoire intended to "tickle power", as she used to say, although the singer had no political affiliation. One of her songs, "Gilito de Barrio Norte", was even banned by the
Comfer. On another occasion, she was ordered to remove "Palomas de la ciudad" from the repertoire during a performance she was to give in a venue directed by
Blackie. During those years, Walsh undertook various trips through Europe, the United States and Latin America and reached an agreement with the newspaper
Clarín to send articles on writers and travel impressions from abroad to be published in the supplement
Cultura y Nación, although she also wrote denunciatory articles such as "Argentinos sin alma", published in October 1980, which reflected on the unfair competition faced by Argentine music in relation to imported music. Her work has often contained an underlying political message, as in the song
El País del Nomeacuerdo ("I-Don't-Remember Land"), which was later used as the theme song for the film
The Official Story, winner of the 1985
Academy Award for
Best Foreign Language Film. Her most famous and controversial publication appeared on 16 August 1979 under the title "Desventuras en el país-jardín-de-infantes", where she reflected on censorship under the military government. The title was reused in 1993 for a book. The article, in essence, placed the reader in a country turned into a schoolroom, at the front of which stood a monitor or censor, an omnipotent figure who, in the manner of
Big Brother from
George Orwell, observed everything for repressive purposes. Although the article made some serious concessions to the military, especially by recognizing an important role for them in the fight against guerrillas, its general tone was disparaging toward the monitor, whom it treated as repressive, brutish and ignorant. After its publication, La Azotea, the publishing house directed by Sara Facio, received constant calls throughout the day in solidarity with the author, filling an entire
cassette of the answering machine. A few days later, Walsh received a call from María Herminia Avellaneda telling her that, according to a notification that had just reached the channel, the television and radio broadcast of all her songs and books had been prohibited. Between 1979 and 1980, Walsh was in the Nordic countries—from which came the article "El país escandinavo" of November 1979—and visited Paris, where she made a French version of her songs and recorded an album with Jairo,
Chansons a regarder, with a cover illustrated by
Guillermo Mordillo. Around that time, her health began to falter. After several months of severe leg and hip pain and successive misdiagnoses, Walsh was admitted in 1981 to the Instituto del Diagnóstico with a guarded prognosis because of a fractured femur. Later that year, she was diagnosed with
bone cancer, which she described as her "own National Reorganization Process", and amputation of one leg was considered, on the conviction that "whoever has arms can walk", but Walsh declined to undergo the procedure. She was later admitted to various sanatoriums in the city, including Bustamante, Anchorena and Bazterrica, where she underwent radiation therapy and chemotherapy, as well as several surgeries aimed at saving the affected leg. In November 1981, she gave an interview to the magazine
Gente, where she stated: "I am living on borrowed time" and later said: "I am 51 years old and I love life. That is why I fight."
Return of democracy and later life (1983–1999) In 1982, Susana Rinaldi premiered
Hoy como ayer, a show conceived as a tribute to Walsh that covered all her songs for adults and helped support the author at a difficult moment in her life. With the establishment of democracy in 1983, she hosted the daily television programme
La cigarra on
Canal 11 together with Susana Rinaldi and María Herminia Avellaneda; it broke with the traditional afternoon programmes aimed at
housewives, such as
Buenas tardes, mucho gusto, and was one of the first television cycles of the democratic and
feminist era. There, the
Mothers and
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo appeared on local television for the first time. They also interviewed artists and politicians censored during the military dictatorship. The cycle drew criticism and scepticism for its journalistic and opinion content, and was taken off the air six months after its launch in 1984 after failing to meet the expectations it had generated. The magazine
Humor, for example, published a cover that read: "La cigarra is not a bug, it is three." Walsh showed signs of rapprochement with the Radical government of
Raúl Alfonsín at the beginning of his term, especially regarding human-rights policies. Indeed, her translation of "
We shall overcome", a civil-rights anthem, was performed by Jairo at the closing event of his presidential campaign and some of her songs, such as "La cigarra", were reinterpreted and popularized in a context of revisionism. In March 1984, she joined the
Council for the Consolidation of Democracy and was appointed
ad honorem adviser to the Secretariat of Human Development and Family, a post she resigned on 26 March 1986 because of the bureaucratization and ineffectiveness that Walsh perceived in the area of culture. In a letter sent to Alfonsín himself, she wrote: "Since in two years I was never summoned to give an opinion on these matters, my resignation seems obvious, but it is my duty to submit it to you, Mr President, together with my gratitude for the confidence you placed in me." Some time later, in an interview with the magazine
Somos after finishing her collaboration on the texts for the documentary
La República perdida (1985), she stated that politics seemed "terrifying" to her. Even so, she resumed her activities in the
Society of Argentine Authors and Composers—where she had worked briefly during
Ariel Ramírez's administration in the 1970s—and took charge of the institution's cultural activities. In the last 20 years of her life, she received multiple honours. She was named an "Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires" in 1985 and received recognition from the
Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina for the
Hebrew version of her stories in 1987. That same year, the Embassy of Poland decorated her with the Order of the Smile and, in March 1990, the
University of Córdoba awarded her an
honorary doctorate (
Doctor honoris causa). The government of Buenos Aires Province declared her an "Illustrious Personality" in 1991 Regarding
Menemism, she did not have an especially negative view of its leader or his government, and maintained friendships with supporters of his policies, such as
Bernardo Neustadt and
Gerardo Sofovich. In December 1997, the publication of an article by her in
La Nación against the
Carpa Blanca generated repudiation and negative criticism, especially from the teachers protesting in front of the
Congress of the Argentine Nation. The article was harsh toward the teachers, and Walsh described the tent as something of "coarse ugliness" that impoverished the city's landscape. She referred to the protest as a "barter between the union leaders and the promoters of native and foreign artists", and severely criticized the fast to which the demonstrators had resorted as a form of protest. A group of teachers wrote a letter of redress in
Página/12, stating that her words had caused "Astonishment. Indignation. But above all an immense disappointment. That is the feeling of those of us who never thought that those verses in which, speaking from the teacher's skin, you said 'I live mending hardships and consoling miseries' were 'an appeal to popular sentimentality'."
Quino even compared her to the character Susanita from
Mafalda, and the writer
Graciela Montes wrote, as a personal letter, that "no one in their right mind considers you a dinosaur", referring to Walsh. As a consequence of her remarks, sales of her books fell drastically, both at
Seix Barral and
Espasa Calpe, but her popularity resurged in 1999 with the premiere of the film
Manuelita, directed by
Manuel García Ferré, which was a resounding success and made her known to new generations.
Final years and death (2000–2011) at a meeting in the
Casa Rosada, 2008. Her last books were ''Hotel Pioho's Palace
(2002) and Fantasmas en el parque
("Ghosts in the Park", 2008). Graciela Melgarejo, in a review for the cultural magazine of La Nación
, described the latter book, autobiographical in tone, as "a new flower that grows, mysterious and perfect, in the middle of a great city park and on the remains of a prison". In Fantasmas en el parque
, Walsh referred for the first time to Sara Facio, with whom she had lived for 30 years, confessing that "she is my great love, that love which does not wear out but is transformed into perfect companionship". In 2009, the scripts of Canciones para mirar
and Doña Disparate y Bambuco
were published for the first time, and a show, Varieté para María Elena'', directed by Gerardo Sofovich, was staged at the
Teatro Tabarís. In 2005, she was diagnosed with severe
osteoporosis, which caused great bone weakness. During the Christmas season that year, Walsh was unable to sit at the table because of spontaneous vertebral fractures caused by her illness. The pain and fractures she suffered led her to take strong painkillers and remain in a state of semi-immobility, often moving in a wheelchair. In 2008, she gave an interview in which she stated that "I do not want to leave the country, or the city, or my house, or my bed." Walsh has been considered a "living legend, cultural hero (and) crest of nearly every childhood". Walsh died of
bone cancer at the age of 80 on 10 January 2011 at the Sanatorio La Trinidad in Buenos Aires after suffering a deterioration in her health. ==Personal life==