María Elena Walsh
Poet, songwriter and children's author of Manuelita and El reino del revés, of reported Irish descent on her father's side; later a member of the Council for the Consolidation of Democracy.
- Born
- reported, Ramos Mejía
- Died
- reported, Buenos Aires
Irish link
Irish link: ReportedLa Nación calls her father Irish, and Delaney calls her a descendant of 1880s Irish immigrants; the origin is not traced.
María Elena Walsh was born on 1 February 1930 at Ramos Mejía. La Nación, reporting her death, calls her father Irish. Juan José Delaney describes her as a descendant of Irish immigrants of the 1880s. Other accounts seen only in search summaries call her father Anglo-Argentine or of mixed English and Irish descent, and none has been checked, so her Irish link is graded reported rather than documented.
Delaney dates her first poems to 1947. She became a poet, a songwriter and the author of children's books including Manuelita and El reino del revés, and in 1990 she published the memoir Novios de antaño. Delaney places her, with Benito Lynch and Rodolfo Walsh, among the Irish-Argentine writers who wrote in Spanish. From 1985 to 1989 she served on the Council for the Consolidation of Democracy.
She died in Buenos Aires on 10 January 2011, aged 80; La Nación reported her death the following day.