By Mariana Marcaletti
Herald staff

After a long career, “Don” Manuel García Ferré is entitled to reveal the root of his success. It’s neither about innovative ideas nor outstanding skills, not even contacts, it’s all about attitude.  “Persevere and you shall triumph,” the creator of El libro gordo de Petete, Manuelita and Pan triste asserts,acknowledging  that the reason of his recognition is his persistance.

“We must set our own goals. We are supposed to pursue our aims in life, and do our best to accomplish them. People who just wander around are pathetic, they don’t know their purpose in life. Our nature leads us to organize, study, work, try hard, love what we do, feel. All that really matters is illusion: when hope runs out, we must generate new projects to replace the ones that die”.

García Ferré’s words are not shallow. His life is a succession of illusions: from his first attempts to sell his first comic strip Pi Pío knocking on publishers doors, to the day when he was finally accepted on Atlántida, to the moment when he ran his own magazine, to the time when he launched the first TV cartoon series Hijitus to the present, when he’s planning on a new version of Anteojito as a feature film, García Ferré never stops daydreaming.

“I was perseverant and never got tired of working, I would spend 15 hours on end writing. When I enthusiast about an idea, I commit to it. It was my calling, that’s why I endured. If I didn’t love what I do, it would be impossible”.

Recently named illustrious citizen by the BA city government, García Ferré is more than proud of his productions: he’s happy. He welcomed the Herald in his studio at Corrientes street, crowded with toys, pictures, posters, letters — even a gift sent by a prison inmate carefully kept in the room (a wooden sculpture of Hijitus). Keeping his creations as priceless treasures, he shows his crafts with the same love and devotion of yore. In this interview, he goes over each and every one of his works, their meanings and underlying secrets.

‘Humour is an expression of tragedy’. Born in Almería, Spain, in 1949, García Ferré moved to Argentina in 1947 due to the Civil War. “From my 6 to 9 years, I got in touch with all sorts of injustice: death, cruelty, man against man, entire families torn apart. I suffered several bombings, fear and hunger. Out of terrible episodes like this, the truth emerge: people’s determination that nothing similar will be repeated”.

His strategy was to write and draw comic strips because he thought that creativity can help people in hard times. “Humour is an expression of tragedy. It help us live and to understand the world. Humour is what differentiates us from animals — whereas other species cannot smile, we can and it makes us special. We sometimes use philosophy through comedy, to question the world”.

Being in touch with violence at a young age didn’t give way to war-related stories. The other way around: most of his characters are heroes who fight evil. “There are exceptions, though. For instance, Oaky would shoot bullets in the air,  a whimsical kid demanding attention. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he would go over the top. Violence is innate in human beings, but we are forced to domesticate it. We learn how to become civilized”.

Unlike his own products, García Ferré thinks the current mass media fail to provide adequate role models. “Although television, with its advanced technology, has enhanced every day life, it has also contributed to the proliferation of bad examples, usually the ones on top of the ratings. The main rule is to sell more and more and, fostering wrong ideas the easy way. And nothing is easy in this world, everything we accomplish is through effort and sacrifice. Youth, nowadays, wants it all fast. But nobody succeded easily”.

A hard path to success. A few years after settling down in Argentina, in his 20s, García Ferré wrapped up a few comic strips and visited several publishers. “The way it worked went this way: ‘I write it, I sell it’. That phrase sums up the whole process. I would do everything: from developing a concept, writing, painting, taking it to the office and publishing it”.

His lucky (our sought-after?) day was when Atlántida opened the doors to him. “Carlos Vilgil, the son of Atlántida founder Constancio, took me in. I brought him a toy, Pi pío, made with eggshell and wax. Some weeks after it was first released, Vigil called me, telling me that readers praised the story. He asked me if I would like to publish a comic strip a day. I accepted”.

That was when he became a full-time professional writer and cartoonist. “From that moment on, I started writing about my childhood and my own biography through comic strips. I had to resort to memories of my past to create a world, apart from literature. Pi pío is a homeless who travels all over the world, discovering places and people he had never seen before, accompanied by his intellectual sidekick Calculín. Hijitus was also born at that time, as one of the characters in Pi Pío, in the 50s”.

As Pi Pío was a metaphor for his own experience as a newcomer in a society he was just beginning to come to grips with, most of his characters are inspired by real people. “But I would be lying if I said that I ran into a man with the same personality traits as Larguirucho or Neurus. There are many Largiruchos, Neurus or Cachavacha. So, every person is a summary of the characteristics embodied by each cartoon. If we think about our friends or relatives, there’s always someone similar to the protagonists of my stories. Likewise, the same happens when we think about ourselves: who are we? Sometimes I am Hijitus, other times Neurus... but I am confident and I am not evil Cachavacha (he laughs)”.

One of the reader’s favourites is Larguirucho. Although he is never a leading role, he is always present in all of García Ferré’s releases.  “Larguirucho mouths many truths. He would repeat many sayings I listened in the street. I found it funny that reality should be told through a character like Larguirucho, a bit clumsy and silly, not completely aware of what he actually says”.

The values represented by García Ferré’s characters are universal and the same that goes for his timeless, international works. “It doesn’t matter if we are in Argentina or in any country, we’re all the same.

Regardless of our own culture and language, the human condition is the same — our reasons to behave can be summed up in the Seven Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. They are the ingredients of this great salad that life is”.

Once again, there are always exceptions that prove the rule. “Pucho faked an extremely Porteño accent, speaking as if he were Carlos Gardel singing tangos. There was also a correntino, but they were flavour to it, adding local colour”.

New experiments on TV. According to Ferré, the groundbreaking aspect of Hijitus wasn’t its plot, but its serialized narration. “Before Hijitus, television used to air cartoon shorts of feature films that lasted an hour but they were not divided into smaller pieces. As most important newspapers in the world offer breaking news on their front pages, and comic strips land on the back page to distract readers after unpalatable news,  would be a good idea the same on television. I told TV mogul Goar Mestre, why don’t we do it on channel 13? I brought him two one-minute shorts of Hijutus, to be released every day, the story told the day before. I wanted six times to target different audiences. By the end of the month, we gathered all the pieces and had a one-hour episode broadcast on prime time during the weekend. Mestre liked the idea, so we Hijitus ran for six or seven years”.

Dressed in blue rags, and accompanied by his faithful dog Pichichus, Hijitus was a superhero. “Instead of the classical magic wand of fairy tales, Hijitus played his tricks with his hat. He can be a superhero only when an injustice occurs. The hat gives him power if he needs it. He was a poor city dweller, and still he was endowed with a spiritual strength”.

His chance to develop Hijitus was helped by the audience’s faithful following. “Unlike today, cartooning some decades ago was a complete different experience. We recorded only a few shots, broadcasting live frequently, mistakes were unavoidable. El club de hijitus, anchored by Guillermo Lázaro, was a smash. It aired from 11am to 12pm, and we were asked to add one more hour in order to warm audience for Los campanelli.

In his opinion, it was all possible thanks to the support of the channel. “There was a coordination between the creative employees and the businessmen. Mestre made it possible, thanks to his open mind. I also told him to launch El libro gordo de Petete. They were one-minute shorts that dealt with several varied topics: what’s a map, why satellite works, what’s the use of sun energy. It was a huge encyclopedia released as a serialized publication. The cute part was the toy animal, Petete, who talked to a girl, actress Gachi Ferrari”.

In November, García Ferré launched a new release of El libro gordo de petete by VyR publishers, now in the format of a book. Unlocking Petete of a suitcase, he teaches us how to make the puppet walk, how to raise its eyelashes, how to make it look natural. “Petete has always been the same toy animal, created 30 years ago. I didn’t want to repeat it because I don’t like copying myself. I made it with a scissors and foam rubber. I traveled with him to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, we shared many live interviews on TV with several artists. He’s now resting until the next time he is back on track”.

The new side of Petete, in his view, was the educational side of the programme. “As once Favaloro told me, El libro gordo de Petete teaches everyone, even people who are too learned in a field. For instance, a lawyer knows a lot about law but they might ignore the origin of figures, who invented the calendar, what gravity means, and so on. With Petete, you can have a preliminary approach to several sides of our existence”.

Choosing the simple also means trying the most difficult path. “Complexity is something that humans made up, but reality is actually pretty simple. Relevant ideas are usually easy. The difficult part is to find ideas. The easy is the harder to achieve. When Newton saw the apple falling, he realised that gravity existed. And his discovery now seems plain, but he had the ability to grasp the simple out of the complex. The truth lies in knowing how to appreciate small details. We must pay a lot of attention, concentrate on everything that goes on”.

With the same sensitivity to grasp his environment as he has always had, Manuel García Ferré is hooked by new illusions, upcoming characters and more projects to materialize. “Years go by and I don’t have the same energy I had when I was 30 or 40,” he reckons. Although he is 81 years, time didn’t worn him out and the future is bright. “I have plenty of illusions for the future: first of all, thanking God for every day of life that he gives me. Secondly, telling the people who are around me that I hope they keep loving me, respecting me the same way that I do. And, last but not least, I hope we can live in a society that allow us to live in peace”.

It was a strategy to have viewers tuned in.”

In his opinion, it was all possible thanks to the support of channel 13. “The creative team employees and executives were in tune. Mestre made it possible, thanks to his open mind. I suggested  launching El libro gordo de Petete, one-minute shorts dealing with varied topics: what’s a map, satellite work, the use of solar energy. It was a huge encyclopedia released as a serialized publication. The cute part was the toy soft, Petete, who talked to anchor Gachi Ferrari”.

In November, García Ferré launched a new edition of El libro gordo de petete on VyR publishers, now in a book format.

Unlocking Petete of a suitcase, he shows us how the puppet walks, raises its eyelashes, looks natural. “Petete has always been the same toy animal created 30 years ago. I didn’t want to repeat it because I don’t like copying myself. I made it with scissors and foam rubber. I traveled with him to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, we shared many live interviews on TV with several artists. He’s now resting until he gets back on track.”

The new side of Petete, in his view, was the educational role of the programme. “As once ill-fated heart surgeon René Favaloro told me, El libro gordo de Petete taught everyone, even experts. For instance, lawyer know a lot about law but they may ignore the origin of numbers, who invented the calendar, gravity and so on. With Petete, you can have a preliminary approach to several sides of human experience”.

Simplicity also means trying the most difficult path. “Complexity is made up by humans, but reality is actually pretty simple. Relevant ideas are usually easy. The difficult is find the ideas. The easy things are the harder to achieve. When Newton saw the apple fall, he realized that gravity existed. His discovery now seems plain, but he had the ability to grasp the simple out of the complex. The truth lies in knowing how to appreciate small details. We must pay a lot of attention, concentrate on everything.”

With the same sensitivity that he analyzes his environment, García Ferré is hooked by new illusions, upcoming characters and projects.

“Years go by and I don’t have the same energy when I was 30 or 40,” he reckons. Although he is 81 years, time has not worn him out and the future is bright. “I have plenty of illusions for the future: first of all, thanking God for every day of life that he gives me. Secondly, telling people around me that I hope they keep loving me, respecting me the same way that I respect them. And, last but not least, I hope we can live in a society that learns to live in peace”.