The Bolivian Academy of Children and Youth Literature adheres to the celebrations and memories of Alfaro's work, in this, the year of the children's poet.
His poetic work was the founding stone of Bolivian child-wealth-musical literature.Not only did he approach the boys and girls since his vocation as a teacher, but physically made great efforts to bring the book to his hands, producing small cut stories and affordable price, something that remains a great need for most of the territorynational.
Death on December 25, 1963, he left many unfinished works and a great void among the pioneers of the LIJ, which on January 12, 1964, just a month later, formed the union of poets for children.Alfaro had to be an active part of this group, made up of Hugo Molina Viaña, Yolanda Bedregal, Rosa Fernández de Carrasco, Elda Alarcón de Cárdenas, Beatriz Schulze, Paz Nery Nava and Alberto Gutiérrez Guerraz.
Here is a small contribution regarding the importance of the wonderful story, a genre that Alfaro knew how to exploit like no one and that has given us some of the most beautiful stories of his repertoire.Always on the right side and against vanity, these stories can hurt adult sensibilities, but sow in children the sense of justice, scrupulously according to the genre.
The wonderful story is not limited to fairy or elves stories, who appear very little in Alfaro's narrative.In the story the match of phosphoros the girl lights matches and finds elves in her heads;When she will grant her a desire, she prays the elves for the infinity of dresses and shoes, and they, thinking that her claim has become greedy, they want to punish her.
However, the last phosphorus head turns on and the elf can hear the request of the order.They are not for her, these lots of dresses and shoes are for all the girls in the neighborhood, of the city, who walk in harapos.The elves decide to rectify their mistake, but there is no magic in the world that reaches so much helplessness.The elf decides then to continue the task day by day, and reach the varncitos too.That is why every child, however, will one day receive a suit and a pair of shining shoes.
There lies the strength of Alfaro's narrative, a single magical element can be enough to transport us to a different world, where everything is possible: in the fire bird (with the iconic illustration of Roser Puig), it is a living -live red birdwho frightens his own and strangers.It is such color, that when you stop drinking water it looks like a flare inn on the surface.When perched on a ceibo, he decides to disguise himself as flukeHis, and, happy, he has lived again and shed red fl ores like his savior.
In the toad that wanted to be a star, the toad eats fireflies, which are the ones who illuminate it inside and raise it through the air.Such is his happy, that the toad starts to sing, his vanity makes him lose care, and with his song his inner brightness will escape ... until the toad, returned in toad again, falls loudly from his height borrowed.
In the enchanted suit, the king's capricious son wants to take the suit to the magician, and cruelly threatens to make a lining with his own skin if his desire is not fulfilled.The magician manages to escape, but leaves a curse in his suit: he squeezes and suffocates the child and, when he is almost about to end him, the king begs his release.The magician stops him, but he can only remove it if the king orders that all the evils that the prince made be remedied.You can only open with each good work that is done.
Should a child be tortured to learn to do good?Do the beautiful butterflies deserve, in the kingdom of the butterflies, be nailed alive by the prince in his insectary as punishment to his vanity?
The punishment of the powerful, the fierce and fierce struggle to save the life of a sapito that managesThe Painter Child, surprise by their description and strength.In them, splash blood and violence is present.
Are these terrible stories appropriate for today's children?In these warm times, the politically correct, we guarantee that they will hurt sensibilities, but they will give what to think about.Observer of a very hard era for Bolivia's children, his voice rises highly denouncing the abuse of the powerful, the danger of pride and vanity, the constant lessoning to which the humble were subjected.
