The Folk Songwriter Sleeping in Mendoza's Main Square

Fabián Navarro is described by Tiempo de San Juan as a leading figure of folk music from the Cuyo region of Argentina. He is credited with more than 1,500 songs and about 35 recorded albums, and with 55 years on stage, playing guitar, piano, charango and electric bass. The article says he has shared stages with Horacio Guaraní, Mercedes Sosa, Joaquín Sabina and Joan Manuel Serrat.

At some point he lived in Spain, where he ran a business in Madrid. He says he lost a restaurant there and was left without any money, which forced him to go back to his native Mendoza. In his own words, he lost a restaurant in Madrid and was left without a peso.

By May 2023, when the article was published, he was living outdoors in Mendoza. He said he slept on a bench or on the ground in Plaza Independencia at night, and by day he stayed on the Sarmiento pedestrian street asking for money to buy food. He added that the local authorities had not come to help him.

Friends spoke up for him in public. Pedro Olguín and Guillermo Ferri backed him, and Ferri said they had filed a complaint with the economic crimes prosecutor's office to find out who is collecting the royalties from his roughly 1,500 songs.

The report does not describe any result of that complaint, and it does not say whether his situation changed afterwards. What it records is a veteran musician with decades of work behind him, back in the city where he was born, asking passers-by for help while his friends pressed for the rights income that his songs may have earned.