The AP is reporting that Mexican cartoonist Gabriel Vargas passed away yesterday at the age of 95. Gabriel was the creator of La Familia Burron – “one of the greatest representatives of the golden age of Mexican comics” and an “undeniable reference point for the nation’s popular culture” according to the The National Council of the Arts and Culture.
The cartoon, which Vargas started in 1937, described in quirky detail the travails of a lower-class Mexican family, their extended family and the barrio where they lived.
Comprised of father Regino Burron, a stolid barber, and his inventive and irrepressible wife, Borola Tacuche de Burron, the family wrestled with poverty and neighborhood disputes on a weekly basis.
The weekly, stand-alone comic books sold as many as 500,000 copies a week for decades, until the 1970s.
Gabriel was the recepient of Mexico’s National Journalism Prize in 1983 and the National Sciences and Arts Prize in 2003.