'Gordo' cartoonist, Carmel resident Gus Arriola dies

The Monterey County Herald ^ | February 3, 2008 | Dennis Taylor

[EveningStar]

Gustavo "Gus" Arriola, the celebrated Mexican-American cartoonist who created the strip known as "Gordo," died Saturday at his Carmel home after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 90...

[Thud]

Thanks. He was a very good man.

Neighbor (the Poet, I think) visiting Gordo's house watches Trailing Arbutus fiddling with the kitchen faucets as "Yeeks" squeal through the house. He asks Tijuana Mama, "Air in the pipes?"

"No", she replies, "Lard in the shower." A dripping Gordo in a towel appears to chase Trailing Arbutus.

[Fiddlstix]

I'm sure you do. lol.
I posted that in case some people don't know.

[Thud]

I grew up with him too.

[EveningStar]

Very sad!

I know. This was in the era where Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans were not afraid of saying that we were one and we love each other.

[Thud]

Not sad. A reminder to celebrate his life and the joy he shared with so many of us.

[Dan Lacey]

He was widely syndicated at the time. His cartoon is included in two large anthologies I own on the history of the newspaper cartoon.

It was a very kind cartoon, sort of straddled a few genres. Happy to hear he lived a long life.

[Verginius Rufus]

I think she was called Tehuana Mama.

It was a different kind of comic strip but often funny on its own terms. The cat was a masterpiece.

I've read that in the early years Gordo was depicted along the lines of American stereotypes of Mexicans (current when the strip began), but that changed after a while. There was a Widow Gonzalez who wanted Gordo to marry her, but she disappeared after a while. The strip just stopped abruptly with no warning. It deserved to be better known that it was.

[Calvin Locke]

Gordo was the name of the first primate, a spider monkey, that the US put into space.

Alas, the capsule sank, before the Navy could recovery it, taking Gordo to the bottom of the Atlantic.

[Fiji Hill]

In the mid-1960's, Gordo was carried by The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for Amerian servicemen and their dependents in Europe. At the time, I lived in Darmstadt, Germany, where my father was a teacher for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, and I looked forward to reading Gordo every Sunday.

[logician2u]

One of my favorites, too. Arriola could poke fun at both Anglo and Mexican culture in a way that did not offend, and the dialect was downright funny, in the same way that Li'l Abner's characters came off as humorous without degrading the hillbilly culture (any more than necessary).

I particularly remember a series of several months of strips featuring a wealthy family of Texans doing the tourist bit, getting hauled around in Halley's Comet. The wife was trying to start a "Jun-ya League" among the society set, without much luck.

The comics sure aren't what they used to be.

[GAB-1955]

Yes, he was. I remember reading ‘Gordo’ as a kid in the Tulsa and Washington papers.

[John Jorsett]

I read Gordo for many years and liked it a lot. I didn’t know why he ended it until now. Sad.