Wednesday, May 26, 2010
One of Mexico’s most successful cartoonists, Gabriel Vargas, died yesterday at the age of 95. His death was announced by the National Council of the Arts and Culture. Vargas had been ill for several years before his death, but no cause of death has yet been given.
Vargas’s most successful comic strip was “La Familia Burron” which he started in 1937. The strip looked at a low-income family struggling with everyday life. It sold up to 500,000 copies per week until the 1970s.
Later in his career he won several awards for his work, including Mexico’s National Journalism Prize in 1983 and the National Sciences and Arts prize in 2003.
There was a memorial viewing for Vargas at a funeral home in Mexico City yesterday.