Background
Gus Arriola was born in Florence, Arizona, the youngest of nine children.
Gus Arriola was born in Florence, Arizona, the youngest of nine children.
He first studied art formally in Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, California.
Arriola"s father, Aquiles Arriola, had been born on a hacienda in Sonora, Mexico. Gus"s mother died when he was a baby, and he was raised by an older sister in a Spanish-speaking household. He learned English by reading the Sunday comics.
His family moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was eight years old.
Immediately after high school he spent a year working on Krazy Kat for Screen Gems, then three years animating Tom and Jerry and Lonesome Stranger for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a "sketch man", before leaving to start his own comic strip. During World World War II, he directed training films for the United States Army while continuing to produce Sunday Gordo cartoons.
Gordo
Although Arriola did not visit Mexico until 1961, he used the human and animal characters of his strip to introduce Mexican culture to readers throughout the world. Gordo was initially designed to be a Mexican version of Li"l Abner, with a highly caricatured style and a lazy overweight title character who spoke in heavily accented English and took naps under a tree wearing a sombrero.
The character reflected popular conceptions of Mexicans at the time, particularly Leo Carrillo"s portrayal of The Cisco Kid"s sidekick, Pancho, on television and film.
After his early strips were criticized for Hollywood-style cultural stereotypes, Arriola realized that his was the only periodical work in American mass media that depicted life in Mexico and modified the strip to be more sympathetic. A much thinner and contemplative Gordo eventually became a flirtatious tour guide, whom Arriola often described as an "accidental ambassador" for Mexican culture. The strip introduced America to such now-popular words and phrases as "hasta la vista," "amigo," "piñata," "compadre," "muchacho" and "hasta mañana," as well as Mayan, Aztec and Mexican customs, history and folklore.
Arriola also periodically included traditional Mexican recipes in Gordo that proved popular, telling one interviewer, "In 1948 we ran Gordo’s recipe for beans and cheese—which got me into 60 extra papers, by the way."
Arriola did all of the writing, illustration and production of Gordo himself, creating strips every day (except in his army years) for 45 years.
Although not overtly political, Gordo was also one of the first popular culture works that regularly raised environmentalist concerns. The last Gordo strip was published on March 2, 1985.
Sam Klemke"s video interview with Gus Arriola.