Eduardo del Río

Eduardo del Río (Rius)
& Los Agachados

Essay

Bibliography

Websites

Books and Articles

Photos

Essay

The comic book, or historieta, occupies an important place in the Mexican print media. Mexicans are voracious consumers of historietas, purchasing up to 70 million issues per month. The historietas available in Mexico run the gamut from Spanish language translations of U.S. comic books through to historietas which are uniquely Mexican in content and outlook. Mexican comic books, and their U.S. Spanish-language equivalents, cover all conceivable genres; one of the smallest genres by market share is the political historieta, whose ranks are essentially populated by the creations of one cartoonist, Eduardo del Río, better known as Rius.

Rius is arguably Latin America's most famous political cartoonist. Born in Zamora, Michoacán in 1934, Rius honed his satirical wit drawing cartoons for a variety of Mexican magazines and newspapers. His trenchant and irrepressible attacks on domestic and international themes led to his sacking from many of the publications for which he worked, and in 1966 Rius created his first historieta, Los Supermachos [The Supermachos].

Rius's work had evolved from “simple humour”, through political cartooning, to the historieta. He regarded the historieta as a useful medium for raising the consciousness of the Mexican people. It allowed him to develop themes within a given issue, or over a period of weeks or months, as well as being able to impart a great deal of information so that his readers could draw their own conclusions about the subject matter contained within the comic books; Rius often took the unprecedented step of including bibliographies for those interested in further reading.

Government pressure on Los Supermachos' publishing house, Editorial Meridiano, saw the editor begin the process of censoring Rius's work without his knowledge, and Rius ceased his involvement with Los Supermachos in 1967. Rius's next venture was the comic book Los Agachados [The Stooped Ones], which he produced from 1968 until 1977; Los Agachados was reprised briefly between 1978 and 1981 before being retired permanently.

Rius was unique among Mexican satirists in that his principle vehicle for satire was the historieta. Unlike political cartoonists whose satire has to be expressed within a single panel, Rius was able to create a satirical version of Mexico itself by populating a “typical” Mexican village with recognisable Mexican “types” – the indigenous peasant; the Revolutionary veteran; the radical schoolteacher, the party functionary; the beata (a devout Catholic woman); the corrupt police officer; and the Spanish shopkeeper. Despite the rural setting of the historietas, the characters contained within them would have been well known to Rius's predominantly middle-class urban readership; the issues broached in Los Supermachos and Los Agachados were problematic for most Mexicans.

In Los Supermachos, and particularly in Los Agachados, Rius addressed myriad themes, from the uniquely Mexican to the universal. Some scholars have estimated that Rius treated up to 200 themes during the publication of Los Agachados' 292 issues, a feat which attests to Rius's innate curiosity, and desire to inform his readership. Among the topics covered were: tacos, Francisco Franco, the Mexican Revolution; obesity, the Middle East conflict, biological warfare, Mexican elections, the Olympic Games, Che Guevara, the bracero programme, and motor vehicle accidents. However, despite the diversity of subjects addressed in the historietas, a number of themes recurred throughout the publications, themes which shed light on Rius's worldview. Rius was a trenchant critic of the Catholic Church, and had much in common with the comecuras [priest eaters]. Comecuras believed that organised religion had nothing to offer the Mexican people, and who advocated the strict application of the anticlerical provisions of the 1917 Constitution. Rius took aim at the undue power and influence of the Church, its wealth, hypocrisy, and its anticommunist stance.

As a committed socialist (Rius was a member of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) for seven years), Rius took all available opportunities to extol the virtues of socialism at the expense of capitalism. Rius was particularly enamoured of the Cuban variant of socialism, and he believed this to be the best option for Latin America. The corollary to Rius's championing of socialism was an antipathy towards capitalism, particularly U.S. economic hegemony, and the extent of U.S. interventionism in Latin America. In his frequent critiques of U.S. capitalism, Rius implicates Mexico's ruling party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party – PRI) in the dominance of foreign investment in Mexico at the expense of local investment, and the pursuit of economic nationalism; whenever Rius wants to make a point about the rapacity of capitalism, the hypocrisy of democracy, or obsessive anticommunism, he employs the gangly caricature of Uncle Sam.

Rius's commitment to revolutionary nationalism saw him reserve some of his strongest and most sustained criticism for the failure of the Mexican revolution to be truly socially transformative. Rius emphasised this failure by highlighting the ways in which the Revolution had failed ordinary Mexicans – the endemic corruption; the lack of a truly democratic electoral process; the appropriation of the rhetoric and iconography of the Revolution; and the failure of the PRI to pursue social justice for all Mexicans.

In using the historieta as his didactic and satirical medium, Rius had to tread a fine line between information and conscientisation on the one hand, and entertainment on the other. In other words, he had to ensure that his comic books were more “comic” than “book”. For the most part Rius was successful in this endeavour. He was aware of Mexico's long tradition of political satire, and utilised the textual and graphical components of the historieta to produce comic books which informed, provoked thought, and entertained. The rural setting and regular cast of characters lent Los Supermachos and Los Agachados the air of a soap opera – plots were developed over a series of issues, and Rius was adept at using the daily goings-on in the village to reflect the theme of each issue.

By combining text and graphics, Rius was able to expand his satirical palette. Working within the three planes of the historieta (the narrative, speech balloon, and graphic planes), Rius managed to convey information and mercilessly satirise the Church, the PRI, capitalism, and U.S. hegemony. The narrative plane employed standard Spanish and was the principal means by which information was imparted and concepts clarified. The speech balloon plane utilised colloquial Spanish from the Bajío region (central-southwestern Mexico) to contribute the lion's share of satirical comment, and to provide verbal humour. This plane was also used to initiate the theme of each issue, usually by one of the characters posing a question for the teacher, Gumaro. The graphic plane provided Rius with additional opportunities to satirise his pet hates. He frequently employed stereotypical images of groups that had had deleterious effects on Mexican development and equality – the beret-wearing, mono-browed gachupín [Spaniard], or the corpulent cleric. One interesting aspect of the graphical component of Los Agachados is its use of borrowed graphics, which offered a counterpoint to Rius's flat and simple style. Rius favoured nineteenth-century graphic art, but also employed Aztec glyphs, mediaeval woodcuts, and graphics from Mexico's Graphic Arts Workshop.

Rius abandoned historietas during the early 1980s, in order to concentrate on writing books, of which he has published over 100. Rius was the creator of the “For Beginners” format, and has written books on Marx, Cuba, nutrition, Mao, education, “dirty” words, and capitalism, to name but a handful of his interests. He is still an active and trenchant critic of the status quo, although his politics have become less dogmatically left-wing over the years.

As well as being a force in his own right, Rius has had some influence on the cartoonists who have followed him, if not in stylistic terms, then at least in terms of irreverence, and a fearless willingness to attack Mexico's sacred cows. Cartoonists such as Rafael Barajas (El Fisgón), and Guadalajara's Jis, and Trino have accepted the baton from Rius and ensure that Mexico's satirical tradition is in safe hands.

— Bob Agnew

Websites

*** Macías, Rocío, “Rius a cien libros de distancia”

Maldonado Valera, Carlos F., “Rius: reír, educar, y (por un tiempo) endoctrinar”

Priego, Ernesto, “The History of Mankind for Beginners (Interview: Rius/Eduardo del Río)”, School Library Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, (April 2002)

Sánchez, Nelly, “Eduardo del Río, Rius: Un monero irreverente”

Books and Articles

Aguilar Zinser, Carmen, “La historieta surge del códice prehispánico y origen obras de arte”, Excelsior, (México), 10 October 1971, Section 2B, pp. 1-2.

Alba, Victor, “The Mexican Revolution and the Cartoon”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 9, (1966-1967), pp. 121-137.

Alocer, Marta and Molina, Alicia, “Mexican Comics as Culture Industry” in Herausgegeben von Alphons Silbermann and H.-D. Dyroff (eds.), Comics and Visual Culture. Research Studies from Ten Countries, München, K. G. Saur, 1986, pp. 196-212.

Aurrecoechea, Juan Manuel and Bartra, Armando, Puros cuentos. La historia de la historieta mexicana 1874-1934, México, Grijalbo, 1988.

Barajas, Rafael, “The Transformative Power of Art. Mexico's Combat Cartoonists”, NACLA, Volume 33, Number 6 (May/June 2000), pp. 6-14.

Butler Flora, Cornelia, “Roasting Donald Duck: Alternative Comics and Photonovels in Latin America”, Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 18, Number 1, (Summer 1984), pp. 163-186.

Cornejo, Leobardo, “Semiótica de Los Supermachos y Los Agachados de Rius” in David Alfie (ed.), El comic es algo serio, México, Ediciones Eufesa, 1982, pp. 120-129.

del Río García, Eduardo (Rius), Rius para principiantes, México, Grijalbo, 1995.

Foster, David William, From Mafalda to Los Supermachos. Latin American Graphic Humour as Popular Culture, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989.

García, Elvira, La caricatura en seis trazos, México, Unidad Iztapalapa, 1983.

Herner, Irene, Mitos y monitos. Historietas y fotonovelas en México, México, Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1979.

Hinds Jr., Harold E. and Tatum, Charles M. (eds.), Not Just For Children. The Mexican Comic Book in the Late 1960s and 1970s, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1992.

Hinds Jr., Harold E., “Comics” in Harold E. Hinds Jr. and Charles M. Tatum (eds.), Handbook of Latin American Popular Culture, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1985, pp. 81-111.

Horn, Maurice, “Recent Mexican Scholarship on Comics”, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Volume 2, (1983), pp. 208-213.

Jones, Errol D., “Rius: Still a Thorn in the Side of the Mexican Establishment”, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Volume 12, (1993), pp. 221-228.

Procter, Phyllis Ann Wiegand, Mexico's Supermachos: Satire and Social Revolution in Comics by Rius, Ph. D dissertation (unpublished), University of Texas at Austin, 1972.

Rius, La vida de cuadritos. Breve guía a la historieta, México, Grijalbo, 1983.

Rubenstein, Anne, Bad Language, Naked Ladies and other Threats to the Nation. A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico, Durham, Duke University Press, 1998.

Schmidt, Samuel, “Elitelore in Politics: Humour vs. Mexico's Presidents”, Journal of Latin American Lore, Volume 16, Number 1, (1990), pp. 91-108.

Speck, Paula K., “Rius for Beginners: a Study in Comic Book Satire”, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Volume 1, (1982), pp. 113-125.

Tatum, Charles, “Rius: Comic Book Writer as Social Critic and Political Gadfly” in Roderic Ai Camp, Charles A. Hale, Josefina Zoraida Vásquez (eds.), Intellectuals and Power in Mexico, Los Angeles, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1991, pp. 765-781.

Tatum, Chuck and Hinds, Harold, “Eduardo del Río (Rius): an Interview and Introductory Essay”, Chasqui, Volume 9, Number 1, (November 1979), pp. 3-23.