Rius

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Rius in 2016.

Eduardo Humberto del Río García (born June 20, 1934 in Zamora de Hidalgo , Michoacán ; † August 8, 2017 in Tepoztlán , Morelos ) known by his stage name Rius , was a Mexican humorist , political cartoonist and author .

Life

Del Rio's father died when the son was only six months old. The single mother moved with her three sons from the provincial town of Zamora to her sister in Mexico City in order to find better ways to support the family. Like his brothers, del Río attended a Salesian seminary after five years in a church elementary school , which he left after seven years in 1950. His brother Gustavo, who was three years his senior, had already drawn caricatures and comics, but decided to continue his priestly training. After various odd jobs, Eduardo del Río later worked as an administrative clerk in a funeral home. In 1954 he accidentally met the director of the humor magazine Ja-já , who noticed his sketches and who then invited him to work. As a result, he published drawings in various magazines and newspapers as an autodidact, mainly on current political issues. He chose his stage name "Rius" as the Latinization of his family name.

Del Río was active as an active member from 1964 onwards in the Marxist-Leninist Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM), which he left in 1968 in protest against the crackdown on the Prague Spring . Even before joining the party, he had traveled to the Soviet Union, where he was invited after he left.

Rius characters at a museum in Mexico City

In addition to his political work in Mexico, he had a special relationship with Cuba: even before the victory of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, he had supported Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement as a political cartoonist from Mexico after he had made friends with some Cubans in exile . Shortly after Fulgencio Batista's flight , he traveled to Havana in 1959 at the invitation of the revolutionary government. He deepened his contacts, subsequently worked for government-owned media and publishers, and supported the revolutionary political project with a total of three books. Cuba para principiantes (“Cuba for Beginners”, 1966), his first book publication, was commissioned by the Communist Party of Mexico: del Río undertook the work with two other Mexican journalists, who were each responsible for the text and the photographs of the originally planned book three research trips supported by the Cuban authorities, including a two-hour interview with Che Guevara . Only when his colleagues later dropped out and the book project threatened to fail did del Río decide to implement the information collected alone and in his own style. After the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe , Rius expressly distanced himself from Castro and, following a trip to Cuba with Lástima de Cuba in 1993, contrasted his early explanatory book with a decided criticism of the authoritarian head of state and the dictatorial system he had established .

In the 1980s, del Río was active in the socialist Partido Mexicano de los Trabajadores and went to Nicaragua as a volunteer reconstruction worker after the victory of the Sandinista over the right-wing Somoza dictatorship . He then published Carlos para todos , an explanatory comic about the FSLN founder and the symbolic figure of the revolutionary guerrilla, Carlos Fonseca .

In Mexico he supported the narrowly failed presidential election campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador ( PRD ) in 2006 .

plant

The Mexican Abel Quezada and the originally Romanian American Saul Steinberg belonged to del Río's formative graphic models . As one of the most popular Mexican cartoonists, Rius has published over 100 books. He criticized the powerful in politics and society, particularly often targeting right-wing Mexican politicians, but also US foreign policy, powerful business enterprises and the Catholic Church. His success and long career have made him a point of reference for the newer generation of political cartoonists in Mexico.

In addition to being a political press illustrator, he also worked as a book author and publisher of his own comics. His anti-government comic series Los Supermachos , launched in 1965 - it reached a weekly circulation of 250,000 copies - he ended in 1967 after differences with the publisher, who had made changes several times without consulting the artist and even other illustrators had already made their own episodes of the series had commissioned. Since del Río was prevented by legal means from the further use of the characters established by him at another publisher, he instead developed the socially critical comic series Los Agachados ("The Underdogs"), which he successfully published from 1968 to 1981 published under own responsibility.

His first book publication, the cartoon Cuba para principiantes ("Cuba for Beginners") from 1966, was the first in a series of humorous and didactic explanatory books that were widely distributed, including Lenin para principiantes , Mao para principiantes and above all Marx para principiantes ( 1972), which has been published in Germany since 1974 as Karl Marx Giant Comic and Marx for Beginners in several editions. His novel combination of partisanship and humor in the genre of the knowledge-imparting non-fiction comic attracted international attention and numerous imitations.

From April 1977, at the invitation of the publicist Paco Ignacio Taibo I, he created a weekly supplement for the daily newspaper El Universal , which was specifically aimed at children and encouraged them to explore and communicate with a wide variety of topics. He was released eight months after dedicating an issue to the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union.

In his typical cartoon style, he also wrote two autobiographies : First in 1995 Memorial: Rius para principiantes (“Notebook: Rius for Beginners”), which he updated in 2014 under the title Mis confusiones: Memorias desmemorizadas (“My confusions: forgotten memories”). The Mexican director Alfonso Arau made a film in 1973 based on characters from Los Supermachos under the title Calzonzin inspector .

In 1996, he and four partners founded the bi- weekly satirical magazine El Chamuco y los hijos del averno. In the 2011 Christmas edition he announced that he would retire after a total of 57 years of work. He was twice awarded the Mexican National Prize for Journalism: in 1987 for best cartoonist and in 2010 for his life's work as a journalist.

Books (selection)

  • ¿Cuándo se empezó a xor Méjico? , Grijalbo, Mexico 2015
  • Mis confusiones: Memorias desmemorizadas , Grijalbo, Mexico 2014
  • Lástima de Cuba: El grandioso fracaso de los hermanos Castro , Grijalbo, Mexico 1993
  • The illustrated Communist Manifesto , Weltkreis, Dortmund 1984
  • Capital Crimes , Weltkreis, Dortmund 1984,
  • Hello Nicaragua , Weltkreis, Dortmund 1983,
  • AB-Che , Elefanten-Press, Berlin (West) 1982
  • Mao for beginners , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1980,
  • Marx for beginners , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1979
  • Karl Marx, giant comic , Diwan, Berlin (West) 1974

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fallce el caricaturista Eduardo del Río, “Rius” . El Universal , August 8, 2017, accessed August 8, 2017 (Spanish).
  2. ^ Rius: Rius para principiantes. Grijalbo, Mexico 1995, pp. 10-17 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ a b c Agustín Sánchez González: Eduardo Humberto del Río García y monos que lo acompañan, in: Confabulario of December 3, 2016, accessed on January 8, 2017 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ a b c Rosario Reyes: Rius, el cultivador del humor, in: El Financiero from June 25, 2014, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Álvaro Cepeda Neri: Las “Memorias desmemoriadas de Rius”, alias Eduardo del Río García, in: Contralínea of August 3, 2014, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  6. ↑ Rius, un humorista sin partido que sigue siendo marxista, un marxista vegetariano que descree de soluciones para el mundo, se retira del periodismo in: Proceso of September 6, 1997, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  7. ↑ Lástima de Cuba, on the artist's homepage, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Rodrigo Moya: Dos horas con el Che hace cuarenta años. in: La Jornada, October 8, 2004, accessed January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  9. ↑ Raúl H. Mora: Rius en Nicaragua, in: Proceso of August 8, 1987, accessed on January 9, 2017 (Spanish)
  10. ↑ Mis super machos, on the artist's homepage, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  11. ↑ Carsten Prien: The big bluff: A new series of infocomics wants to explain a lot with little text, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of June 20, 2011, p. 12
  12. ↑ Eva Horvatic: knowledge in property Comic (in TibiaPress publisher), in: Media impulses 4/2013, accessed on January 6, 2017
  13. ↑ Así es Rius , on the artist's homepage, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
  14. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0069836/
  15. ↑ Aviso de mediana urgencia, in: El Chamuco of December 24, 2011, accessed on January 6, 2017 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Rius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES del Río García, Eduardo Humberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican intellectual, political cartoonist and author
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Zamora de Hidalgo , Michoacan
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 2017
Place of death Tepoztlán , Morelos