René Ríos Boettiger ( Concepción, 15 December 1911 — 14 July 2000), also known as Pepo, was a Chilean cartoonist, creator of the famous character

Condorito ''Condorito'' (''Little Condor'' in Spanish) is a Chilean comic book and comic strip that features an anthropomorphic condor living in a fictitious town named Pelotillehue—a typical small Chilean provincial town. He is meant to be a representat ...

. He has been credited as the most prominent Chilean graphic humorist of the 20th century.

Biography

He was the son of the marriage of Amanda Boettiger Krause and the doctor René Ríos Guzmán. He published his first cartoon at the age of 7 in the newspaper ''

El Sur Sur or SUR or El Sur (Spanish "the South") may refer to: Geography * Sur or Shur (Bible), the wilderness of Sur/Shur from the Book of Exodus * Sur (river), a river of Bavaria, Germany * Súr, a village in Hungary * Sur, a district of the city of ...

'' of Concepción. Encouraged by his father, he continued with his drawings until he held his first exhibition, at the age of 10, at the Palet confectionery in his city. Although he studied medicine at the

Universidad de Concepción Universidad (Spanish for "university") may refer to: Places * Universidad, San Juan, Puerto Rico * Universidad (Madrid) Football clubs * Universidad SC, a Guatemalan football club that represents the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala ...

, Rios abandoned his studies in the early 1930s to devote all his time to creating his cartoons. In 1932 he moved to

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

to work as a cartoonist at the satirical magazine ''Topaze''. Adopting the pseudonym "Pepo" (from ''pepón'', "little barrel", his childhood nickname), he created the comic strip ''Don Gabito'' for the magazine, a strip featuring a caricatured Chilean president

Gabriel González Videla Gabriel Enrique González Videla (; November 22, 1898 – August 22, 1980) was a Chilean politician and lawyer who served as the 24th president of Chile from 1946 to 1952. He had previously been a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 193 ...

. He also caricatured president Pedro Aguirre Cerda as ''Don Pedrito''. In 1949 he created

, his most famous character, taking the idea from the condor of the Chilean coat of arms. Over the next sixty years Rios contributed cartoons to a great number of publications, including ''El Pingüino'', ''Ganso'', ''Pobre Diablo'', ''Can Can'', ''Pichanga'', ''El Saquero'', ''El Peneca'', and branched out into other forms of illustration as well. Rios died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 88. A great lover of the seaside, Rios often drew while looking at the sea at

El Quisco El Quisco is a Chilean city and commune in San Antonio Province, Valparaíso Region. Located in the country's central coast, it serves as a popular summer resort for the population of Santiago and forms part of the Coast of Poets, a cultural spa ...

on the Chilean Central Coast. A statue of

now stands at the location. In 2000, an effort led by Omar Pérez Santiago (a scholar of Chilean cartooning and a co-founder of the academic Chilean Center for Comics) resulted in a sculpture of Condorito memorializing Rios being installed in the Chilean House of Culture in San Miguel.

References

External links

Condorito official site

Condorito Video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pepo 1911 births 2000 deaths Chilean cartoonists Chilean comics writers Chilean comics artists People from Concepción, Chile University of Concepción alumni Chilean people of German descent Deaths from cancer in Chile