MEXICO CITY – Painter and cartoonist Gabriel Vargas, creator of a comic strip that reflects the daily struggles of a typical Mexico City resident and has remained popular for more than six decades, has died, his secretary, Guadalupe Lopez, told Efe. He was 95.

Vargas died at home on Tuesday.

“Don Gabriel has died ... of natural causes. He didn’t suffer from chronic diseases, nor diabetes, nor heart (trouble). His body was just tired,” Lopez said.

In addition to creating several comic strips, the most famous of which was “La Familia Burron,” Vargas was also a plastic artist and a sketcher and painter who employed a variety of techniques, but “as he would say, he was only known for his (comics),” Lopez said.

He was hired while still an adolescent at the Excelsior newspaper, where he began to publish his drawings.

La Familia Burron first appeared in 1948 and has become an entrenched part of Mexican culture, reflecting the life of the capital’s lower-income residents through its dozens of characters.

The comic strip’s success is attributed to its accurate depiction of the daily challenges and concerns of a typical working-class family in a downtown Mexico City neighborhood.

Among other awards, Vargas won the National Sciences and Arts Prize in 2003. EFE