Who is ... Tehuana Mama?

Alicia Contreras de Ortiz -- a Zapotec amazon better known as Tehuana Mama -- joins the cast of Gordo as the Lopez family's housekeeper in April of 1967. Indominable matriarch of an expansive clan of children and grandchildren, "Mama" brings a much-neglected regular female character to Gordo's cast of wily "gorls," ogled turistas, and the scheming Widow Gonzalez. 

Tehuana Mama is first mentioned April 12, when schoolteacher Miss Ruiz cancels a program which offered extra credit to students willing to take work as housekeepers -- a program with a problem when it comes to the enthusiastically over-gallant Lopez men entertaining a pretty maid. Miss Ruiz sets the boys straight:

Mama appears in the following episode, and makes life difficult for the languorous Lopezes with her strict schedule. 

Gordo and Pepito try to wrest control of their lives back from Mama with a series of schemes -- including pretending to take off for the Mexico Olympics a year in advance, and pleading poverty -- but family comes first for Mama:

Mama doesn't return to the strip until 1970, although she may have been playing on Arriola's mind a little earlier. A Tehuantepec woman appears in this strip from late 1969:

Pepito leaves for college in 1969, which makes Gordo's empty home and larder an easy target for his freeloading friends. When Gordo rehires Mama in January 1970, it's on a more-or-less permanent basis -- and, this time, with a romantic undertone, as well!

Mama settles in immediately as Del Monte's resident domestic goddess, particularly in the Sunday pages where she shines as the benevolent caretaker of Pepito's pets. 

Mama even adds a couple of new supporting characters of her own, first her grandson Trailing Arbutus, in May 1970:

And her knockout daughter Inocencia, in April 1973, who fills in as Gordo's housekeeper while Mama recovers from the flu:

Although disapproving of the aging Gordo's pursuit of younger women, Mama is not immune to the old gallo's charm. In the final two weeks of strips in February of 1985, Gordo escapes the clutches of The Widow Gonzalez one final and permanent time -- by finally ending his eligible bachelorhood one and for all, proposing to and dashing off to marry Tehuana Mama.