06 · 14 · 22

Jorge Arriaga… El Tuerto

Rafael Aviña

Preceded by the phrases: “Yo soy el asesino…Yo maté a la usurera”, “Pepe El Toro es inocente…” ["I am the murderer...I killed the loan shark", “Pepe El Toro is innocent...”], this is perhaps the most representative expression in the history of Mexican cinema. A dialogue referred to by one of the most prolific and forgotten supporting actors of Mexican cinema: Jorge Arriaga, born in Morelia, Michoacán, in 1915 and died in abandonment and absolute poverty in a neighborhood in Mexico City in 1973. From a very young age, in the late thirties, Arriaga began to frequent film studios when the film industry began to make significant progress and, as a result, he soon found work, getting small roles in titles such as Refugiados en Madrid, Canto a mi tierra, Virgen de medianoche, Beautiful Michoacan or La feria de las flores, which launched another novice actor with whom Arriaga would soon star in that famous scene of the above mentioned dialogue: Pedro Infante.

Directors such as Alejandro Galindo and Ismael Rodríguez served in a way as godfathers to Arriaga, who used to appear in several of their films. In Konga roja he was one of the henchmen of the villainous Carlos López Moctezuma; in Esquina bajan, one of the thugs of the corrupt truck driver leader played by Víctor Parra; in Four Against the World, a police detective, and again a thug in Confidencias de un ruletero for Adalberto Martínez Resortes, as well as in Dicen que soy comunista, where Arriaga played comrade Buenaventura: all by Galindo.

However, it was under Ismael's direction where Arriaga not only found an unexpected triumph, but, unusually, this success brought him enormous public conflicts, including a curious lynching attempt in the city of Puebla. After appearing in another of his films: Cuando lloran los valientes, in the role of a military man, Ismael commissioned him to play the character of Ledo, a murderous criminal, in his 1947 anthology Nosotros los pobres, a year in which Arriaga made eight films, among them Juan Orol's El reino de los gángsters and Galindo's El muchacho alegre.

In Nosotros los pobres, Ledo stabs to death a loan shark played by Conchita Gentil Arcos and, as a result, the protagonist Pedro Infante, Pepe “El Toro”, is accused of the murder and locked up in the Lecumberri penitentiary. There, in a punishment cell, Infante manages to eliminate two of Ledo's henchmen in a brutal fight and leaves Ledo one-eyed by stabbing him in the eye with a piece of wood from a chair. He bends his arm and with his eye emptied and bloodied, he forces him to put his face in an air vent where Ledo desperately shouts: “¡Ya no por favor! ¡Ayyyy! ¡Ayyyy! ¡Yo soy el asesino¡ ¡Yo maté a la usurera! ¡Pepe El Toro es inocente!” [“No more, please! ¡Ayyyyyy! ¡Ayyyyyy! I am the murderer! I killed the loan shark! Pepe El Toro is innocent!”], before the surprised gaze of one of the policemen played by the secondary actor José Ortega.

The matter did not end there. A year later, in 1948, with twelve films shot throughout the year and the continuation of that film: Ustedes los ricos, by Ismael himself, Jorge Arriaga, with an overgrown beard and an eye patch, throws Jesús García “El Camellito”, the hunchbacked lottery salesman, under the wheels of a streetcar in one of the most atrocious sequences of a film ahead of gore cinema and its bloody scenes. Even worse, Ledo, now nicknamed El Tuerto, with the help of his brother, played by the always effective José Muñoz, sets fire to Pepe's carpentry shop, where his little first-born son El Torito (the child Emilio Girón) is charred to death. Of course, his perversity deserves a punishment to match, and El Tuerto ends up crashing to the pavement of Juárez Avenue, falling from the top of the Federal Electricity Commission building, in his attempt to murder Pepe “El Toro”, trampling his hands as he hangs from the cornice of the building, in this brutal display of a singular aesthetic of violence in an unusual film.

Ustedes los ricos had a successful premiere on December 31, 1948 at the Palacio Chino, and premiered on January 22, 1949 at the Rex cinema to begin a triumphant exhibition in second and third run theaters. A few months later, Jorge Arriaga was walking through Puebla when he was recognized by some spectators who began to insult him and later stoned him because of the “infamies committed against Pedro Infante”, and the police had to intervene. This hate of the fans towards his character of Ledo accompanied him for a long time. Arriaga participated in more than one hundred films; he acted alongside all the greats of cinema and in all genres as shown in: Las calaveras del terror, Los misterios del hampa, Rosenda, Yo soy charro de levita, Lluvia roja, Quinto patio, El beisbolista fenómeno, Espaldas mojadas or La sombra vengador and its sequel, where he plays the role of a Mexican Secret Service agent. He died in the solitude of his small apartment like that cell in Nosotros los pobres where he molded his unforgettable character.

Translated by Adrik Díaz