Chucho Chilango answers the phone. His voice is quiet, almost a mumble. Wary the FCC might
be listening and trying to shut down Radio Libre again, he said he'd rather not answer questions
over the phone.
Three hours later the pirate radio DJ walks into a Mission District Cafe in the heart of this Latino
Neighborhood in San Francisco. He's with a friend who's carrying a guitar. Chilango's ready to
talk about his "Sacrichingo Show" on 103.3. At Radio Libre, Chilango says, "we sacrifice the
demons of information," he says as he nods to his friend that it's OK to leave. Maybe it's just
one last precaution before he begins to trust his interviewer. Despite his cautious behavior,
Chilango refuses to think of Radio Libre as an illegal entity. "Just like a community has its
newspapers and community centers, they should also have their own radio stations," he says
while sipping hot apple cider.
His show is broadcast on Sundays between four-to-six in the back room of a grey Victorian in the
heart of the Mission District. On the way back to the makeshift station, an odor in the kitchen
hints of sour milk. Bike frames are strewn throughout the flat. This is Radio Libre's temporary
home, but it's so packed it looks like the station's DJs have been here a lot longer. The room is
crowded, littered with crates of records, speakers, a conga and a grey couch with a guitar case
sitting on top of it. In the corner there's a blanket posing as a curtain in front of a broken
window. Bits of glass fall to the ground below between conversations.
Chilango wears his long black hair in a ponytail and has skin the color of toasted clay. He's
adorned with eight silver rings on his fingers and two earrings on each ear. His eyes are a deep
black so he doesn't give away his thoughts. His speech is a monotone. "We offer an alternative, a
different point of view than what you get in the mainstream media," says Chilango. On his show
he tackles political and social themes, and information pertinent to the Latino community. He
also plays music that provides social commentary. But on some Sundays, just for kicks, he plays
mambos and the classic old jams that would have your abuelita dancing in her rocking chair.
Although Stephen Dunifer created the first station in the Bay Area, Latino voices were
broadcasting in no time. From Watsonville to Sacramento, the list of the stations continues to
grow. The station's names, Radio X, Radio Zapata, Radio Libre, hint at their status as mini radio
revolutions. Radio Libre is a bilingual station broadcasting at thirty watts, which is the average
wattage of a microbroadcaster. While the names connote the same sentiment as the stations in
Latin America, that's where the similarities end. Those stations aided the revolutionary armies.
Radio Rebelde in Cuba was instrumental in the overthrow of the Batista Regime. Fidel Castro
used the radio to broadcast information about battles and give reports about soldiers who were
injured or dead. Radio Venceremos of El Salvador transmitted from ditches in the mountains of
Morazan. Today they still broadcast and are legal. These radio stations gave a voice to each
revolution. They were not censored and they eluded capture.
Subcomandante Marcos, of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, transmitting from the
jungle through a clandestine radio station in 1994, let the people of Chiapas know exactly where
they stood. "We are shadows of tender fury; our dark wings will cover the sky again, and their
protective cloak will shelter the dispossessed and the good men and women who understand that
justice and peace go hand in hand. If they deny us our rights, then our tender fury will enter those
fine mansions. There will be no fence our shadows will not jump over; no door will be left
unopened, no window left unbroken, no wall left standing. Our shadow will bring pain to those
who call for war and death for our race; more tears and blood will flow before peace can sit down
at our table with good will. FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! JUSTICE!"
But while those radio stations served the oppressed of their countries they should not be confused
with the stations here in the United States. "We are not clandestine or subversive at all. What we
do is provide an alternative to the garbage that you hear on the mainstream press," says Lalo
Rangal, who has a show on Free Radio Berkeley every Sunday. In the future, he would like to
have a mobile radio station in the back of a van. He would take this station to the people and
broadcast there, whether it be in the rural areas or in the urban areas. Rangal's a little
disappointed with his show on the Berkeley station. He says there's only an eight percent Latino
population and his show is in Spanish, so he doesn't have the numbers he'd like. His shows are a
battle against the Latino stereotype. "We're not all Mexicans," says Rangal refuting the
stereotype. "We're a very able and varied people." To contradict the mainstream radio stations,
he plays music from the whole Latin American region, not just Mexico.
In October of 1996, amid heat from the FCC their nervous landlord evicted the station and four
of its DJs from their Mission District home. It took the group four months to find another, albeit
temporary home. The FCC tried to slap fines on four people who were in the house at the time
and refused to let the agents of the FCC in. The FCC then wrote a letter to these people; it said
they were in violation of the law and could be put in prison for up to a year or fined up to
$100,000. It also accused the individuals of conspiracy.
"Where is the minority community gonna get access if it's not through micropowered radio,"
says Steven Dunifer of Free Radio Berkeley."The media resources have dwindled down. The
minority community is under-represented and can't fight back." Jennifer Navarro, who has
traveled all the way down to El Salvador delivering and helping set up stations says, "That's
what I like about pirate radio, we're not asking anyone for shit. We're doing it ourselves ... I see
[micropowered radio] as a tool, a big responsibility." She would like to see a radio station that
reflects the community, but it would be hard to say exactly what a Latino community looks like
because it's so diverse. "I don't want to hear just activists. I want to see housewives, I want to
see kids. If it's for the community, then it should reflect the community."
Jose Ibarra, of Radio Zapata in Salinas, has a station which reflects his community. The station
goes on at the crack of dawn because it serves a migrant worker community. His DJs are seasonal
because they are part of that community. Radio Zapata offers less programming at the end of
Summer. This is when all the migrant workers follow the crops elsewhere or return home. Radio
Zapata is one micropowered station where the FCC won't have to worry about profanity. "On
mainstream radio they glorify drugs, gangs and sex because that's what sells," says Ibarra."That
culture no longer has any dignity ... We don't play pop music. We play traditional, indigenous
and revolutionary music that is popular to us.'" "We have felt that the viejos (elders) were being
excluded from programming, our job is to keep their music alive ... It's a very important job we
have," says Ibarra. But that's just the music they play.
Radio Zapata also offers a wide variety of news and views from a Zapatista point of view and
also what's going on in the community around them. "A person has to be aware of their rights ... We have to know who's bothering us." Sometimes he uses a bit of comedy to get his point
across. Ibarra tells of the person who doesn't want to worry about anything. "'O.K., O.K, but I
don't want to think,'' he says. "But later they're worried about so and so on la novela,
(pobrecito)." It's a criticism that his community would rather watch soap operas then deal with
real issues. It's a little bit of sugar and a lot of truth.
In early 1997 Radio Zapata had to shut its doors. A court order denied them access to their P.O.
Box. Since it was Winter and their audience had moved either back to their countries or to follow
the crops elsewhere, Radio Zapata made a conscious decision to close down its radio station and
wait for its audience to come back in the Spring. "It wasn't much of a decision to close down ...
Nobody would've responded for us, so we took that time to reorganize the people," Ibarra says,
so that when their audience came back in the middle of March they would have a regenerated
radio station. If they need to elude the FCC they are sure their audience will provide homes for
them. An FM signal is easy to detect for the FCC, but it is also very mobile. He says they will
bounce around from house to house in order to elude capture. Meanwhile they are saving their
money for an AM transmitter, which is much harder for the FCC to detect. But also it is much
heavier, thus harder to move around. Ibarra's criticism of his peers in the micropowered world of
radio are that sometimes they tend to not serve their communities. "If the music is similar to that
of a mainstream station, then it's just another station," Ibarra says. The mainstream is exactly
what Radio Zapata is fighting against. "We are struggling for what is just," says Ibarra.
Another person who has bought a transmitter from Dunifer and will start a station in the near
future is Robert Gandera c/s. He has experience working on micropowered radio. He used to do a
show called "La Hora Sabrosa" on a station run by the Friends of the Nation. He plays strictly
Salsa because up in Sacramento there are too many stations playing Banda said the man whose
speech is littered with what you might call veteranoisms or cholo speak. He plans to start his
station in late 1997, "I plan to call it 'La Tuya FCC,''' jokes the one time activist. For his radio
station he would like organizations to come in and create their own shows. While some of the
programs are messages to organize and fight back a lot of the music on the air is Hip-Hop.
Myke1 and L.O.C. are young DJs practicing their routines to perform at the clubs where they
spin their records. The radio station serves to get their names out into the neighborhood.
Certainly nothing socially conscious about that, but the beats they play wouldn't normally be on
the radio. "This is straight up underground flavor," says L.O.C. R. Love reads the news from the
barrio while Myke1 and L.O.C. mix. Although she just recently realized it, Radio Libre serves as
kind of an internship for the broadcasting degree she seeks from San Francisco State. R. Love
stands at five three, her hair is long and straight. When she talks, she looks you right in the eye,
as if trying to read your sincerity. She is 26 but looks about 19. She speaks fast and with a
passion that only comes from doing something you love, something worthwhile. "I love doing
pirate radio," she says with conviction. At Radio X in San Francisco Camila who refused to give
her last name says it is very empowering to hear people like yourself on the radio. "Now we have
access to means of communication ... we can talk about our community especially in a racist
society ... We can talk about events that don't make it into the mainstream press."
What rings true for most of these people is that the mainstream sells us nothing but garbage and
consumerism. They want to provide an alternative. An alternative that isn't driven by the
advertisers search for the buck. In this decade of California's anti-immigration, anti-Affirmative
Action backlash and the Federal Welfare Reform Act, this whole country needs a different point
of view. Micropowered radio stations and their DJs have the guts to offer this different view. In
this day and age where we're glutted with news shows, the community media outlets become a
necessity. I think for Latinos it's a way to address the problems of their community and a way to
fight back.
