Latino Radio in LA Area

NYT, April 1, 2006,  Live, From Burbank, Calif., Hispanic Indignation By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, March 31 The jokes kept coming: skits loaded with bleeped-out vulgarisms about wasting food at buffets and people who snore too loudly, a prank call to an event organizer trying to finagle an invitation, hijinks enhanced by sound effects befitting a radio-show whose host is nicknamed El Mandril, or the Baboon.

But then El Mandril from a studio at KBUE-FM in suburban Burbank adorned with posters of him in the flowery dresses and purple-and-orange wigs of his radio alter egos interrupted his morning drive-time zoo on Friday for a message from his conscience.

With the flip of a switch, literally and figuratively, he changed the tenor of his show, one of the most popular Spanish-language radio programs in Los Angeles.

The laughter subsided and the ranchera music faded as El Mandril opened the telephone line and took a call from a demonstration organizer in San Diego calling to say that more than 1,000 local students had skipped school to protest immigration legislation before Congress, part of a wave of such demonstrations in Southern California this past week.

“I understand you also are going to Tijuana to drum up interest there,” said El Mandril, whose real name is Ricardo Sanchez, one of a handful of radio-show hosts here credited with steering hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters into the streets of downtown Los Angeles last weekend.

Now, the question for Mr. Sanchez and his allies is what comes next. Mr. Sanchez pondered that and decided to continue to fan the flames, this week inviting to his program activists pushing for more demonstrations and a nationwide boycott on May 1 that would call on all Latino immigrants, legal or not, to skip work and avoid buying anything.

His guests on Friday morning included representatives from Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an advocacy group hoping to turn out thousands of people on Saturday in Costa Mesa to protest plans by the police to help enforce immigration laws, a move organizers see as an affront to Latino immigrants there.

But Mr. Sanchez is trying to balance his inner demands with the expectations of his more than one million listeners who want a fun show, and that of outside advocates, who want more attention for one of the largest mobilizations of Latinos in years.

KJ