At just 6 years old, Marcos Gutiérrez was already selling lemons door to door, carrying a small bucket through the streets of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, never imagining that one day he would have the opportunity to "give a voice to the whole world" through his radio show "Made in California" which has managed to reach an audience of more than 70 thousand people every day in the Golden State.
Although he arrived in El Paso, Texas, when he was just 13 years old, the now famous announcer was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where he was restless from a young age, "always looking for action, I like to move. I compare myself to a shark, in fact, I work at home and I do it standing up," said Marcos Gutiérrez in an interview with Península 360 Press.
He liked to ride his bike on the wrong path and get home late, which caused him problems, especially with his father, who, in the words of the announcer himself, was a man of great discipline, "one of the old-fashioned ones, really."
Marcos has three older siblings, two girls and one boy, but when he was 13, “a little sister arrived and took my crown.” His parents were born in the U.S. but met in Ciudad Juárez, which allowed him to obtain both nationalities.
He learned English at a Catholic school, from which he and his siblings were expelled due to bad behavior. He later went to a school where the majority of students were African-American, where he says he "had a tough time," because discrimination for being from Juárez, Mexico, and not knowing English caused them problems and once again, they had to leave that school.
Finally, they arrived at a technical high school, where half of the classes were theoretical and the other part practical, and there he was attracted to the printing press, his first approach to the media.
By 1966 he had graduated, his father was doing well financially, Marco says, however, he wanted his children to start working after finishing high school, so in the summer he got a job, where for six weeks he cleaned train car gutters, however, it wasn't his thing and he decided to return to school, an idea he had not previously considered.
Western Texas University was a turning point. Without knowing what to study yet, "I was about to decide what my career would be when I was sitting there on a bench and I heard a student radio station, and there was a woman interviewing someone... and I said wow! I can do that... I have a passable voice and that's how I immediately said, I'm going to see where this station comes from," he said.
At the age of 20, he began working at a student station, where he also got a job as a DJ at a music club called "The Zoo" in El Paso, Texas, where one of the owners was an ad salesman at a popular local radio station, who offered him a job as a DJ.
"We're talking about a time when there wasn't a Latino, much less a Mexican, on the radio in the United States."
And even though at that time El Paso, Texas, had a 60 percent Latino population, the media did not include them in their programming, much less in their talent.
"He understood the market, he played the music that we Mexicans liked and he sees me at the Zoo, I say a few words and I play the music, he takes a risk and hires me. I was the first Latino in El Paso, Texas, as a DJ on an English-language station."
By 1970, Marcos had already developed as a DJ and was popular.
However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of Marco's important moments in the media would have come, due to the violent demonstrations that took place in various parts of the United States due to attacks against the African-American community.
A fact that caused a revolution even in the media, which until then had covered up or not covered what was really happening on the streets with minority communities.
This forced radio and television stations to study the challenges facing the communities, analyze the problems and program for that group of residents.
On January 4, 1970, he set out for San Francisco, where he began to look for work of any kind. After holding down several jobs, the opportunity came that took him to the top.
«At that time, since there weren't many Latinos in the media, I was a unique person because I had already taken not only classes and studied communications, but I also had experience, and one of the Mission districts in San Francisco held auditions among a lot of people to find a producer and a host, and it was my turn. And from then on, that gave me the luxury of being one of the first to have a bilingual program for Latinos in San Francisco,» he said.
From there, he moved to Channel 4 on NBC with the program "Alma de Bronce", then to Channel 5 CBS with the program "Sol es Vida", and 14 years passed where he spent his time doing television, before returning to radio.
She decides to return to her studies and completes university, a master's degree and a doctorate in media.
«As Latinos, no one is going to make the appropriate programming that we need, if we do not move it will not happen, there will not be the programming that we are looking for and that can help us in the community, and based on this program, the opportunity is given to rent air time in San Francisco to create "Hecho en California"with programming that, I believe, is serving the community and finding Latino sponsors to work with us."
Marcos Gutiérrez has new plans, as he is already preparing a book about his life and hopes to have it in bookstores in 2023.
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