At the age of 6, Marcos Gutiérrez was already selling lemons door to door, with a small bucket he traveled the streets of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, without imagining that one day he would have the opportunity to "give voice to the whole world" through his radio program "Hecho en California" which has reached an audience of more than 70 thousand people every day in the golden state.
Although he arrived in El Paso, Texas at the age of 13, the now famous broadcaster was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where he was restless since he was a child, "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 Peninsula 360 Press.
On his bicycle he liked to take the road to get home late, which caused him problems, especially with his father, who, in the announcer's own words, was a man of great discipline "of the old-fashioned kind, the real thing".
Marcos has 3 siblings older than him, two girls and a boy, but at the age of 13 "a little sister arrives and takes the crown away from me". His parents were born in the U.S. but met in Ciudad Juarez, which allowed him to obtain both nationalities.
He learned English in a Catholic school, from which, along with his siblings, he was expelled due to bad behavior, to later enter a school where most of the students were African-American, where he says he "had a hard time", because the discrimination for being from Juarez, 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 half practical, where he was attracted to printing, his first approach to the media.
By 1966 he had graduated, his father was not doing badly financially, says Marco, however, he wanted his children to start working when they finished high school, so in the summer he got a job, where for six weeks he cleaned train car channels, however, it was not his thing and he decided to go back to school, an idea he had not previously contemplated.
Western Texas University was a turning point, not knowing yet what to study, "I was about to decide what my career was when I'm sitting there on a bench and I hear a student station, and there's 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 the student station, where, at the same time, he 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 to work for him.
"We're talking about when there wasn't a Latino, much less a Mexican, on U.S. radio."
Despite the fact that, at the time, El Paso, Texas, had a 60 percent Latino population, the media did not include them in its programming, much less in its talent.
"He understood the market, he played the music that we Mexicans liked and he sees me at the Zoo, I gave a few words and played 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 the most important moments for Marco in the media came during the violent demonstrations that took place in various parts of the United States due to attacks against the African-American community.
This fact provoked a revolution even in the media, since up to that moment they covered up or did not cover what was really happening in the streets with the minority communities.
Thus, radio and television stations were forced to study the challenges faced by 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 in whatever job he could find. After several jobs, he got the opportunity that took him to the top.
"At that time, since there were not many Latinos in the media, I was a unique person because I had already had not only classes and studies in communications, but I 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 I got the job. And from then on that gives me the luxury of being one of the first to have a bilingual program for Latinos in San Francisco," he said.
From there, he went to Channel 4 on NBC with the program "Alma de Bronze", 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.
He decides to go back to school and finishes college, a master's degree and a doctorate in media studies.
"As Latinos, no one is going to make us the proper programming that we need, if we don't move it's not going to happen, there's not going to be the programming that we're looking for that can help us as a community, and based on this program it gives us the opportunity to rent airtime 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 expects it to be in bookstores in 2023.
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