When you walk into Marcos Gutierrez’ studio, he’s liable to hand you a microphone and put you on the air. That’s his thing, giving voice to Latinos, being “rah rah for the folks, the community.” Other hosts try to entertain people, he says, but he wants to help them.

By Vanessa Serpas

If you listen to Spanish-language radio in the Bay Area, you know Marcos Gutierrez. And if you’re even slightly involved with Latino community organizing in Northern California, chances are he knows you, too.

Gutierrez is highly energetic, a dynamic speaker, quick on his toes and the epitome of multitasking. He sits on-air in the studio with a headphone on one ear listening to his guest, his other ear to the phone as he tries to get his next caller on the line, and his hand on the switchboard to control music and sound effects.

With more than 40 years of broadcast experience under his belt, Gutierrez helps give voice to the Latino community.

Gutierrez, host of Hecho en California on KIQI-AM 1010, keeps an open door when it comes to letting the Latino community speak. “If people have something to say then I bring them on the air,” he said.

The Latino population in the Bay Area reached more than 1 million, with the majority immigrating to the United States from Mexico, according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center. Many share the same dream – finding work to provide a better future for their loved ones.

Countless Latinos end up in service occupations as construction workers, babysitters, dishwashers, housekeepers and janitors. With little time to find information about what happens in their communities and in their countries of origin, Gutierrez works hard to bring them up-to-speed with current events.

Juan Gonzalez, founder of the bilingual newspaper El Tecolote, which serves primarily the Latino community, said Gutierrez is a pioneer in Latino programming.  “He has been a role model for others to follow in terms of making right by a program that you’re able to get in the mainstream media and still making it relevant to the community that you’re attempting to serve,” he said.

While Gutierrez is known for serving his community, he is also known for his bold personality.

Antonio Arenas, a San Francisco State University student, remembers listening to Gutierrez as a boy. “Every morning on my way to school, while eating breakfast, my aunt would listen to him,” said Arenas. “My aunt thinks he’s scandalous because he’s animated and so energetic, but he makes the show exciting.”

Arenas, once a member of the social justice group Chicano Moratorium, first met Gutierrez when he decided to show up at his studio to make an announcement about an event. “I heard he allowed people to go on his radio station and do announcements so I just went to his station and he interviewed me,” said Arenas.

Gutierrez’s show has focused on anti-government protests in Venezuela, elections in El Salvador, evictions affecting Bay Area residents and deportations affecting Latino families nationwide.

Gutierrez focuses his Spanish-language radio program, “Hecho en California,” translated to “Made in California,” on issues that are affecting the Latino community whether local, national or international. “I try to reflect what I think the community needs — and hope that at the very least we are not dumbing down our community, like other stations that don’t try to help people, but just entertain them.”

Gutierrez was born in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old.

“Since I was a kid, I knew I didn’t have any other job than to serve my community in this life,” said Gutierrez.

His devotion gained renewed vigor during his college years at the University of Texas at El Paso. “The revolution was beginning and I was a revolutionary,” recalled Gutierrez, recounting an experience with a group of friends who decided to take down a confederate flag hanging outside one of the school’s sorority houses.

Aware of the tumultuous social changes occurring in the 1960s, Gutierrez decided that if he wanted to make a change, he had to do it in a bigger city where he could have more of an influence. So he moved to San Francisco.

He didn’t waste time getting to work.

Gutierrez worked with KPIX-TV, a CBS affiliate and KRON-TV, then an affiliate of NBC, along with other national broadcast stations. But he wasn’t satisfied.

“They cover the news but they’re not going to come out and be rah rah for the folks, the community. They’re not going to work to better (the community’s) situation,” said Gutierrez.

Ever the activist, Gutierrez decided to go back to school and graduated from the University of San Francisco with a doctorate in education focused on broadcasting. “The only way (to) really make a difference in our society is if we, as Latinos, were to own and operate our own medium,” he said.

Gutierrez set out to do just that. He started his own show and became the embodiment of the community he was trying to serve.

Walking the street with Gutierrez can be a lot like appearing on his show. A quick hello and he begins his playful third-degree about what people are doing with their lives, what events are they attending, when are they going to stop by the radio show to discuss some issues and ask why haven’t they called.

It’s a skill to keep up with him on and off the radio.

“He allows community members to take the mike and gives them a voice on a daily basis, but sometimes it seems like he’s going a hundred miles per hour. That’s his style, though,” said Felix Kury, director of the Clínica Martín-Baró, a free Mission District health care clinic that caters primarily to the Latino community.

Kury is not the only one to experience Gutierrez’s quick-witted, spontaneous personality. During an interview for this article, a reporter for New America Media was put to the test when Gutierrez handed her the microphone, headphones, and a news clipping to review as he simultaneously introduced her live on the air. “I know you have something to say,” he told her.

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Vanessa Serpas is a San Francisco freelance writer with a B.A. in journalism at San Francisco State University. An earlier version of this story was originally part of a New America Media series profiling members of Bay Area’s ethnic media. New America Media is the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 3,000 ethnic news organizations. Reprinted with permission.