Televised show jokes about using pesticide to exterminate "mariquitas" like Ricky Martin

Sometimes I am accused of being overtly sensitive about language which surprises me because I consider myself to be open to interpretation and context when it comes to usage of language that might be deemed homophobic. I also believe that tramping down on homophobic expressions or banning certain words does nothing to solve the underlying intent when someone uses such language.

This gets complicated when it comes to Latin America. Words that are considered to be homophobic slurs in one region might not hold the same connotation in another region. Take the word "playo" which is used in some areas of Central America to describe someone who is or appears to be gay in a derogatory way.

Outside the region people wouldn't even know what it means.

Or take the word "mariquita" which could be interpreted as the diminutive of "maricón" and akin to calling someone a "little faggot" except the word is also used as a noun for the insect known in the United States as a lady bug.

Both definitions enter into play in this clip aired on Panamanian national television in a comedy skit show called "La Cascara" ("The Banana Peel"). It's crass and not particularly funny and the punch line is particularly offensive.

In the skit two cartoon characters representing a narcissistic and self-involved wealthy Panamanian woman and her peasant caretaker find themselves transplanted to her vacation home in Miami where she introduces the caretaker to her Miami neighbors: Carlos and Ricky and their twins, a not so veiled reference to out pop star Ricky Martin and his family.

The "joke" hinges on the woman explaining to the caretaker that Miami is "inundated" with "mariquitas" (little fags) which the caretaker interprets as there being infested with lady bugs.  The show thinks it's hilarious to paint the caretaker as a dim idiot who inadvertently calls Ricky Martin a faggot to his face while explaining why he is spraying pesticide in Martin's face.

It's not the first time that the show has skirted bad taste and homophobia. In a different skit God asks a "good angel" to recommend ways to promote goodness and love between couples while "Lucifer" tries to trick the "good angel" into having God accept gays as being good and loving which is ultimately rejected.

I wouldn't have gotten wind of the show if it wasn't for Agustín Clément - a playwright and entertainer who is one of the few out personalities in Panamanian showbiz.

Agustín has often fought what sometimes seems a lonely battle against homophobia in Panamanian media and has been trying to draw attention to "La Cascara" and its homophobia for months with limited response.

He does have allies in the Panamanian LGBT advocacy organizations but their calls against homophobia are often just as easily dismissed.

Unlike the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in the United States, there are no media watchdogs in the Latin American region able to support anti-homophobia efforts such as Agustín's.  GLAAD does have a Spanish-language media department but it's limited to the Spanish-language shows and publications produced and aired in the United States media market.

What Agustín has gotten in return for his advocacy is a public war of words with the producers and comedians involved with "La Cascara" and attacks from people who are fans of the popular show on Twitter and Facebook.

I found this clip to be particularly offensive so I offered to bring it to wider attention by adding translated subtitles and making people aware of what passes as comedy on this particular show.

If you have any ideas of how to support Agustín's efforts you can reach him through Twitter at @agusclement. Currently he is a morning anchor of the "Despierta Ya!" show on Bésame 91.3FM and produces and directs children's plays.

Reaction:

• Meme (The Backlot)

Related: 

• Opinion: Can baseball's Yunel Escobar blame "maricón" statement on cultural differences? (Fox News Latino)

Austin Hispanic contractors' group apologizes for posting video deemed offensive to gays

The Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday that a local Hispanic contractors' organization had removed a video from its website and given apologies after a local television station received complaints that it contained demeaning portrayals of gays ("Hispanic contractors' group pulls video called demeaning to gays").

The U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association had recently been in the news for leading a successful protest against a morning talk radio show on KLBJ-AM in which a co-host had repeatedly referred to Latino immigrants as "wetbacks". On Monday, the parent owner of the radio station announced that the show would be cancelled. That same day, though, KVUE TV broadcast the news report highlighting that the same organization that led the fight against the anti-immigrant slur had the questionable video on its website.

What's exactly in the video and is it truly offensive to gays? You be the judge. The American-Statesman says that it consists of outtakes from a promotional ad for the Association featuring Mexican-born comedian Paul Rodriguez which were never used in the ad that actually aired. The paper described it as "Rodriguez dressed as a construction worker walking in an effeminate manner".

The Association has taken the link to the video off their site but I've managed to get my hands on a copy and have posted it above. The clip in question begins at the :30 second mark and lasts 35 seconds. In it, Rodriguez seems to be ad-libbing his way through the shoot and starts riffing on the gay community in Austin, speaking both in English and Spanish. Here is the transcript with translation of Spanish-language phrases:

Paul Rodriguez: Doesn't Austin have like a gay... a big gay population?

Contractor in blue: Si, esta rogado por locas ["Yes, nellies always ask him out"]

Paul Rodriguez: So you go, you go [prances] 'and specially for you...' [walks and simulates grabbing contractor's butt, contractors laugh, Rodriguez goes back and simulates holding contractor's testicles]
Paul Rodriguez: Cough! [contractors laugh]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances again] Estas bien nalgón ["You're cute, big butt guy"]
Paul Rodriguez: Let's go, let's go...
Off-camera: [Unintelligible]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances some more] dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena ["Give your body happiness, Macarena", a quote from the song Macarena by Los Del Rio]. Here we go...

At 1:57 there's another bit in which Rodriguez addresses the two contractors as women and hands them over what he describes as invitations for them to join Jenny Craig and lose some weight.

After removing the link from the Association's site, spokesperson Paul Saldaña, speaking to the American-Statesman, said "The video was in poor taste, and we certainly need to be held accountable to the community's expectations."

Frank Fuentes, the organization's chairman, told the paper "We shouldn't have had it up there. I personally don't think it equates to what happened on the radio station, but I can understand why people would think that."

Both Saldaña and Fuentes said that Rodriguez had initiated the banter and that it was never part of a script. They said they had contacted local LGBT organizations and advocates and requested a meeting with them to apologize for the incident. The meeting, they said, is scheduled for later this week.

Their immediate action to remove the link and willingness to be the ones to actively seek a meeting with local LGBT leaders speaks well for the Association despite having posted the video in the first place. I also find it suspicious that people started to complain to media only after the Association's successful actions in shutting down a xenophobic radio show. Something tells me that fans of the show combed through the Association's website to find anything they could pin on them and show them in a bad light.

As for the video's content, does it offend? I guess it depends on your sensibility. To me it comes across as puerile, stereotypical, and - yes - a tad homophobic. But hey! It's Paul Rodriguez! Does it absolutely rile me up and make me want to boycott Austin, Texas? Oh, please, there are bigger fish to fry. At least, once on notice, the organization acted swiftly and properly.

El Blabbeador on BBC News

And I thought people wouldn't notice but I have already gotten a few messages about this article posted online earlier today.

BBC News reporter Emilio San Pedro was in New York recently to cover issues related to the Latino community and the New York City visit by the Pope, among other stories.

When he called me he said that he was interested in meeting me to discuss the Latino LGBT community in the United States. He said that British press had been covering issues related to sexual orientation and the Middle East (most recently in the context of protests against the deportation of gay Iranians and the case of Medhi Kazemi in particular) and that he wanted to broaden the discussion to include issues faced by LGBT communities throughout the world.

BBC Radio broadcast a brief interview a few days ago and today BBC News posted a larger article based on San Pedro's conversation with myself and my great friend, Diana De La Pava. Here is the link:

• "Gay Latinos 'minority twice over'" (BBC News, April 29, 2008)
  

Although I did speak of sometimes LGBT Latinos being marginalized by both the Latino community as well as the mainstream gay community in the United States, I'm not sure I was trying to play on the "poor little us" angle which the title conveys. But I hope the rest of the article carries the message that despite some marginalization, the community has been able to become more visible and gain certain power as welll.

Luis Jimenez is back in town

With posters announcing "The Second Coming" plastering the city (almost as many posters if not more than for the movie "Cloverfield"), Spanish language radio shock-jock Luis Jimenez finally ended his contract-mandated exile and was back on the New York City radio airwaves yesterday morning with his "Luis Jimenez Show" on La Kalle.

Unrepentant for past on air transgressions - or the homophobic skit that got him suspended for a couple of months last year in a version of the show that was being broadcast by Univision Radio in markets outside New York - the debut of the show was preceded by a number of interviews with the press which were striking for the animosity he expressed towards his former colleagues at "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on La Mega. So much so that when he continued to slime La Mega on the air it seemed more like an act to paint himself as the wronged underdog back in town to take them down than anything else (this "underdog," of course, is the man who signed with Univision for $5 million, making him the top paid Hispanic radio personality in the United States).

In a pre-show interview that appeared yesterday in the Daily News, Jimenez addressed his suspension for the first time in public and said: “That happened right after [Don] Imus’ problems and I think the suspension was less about me than about delivering a message."

In the show aired yesterday, which was set up as an on-air "press conference" instead of a proper show, Jimenez told listeners that he had nothing for which to apologize and said that he'd felt personally hurt about being tagged as anti-gay. He said that he knew it wasn't even the gay community that called him homophobic but one or two people at a small organization (alluding, we assume, to GLAAD, which released a statement denouncing his on air banter before the suspension).

He said that it was a sad day when radio personalities didn't have to fear the FCC but, instead, a small organization. "That's not a democracy," he said, "It's a dictatorship."

He also told the Daily News that “rules for content have definitely changed, black comedians have said ‘ho’ for years and now it’s bad. You used to hear ‘bitch’ all the time and now it’s ‘the b-word.’ I think it’s a problem, but I can adjust. You find other ways to say things. I make up words.”

He added that, despite how he felt, he wasn't about to do anything to get his new employer in trouble and that he was grateful to Univision for bringing him back to New York.

The press conference as an on-air show drew mostly online Latino website reporters with most "reporters" congratulating Jimenez on his return to the air and a female reporter actually gushing over Jimenez and how great he looked. One of the exceptions was the well-known El Diario La Prensa OpEd columnist Gerson Borrero who asked a few pressing questions about the feud with "El Vacilon," the issue of censorship and whether Jimenez would be willing to return to SBC Radio, owners of La Mega, if he was offered $10 million dollars.

But wait! What about the show's content?

Well, a number of new personalities were introduced in yesterday's show including Fay who describes herself as being a lesbian woman. She spent some time defending Jimenez from the accusations of homophobia and vouchering for his character (she's the show's Robin Quivers, if you will, to Jimenez' Howard Stern role).

Yesterday and today she engaged in some sophomoric banter with Jimenez - mostly of the Beavis-and-Butthead type - that played on words such as "mamar" (to suck) and "mamá" (mom) that, at least to my ears, fell mostly flat.

Today she asked reggae star Daddy Yankee, a guest, if he clipped his eyebrows just like Don Omar - another reggae singer with whom he has a feud - or if he regretted wearing pink in one of his old videos which might indicate he was less of a man (I guess if a lesbian woman uses the same stereotypes to call men's masculinity into question, all is forgiven, no?).

Then there was a feature in today's show - set to the Village People's "Macho Man" - in which male listeners were asked to call and see who could say phrases such as "If your hands are busy, I'll shake it for you" without sounding gay. A winner was named. As far as offensiveness goes, it was so lame that I'm not sure that it merits mention here.

No, there were no skit songs about a man enjoying being raped by another man or prank calls telling a man that he has hours to live because he has AIDS - as in the past - but I was struck by how boring the first two shows were (not something I would have said about the old "Vacilon" shows).

At one point, to promote the show's online prescence, we were told that a man was going to fall on a bed of mousetraps. For minutes all you heard was the clickety-clack of the mousetraps going off. Someone assured listeners that if they watched it online it would be funny.

As close as it got to the offensiveness of old was a song skit this morning about a man who meets a beautiful woman and takes her to bed only to find out that she has such a huge vagina that he's afraid to fall inside her and get lost. Pretty objectionable, I think, but it even felt forced. An attempt to "prove" that Jimenez hasn't changed his ways even if everything else in the show seems to indicates otherwise.

Previously:

• El Vacilón de la Mañana and Mariconsuelo (Nov. 30, 2007)
  
• A visit with the radio shock-jocks of "El Vacilón de la Mañana" (Nov. 16, 2007)
• Out of La Mega, Luis Jimenez throws a homophobic fit (Jan. 22, 2007)

El Vacilon de la Mañana and Mariconsuelo

As long as I'm in a blogging mood: Earlier this month I wrote about the experience of visiting the radio shock-jock team of La Mega's El Vacilón de la Mañana after years of criticizing the show for it's homophobia.

I said I had been pleasantly surprised by the reception and by the fact that Frankie Jay and Juan Carlos were the first to admit that the show might have relied in the past on some questionable humor and by their expressed willingness to work on improving the way the show used jokes at the expense of gays and lesbians.

Today I open Hoy on the way to work and one of the things I notice is an ad for a live show that the Vacilon team will be doing at the United Palace Theatre in Upper Manhattan on December 8.

Along with a few music acts including Calle 13, set to appear are also a few personalities from the radio show including Mariconsuelo (pictured above left).

Maricon is, of course, the Spanish word for faggot and the name is a pun on the name Mary Consuelo used with full knowledge of the double-entendre.

Over on their MySpace page while the image is still there in a similar flyer, the reference to MariConsuelo is gone which might mean that the ad went to print before we met with them and they changed their mind on using the character or that the version of the flyer is a different size and the reference was dropped because it didn't fit.

Then again they also have a picture of another personality, Bocachula, dressed in a brassier and panties.

They did say that changes will come slowly and to give them time but I wonder just how much time they will need.

Related:

• Activists target homophobia in Spanish-language radio (EDGE, Nov. 7, 2007)

Previously:

• A visit with the radio shock-jocks of El Vacilón de la Mañana (Nov. 16, 2007)

A visit with the radio shock-jocks of "El Vacilón de la Mañana"

Is it that I am getting older? Or that I don't really care much about these things anymore? Or might it be that the place is the same but the circumstances have changed?

Five years ago I might have gloated about this or seen it as a big momentous occasion but when I finally agreed a few weeks ago to visit the studios of the La Mega radio station to meet and talk to the radio shock-jocks of the "El Vacilón de la Mañana" morning show it felt almost bitter-sweet.

After all, my refusal to appear in the show during an increasingly public confrontation in 2001 over the show's virulent homophobia drew on-air accusations from the former Vacilón shock-jock Luis Jimenez and his co-host Moonshadow that I was a coward (I wanted a serious meeting with the shock-jocks AND the owners of the radio station, not engage them on their home turf as entertainment for their public).

At the time Jimenez was leading one of the most successful morning talk-show team in all of New York - sometimes even beating "Howard Stern" in the ratings - by doing some of the most offensive prank phone calls and skits ever heard on the public airwaves (i.e. a skit in which man with a lisp sings a bachata about being raped the night before and enjoying it, a prank call to a man telling him he probably has hours to live because his wife just tested positive for AIDS and most probably infected him as well, etc.).

It wasn't the first time that the community had protested the show. In 1994 a group of New York City-based lesbian organizations that included Las Buenas Amigas, African Ancestral Lesbians for Societal Change and The Lesbian Avengers actually broke into the studio and disrupted a broadcast of the show and released a statement that characterized the show as follows:

Spanish-language radio station MEGA-KQ 97.9 FM describes lesbians as weird, disgusting, and sick; a 'comic' segment features 'Ros', a stereotypically effeminate and oversexed Latino homosexual who is the butt of denigrating jokes. Blacks ('africanos') belong to 'tribes' and have 'bad hair'; blacks are derisively called 'timba', 'tuta' and 'macumba'; an ongoing character, 'Mamu', who speaks in a caricatured East Indian / Pakistani / Bangladeshi accent is portrayed as oversexed and inferior; during Yom Kippur, the Jewish religious holiday was described as weird, incomprehensible and boring. Another ongoing character, 'El Chulo,' rejoices in the exploitation of older women for money, especially Asian and African women; the rape of a girl by an old man in Brazil was praised as sexual prowess. The character 'Tito Metralla' is taunted and scorned because he stutters.

In other words, despite the protest, things didn't change much between 1994 and December of last year when both Luis Jimenez and Moonshadow left the show in an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the radio station.

Not that the high-jinx have hurt Jimenez career: The reason for leaving La Mega was a multi-million contract that he accepted from rival Univision radio in December where he has since launched "The Luis Jimenez Show" currently broadcast in Chicago, Fresno, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and Fort Myers and debuting in New York in early 2008.

As for his homophobic tirades, which he always argued were part of the tools used by a comedian who happened to be an equal-opportunity offender and not meant to be homophobic at all, since his move to Univision he has been caught calling a former co-worker a "faggot" and a "cock-sucker" off the air and received a two month suspension at Univision radio in May after GLAAD caught him doing a derogatory song skit about lesbians in the wake of the Don Imus "nappy-ho" fracas.

He has yet to apologize for either and is rumored to have been furious about the suspension. Still, just as Don Imus seems to be on his way back to the New York radio airwaves, I suspect that Jimenez will probably be welcomed back to New York with record ratings for his show once it debuts - as many fans as he left behind in this city who will surely buy into his "banished underdog arriving back into New York victorious" story - despite the fact that the guy has made millions of dollars with the shtick.

Ok, allow me to clear my throat after that (- ehem - ) which brings us to last months visit to the La Mega studios.

One of the great things that did result out of the confrontations with La Mega in 2001 was the realization by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) that they needed to step up when it came to Spanish language media (at the time they failed to take action because they had few people on staff who understood Spanish and said that they were not sure if the show was as homophobic as I claimed it to be which led to ongoing discussions that resulted in the launch of a successful Spanish-language media program at GLAAD).

I'm not sure if Chuy Sanchez, the current Spanish language media strategist for GLAAD was aware of my history with La Mega, but I certainly was surprised when I got an invite to participate in a meeting with the current on-air team, Frankie Jay and Juan Carlos (pictured above), as well as La Mega general manager Frank Flores - who is also the vice president and New York manager of the Spanish Broadcasting System which owns La Mega.

Brian Theobald of EDGE New York wrote a story ("Activists target homophobia on Spanish language radio" - Nov. 7, 2007) that describes how the recent meeting came to be although it doesn't say that among the participants were yours truly as well as my friend Pedro Julio Serrano from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).

Now, I have to confess that I haven't heard the show since the new team took over earlier this year but I did know from Pedro Julio that Frankie Jay, who joined El Vacilón from a show he did in Puerto Rico, had been an ally when both lived in the island and Pedro Julio was advocating for LGBT rights there.

So it wasn't a big surprise when both current shock-jocks seemed open to criticism, friendly and engaged in the conversation, even as Chuy pulled up video and audio files that demonstrated some questionable skits and banter that they had ran on their show since they replaced Jimenez and Moonshadow.

I also was not under any pretense that a meeting like this meant that things would change immediately or even that it was purely the result of good-faith (good-faith might have played into it but I'm sure that the recent attention paid to Don Imus and Luis Jimenez also had to do with it) but, still, I was surprised by how genuinely friendly and open to the Vacilón team seemed to be.

The next day, I wrote to Chuy to let him know just how impressed I'd been by the tone of the conversation and today I am even more impressed that general manager Flores would go on the record with EDGE New York to say "We fell into the same trap that most people fall into, thinking everything is funny when you’re not the punch line to the joke, they made us very much aware that some of the things we were doing on their air that we needed to change. It was like light bulbs going off in our heads" and "Changes like this don’t occur overnight, but the important thing is we now have a renewed sensitivity to the problem and an ongoing relationship with GLAAD. I told them that this is an ongoing process and they can always tell us when we’ve crossed a line."

That would have never happened under the old team and I am glad that I was able to take part of the exchange which I feel was a truly historic meeting when it comes to Latino LGBT activism in this country.

Still, Univision radio still has high-hopes with "The Luis Jimenez Show" in New York and it still remains a mystery if Jimenez has learned a lesson from his suspension. We will certainly be all ears once he makes the debut.

On political asylum, a warning

Just before I left for Colombia I sat down with Diego Senior, the NYC correspondent for Colombia's Caracol radio, to discuss political asylum due to fear of persecution based on sexual orientation. In the interview I spoke of several cases in which I have been involved (in assessing a case, working with legal service providers and lawyers to provide information on specific countries or in translating materials or at the asylum hearing).

A few things made it into the interview including a warning to those who might think that it is easy to be granted political asylum in this country particularly if the person has little if any documentation of persecution or if they lie about past experiences (the interview has since been picked by the Spanish-language news agency EFE which led to a reporter tracking me down in Bogota for an article that appears in this week's Cambio).

This comes to mind after reading a post today on Arthur Leonard's blog on a gay man from Peru who lived in Bolivia as an adult and then moved to the United States where he finally requested political asylum claiming he feared to be sent back.

The case reads like a primer on what not to do when applying for asylum:

1. There is a one-year window from his/her arrival in which a person can solicit political asylum in the United States (unless the person can prove special circumstances that might have kept him from applying during that first year). The man entered the United States in 2001 but waited until 2003 to submit the asylum application.

2. The man did not provide evidence for any of the alleged discrimination either while living in Peru or Bolivia and provided conflicting testimony about one of the incidents. Sometimes cases are won without specific evidence but any evidence that is submitted obviously strengthens a case and if the case is weak from the beginning any contradictions in the testimony can be damaging.

3. Even if true, the courts noted, the claims of discrimination presented did not rise to a level where they proved that the man would be tortured or persecuted if sent back home.

No surprise, then, that an Immigration Judge first threw out the asylum claim based on the man's failure to apply within a year of entering the country and that, on appeal and seeking "withholding of removal," the Board of Immigration Appeals and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals both rejected his appeal and, thus, his right to stay in the United States.

I just wish more people who think that applying for political asylum is easy would read the outcome of cases like these.

To read more details about this specific case:

• Gay South American denied US Refuge (Leonard Link)

Thanks Mad Professah! You are right - I should have listed some resources:

• Immigration Equality can be found here
• The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission can be found here

Television host says she didn't know expression was homophobic, should she have been fired?

A wide array of Latino LGBT leaders throughout the United States took notice of the recent firing of the host of a popular Spanish-language television gossip show for using a word that might be interpreted as homophobic in Cuba but not necessarily in other Latin American countries. I mean, I'm certainly as knowledgeable as most people when it comes to homophobic expressions in Latino culture and even I had no idea that the word cherna could be interpreted to mean "faggot." Then again I am not of Cuban or Caribbean descent (nor is Luisa Fernanda, the fired host).

Today's Miami Herald takes a look at Telemundo's swiftness in terminating Luisa Fernanda's contract as the host of "Cotorreando" and the mixed reaction from Latino gay leaders including Ron Brenesky of Miami's Unity Coalition - who is of Cuban descent - and says she should not have been fired ("Host had 'no idea' of gay slur").

The groovy, amazing and lovely Monica Taher of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (not to say that Ron isn't just as lovely or amazing) also expresses ambivalence about the firing, praising Telemundo's willingness to address instances of homophobia on the programs they broadcast, but also stating that the context in which the word was said was not necessarily homophobic.

Last week, Monica did an informal survey of Latino LGBT leaders throughout the United States and got a varied response, mostly supporting Luisa Fernanda.

How some of us came to defend a host in as trashy a gossip show as "Cotorreando" still makes me giggle a bit.

El muy groovy and amazing Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano (OMG, I love that name) put up his thoughts over on his blog God is Brown on Friday.

Here is what I sent to Monica last week as well:

When CBS radio fired Don Imus over the racially-insensitive comments he made on air a couple of months ago, it seemed to me that the radio company was responding to the escalating national outrage and the potential impact on their advertising dollars rather than purely because Imus had crossed the line. As has been reported, Imus and his on-air cohorts had crossed that line over and over again with nary a peep from CBS radio UNTIL it became a national controversy.

Similarly, Spanish-language radio shows such as "El Vacilon de la Manana" have long been the target of protests by Latino LGBT organizations and activists for more than a decade and none of the radio stations that carry El Vacilon have ever deemed that it was appropriate to suspend or fire a radio personality for skits, call pranks or comments that not only crossed the line but probably violated FCC regulations as well (case in point: a skit song about a man enjoying being raped and wanting more that was on "El Vacilon" at the time that radio personality Luis Jimenez was part of the crew).

The recent suspension of Luis Jimenez who made a move to Univision radio after he was offered a multi-million dollar contract was shockingly swift and must have been embarrassing for Jimenez. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the move came after Jimenez used pejorative language to refer to lesbians.

But don’t look for an explanation from Jimenez or Univision radio: Jimenez has yet to officially speak about the incident – or apologize – and Univision radio has only put out a vague statement about “inappropriate comments” and its commitment to upholding the “highest standards.”

But, come on! Univision must have known exactly what Jimenez would bring to the show (Jimenez has a well documented history of homophobic outbursts on and off the air).

Most probably, in the wake of Imus, Univision felt threatened by GLAAD’s interest in Jimenez’ show and potential repercussions if advertisers got wind of it.

The firing of Luisa Fernanda from Cotorreando shows that these punitive actions are probably a passing trend rather than Latino media finally having found its "conscience."

I have had a long personal and professional interest in being a watchdog over the representation of the LGBT community in Spanish-language media so perhaps I've been more involved than others on this topic. So I guess I can say that it frustrates me that some in our own community side with those who say that we are humorless censors looking for any opportunity to shut down anyone or anything that does not portray the LGBT community in the best light – when that could not be further from the case.

The Latino LGBT community is incredibly diverse. We come in all hues and degrees of masculinity or femininity, with all sorts of political and ideological backgrounds. There should be effeminate gay men or butch lesbian women represented on out television or radio shows, as well as femme lesbians and macho gay guys. There are good and bad and semi-good and semi-bad gay people. The issue is not to block out aspects of our community we might not like or to concentrate exclusively on the greatness of the LGBT community (although we ARE great!) but to stop being ridiculed and assaulted through Spanish-language media at our expense.

There is humor to be had through skits, songs or comedies that portray the LGBT community in Spanish language media (see the now defunct and groundbreaking Telemundo comedy "Los Beltran") but one thing is to laugh with us and quite another at us.

So, having said this, it might shock some people to hear me say that Luisa Fernanda should not have been fired from Cotorreando. By all intents and purposes, she has had an on air and off air history of supporting the Latino gay community in ways that other supposedly pro-gay personalities have not done. And if she says that she had no idea that the comment she made was pejorative of lesbians in the Caribbean, she has more than earned the right for us to take those comments at face value.

Still, Jimenez is the superstar radio personality that Univision hopes will bring millions to the station – and he only gets a month's suspension (he is back on air as I write this) - while Luisa Fernanda is off-the air at Telemundo for good.

To me, this shows a case of commercial skittishness and fear from the national radio and television broadcasters rather than a true desire to curve some of the most offensive content on Spanish-language radio or television today.

It's great that Telemundo and Luisa Fernanda met this week with Miami's Unity Coalition. Hopefully the conversations will lead Telemundo to ask Luisa Fernanda back on the show.

But the networks and radio producers have a long way to truly change a culture that promotes extreme offensiveness in exchange for increased ratings even if they do have the power to edit content despite their contention that it's "what the public wants."

Censoring expression, even if its language that offends, is not the way to change cultural stereotypes. It’s whether that language incites hate, prejudice and violence against others that matters and needs to be challenged.

Related stories:

• Cotorreando's Luisa Fernanda is Fired (People in Español)

Blog Posts:

• Luisa Fernanda, fired for a word she didn't know (Alex Blaze in Bilerico)
  
• Luisa Fernanda should not have been fired (j.brotherlove)
  
• Unity Coalition to honor Luisa Fernanda on Sunday (Miami Herald's Gay South Florida blog)
  
• Hard Face (Stuck on the Palmetto)

Bay Area Reporter: Disrespectful burial, gay radio jock, GLAAD goes to Mexico

Today's Bay Area Reporter has a number of stories that may be of interest to Blabbeando readers, some on which we have commented before. Among them:

Disrespectful burial: Mourners who went to pay their respects to murdered Latina transgender woman Ruby Rodriguez (also known as Ruby Ordeñana) in San Francisco were not happy to find that she had been dressed as a man for the viewing. Apparently the Nicaraguan Consulate had called the funeral home where the viewing took place to say that Ordeñana's father had requested that she be buried in men's clothing. Close friends expressed surprise at finding out that Ms. Ordeñana had any relatives living in the Bay Area.

Outed ex-Univision Radio employee now a radio show host: The Reporter also profiles 46 year old radio broadcaster Roberto Hernández (pictured), host of a weekly radio show targetting the Spanish language LGBT community in San Francisco (Roberto Al Medio Dia! on KIKI 1010AM).

In 2002, Mr. Hernández sued Univision Radio when, as an employee, he was outed as a gay man in a live prank call he received from two radio shock jocks that also worked for the radio network. He tells the Reporter that the case was settled for $270,000 which he has used to launch his own show and to launch a non-profit group somewhat awkwardly called Gay y Lesbianas Unidos Contra la Homophobia or GLUCH.

GLAAD crosses the border: Little noticed when it happened a few weeks ago, there was history of sorts made by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. On April 2nd Monica Taher, GLAAD's people of color strategy director, and Luis Perelman, President of the Mexican Federation of Sexual Education and Sexology met with producers and hosts of the Azteca America Network's "Ventaneando" gossip television show. At issue was homophobic language expressed by one of the hosts during one of the tapings which was later broadcast in the United States. The Reporter takes a look at the outcomes and has some local reaction.

Now, for some of us with an eye on Latino media, it seems more than appropriate that GLAAD target Spanish-language television production networks and production houses such as Azteca, Univision, Telemundo and others but the truth is that a great deal of their content is produced outside the United States. So it's worth noting that this particular meeting took place in Mexico City (full disclosure: Monica is one of my bestest friends in the world, but still pretty groovy). I might be wrong, but I believe it is the first time that GLAAD has targetted conglomerates airing programming in the United States even if they are based outside the United States.

So many protests, so little time: Garrison Keillor in NYC

So, somewhere among the e-mails received and sent this week, Rex passed along a tidbit from advice columnist Dan Savage saying that instead of protesting General Peter Pace, people should maybe be acting up against A Prairie's Home Companion's Garrison Keillor.

The reason? A column Keillor wrote for Salon.com this week available here in which he tackles, among other things, his supposedly humorous thoughts on gay parenting including the following:

And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

Savage failed to see the joke and shared his thoughts on why people should "Fuck Garrison Keillor" over on his blog (which then got noticed by Andrew Sullivan over on his blog).

And somewhere along the way, Savage's wish seemed to inspire real call for a protest at today's live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion here in New York at the Town Hall on 43rd Street off Sixth Avenue.

Problem is the call for a protest apparently never got to too many people cause it was just Gay USA anchor Andy Humm (pictured above outside the Town Hall earlier today) holding a sign that read "Garrison Keillor: Stop Slurring Gay Parents" on one side and "Boycott Prairie Home Anti-Gay Bigotry" on the other. He was also and handing a statement to the people in line for the show that read, in part:

Heterosexual people don't need any qualifications to become parents nor do they have to be married. And they don't need any qualifications to be married other than to be of different sexes.

But Garrison Keillor is so repelled by the idea of gay parents and same-sex marriage that he needs to employ trivializing stereotypes to put them down.

Bigotry like this is shameful and we hope the NPR audience will tell Keillor what they think of his prejudices.

A Keillor rep actually came out and handed Andy a printed copy of yet another post made on a blog, in this case, Keillor's own, in which he responds to the criticism this way.

I'm not sure that explains some of the cringe-worthy passages away even if it was an attempt at humor. He does have some defenders out there though.

So many blog posts, just one person protesting at the theatre. Some theatre goers at least were receptive to the statement that Andy was handing to them.

I guess some controversies are made for the blogosphere if not necessarily for outdoor demos.

Or perhaps they all were at that other queer protest today?

UPDATE: Rex on Keillor here.

ITN: Mario Acosta-Velez, Spain's weddings, Chicago shootings, La Mega

All these stories have run recently on English language media so... no need to translate them (Yay!)

Cover Man: DC's Metro Weekly profiles Latino gay activist Mario Acosta-Velez, President of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, member of DC's Human Rights Commission, Executive Director of the Latino Civil Rights Center and Board Member of Gente Latina de Ambiente (GELAAM). A few months ago Metro Weekly also featured a cover story on DC Latina transgender activist Ruby Corado, so kudos to Metro Weekly for featuring some of our own.

Why not U.S.?: The Advocate takes a look at why a mostly Catholic country such as Spain was able to allow same-sex couples to marry throughout the nation even as the United States continues struggling with the issue.

No arrests: The Windy City Times takes a look at a Martin Luther King Day march and press conference held in Chicago's South Side in light of the New Year's Eve shooting that left six gay men with bullet wounds (all six survived but authorities have yet to arrest anyone).

Mega shocker: Finally, the Spanish-language radio station airwaves in New York are in an upheaval after the recent departure of popular morning shock-jock Luis Jimenez from the top rated "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on La Mega (97.9FM) with his partner, Moonshadow, indicating that he might follow. For more than ten years we have criticized the incredibly homophobic content on which the show traded but the criticism mostly fell on deaf ears and was dismissed by the radio station in consideration of just how big a cash-cow it had become for them.

Unfortunately, Jimenez' departure is not a sign that Spanish language radio is waking up to their responsibility to avoid extremely obscene material in the mornings. I guess it's no big surprise that money was the key reason for the Mega-break up: He will now get an annual salary of $5 million dollars for Univision radio.

Puerto Rico's El Vocero says that a local radio personality, Frankie Jay, has signed up to replace Jimenez. Puerto Rico Para Tod@s' Pedro Julio Serrano tells us that the new DJ stayed away from homophobic fare while building a radio following in the island, which means that "El Vacilon" might just change a bit. We'll have to wait and see.

La Mega shock-jocks rebuffed by mourning family

It's been a while since I listened to "El Vacilon de la Mañana" on New York City's La Mega radio station (97.9FM) but a Gerson Borrero column in Friday's El Diario La Prensa caught my eye.

Back on August 14th, 2006, in his "Bajo Fuego" opinion column, Mr. Borrero profiled Mr. Marino Heredia, a Dominican Republic immigrant who came to New York in 1978 already infected by a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes called filalia. As a younger man, Mr. Heredia had trusted those who said his swollen leg was the result of an evil spell cast on him and had only sought help from brujos (witches). It wasn't until his arrival in the United States years later when symptoms worsened that he finally sought medical help - and was diagnosed.

At 50 years of age and weighing at 750lbs, Mr. Heredia contacted Mr. Borrero seeking help in finding a specialist that might be able to help him. Earlier this summer he gained a bit of notoriety in the Spanish-language press when 15 firemen had to assist in helping him out of his second floor apartment before he could be taken to a Queens hospital. Mr. Heredia did not survive much longer, he passed away last week.

In the article, Mr. Borrero asked Mr. Heredia to describe some of the symptoms. Mr. Heredia said that one of the worst things was that his "balls had grown too much." Asked if he was referring to his testicles, he clarifies that he is referring to two massive growths on both sides of his inner thighs, which made it impossible for him to walk (elephantitis of lower body extremities and sexual organs is common in advanced filalia sufferers according to this link)

Well, enter "El Vacilon de La Mañana." Upon learning of Mr. Heredia's passing last week, they apparently latched on the comments he had made to Mr. Borrero in August and called the El Diario La Prensa columnist to discuss Mr. Heredia's "balls." Mr. Borrero says he spent a few minutes trying to convey the seriousness of the disease during the broadcast (he should have known better than to actually have gone on air with the notoriously offensive "Vacilon" crew, which it must be said advertise prominently in the print and web portal editions of El Diario).

In Friday's "Bajo Fuego" column, Mr. Borrero says that he was interrupted by a cell phone call from Mr. Heredia's sister, Luz Heredia, even as he was still on air with "El Vacilon." She wanted to express her family's indignation at the comments made about their brother on air at a time when they are also dealing with how to bury a man who weighed so much when he died.

Apparently, "El Vacilon" made an offer to help the Heredia family with burial expenses but Ms. Heredia tells Borrero "Even if we were in need, how can we accept anything from those who are disrespectful?"

Mr. Borrero is right to say that "[DJ's] Moon, Francis Mendez, Carolina, Chino and the rest of the abnormal [crew] were unmeasured in their insensibility" and ends by saying "You crossed the line, friends."

Question is: When haven't they done anything but stuff like this.

Previously

• Hispanic Jews in Miami vs. El Vacilon de la Mañana (Sept. 25, 2006)
• Letter to the NY Times: When You Raped Me (Nov. 2, 2006)
• Spanish language media no longer immune (August 13, 2006)

Hispanic Jews in Miami vs. El Vacilon de La Mañana

In previous posts, we have mentioned past efforts in New York to address the rampant homo- phobia (as well as misogyny and racism) in what is often the top-rated local radio shows in the mornings: La Mega 97.7 FM's "El Vacilon de la Mañana."

This has gone on for most of the decade and, so far, it's been a losing battle between a handful of LGBT activists working from their boot-straps and a radio show that brings millions in advertising for the Spanish-language radio station on which it is broadcast.

They have gotten away with it mostly because they use the good ol' "we don't just insult gays, we insult everybody" excuse and because the show is in Spanish which means that most media observers do not know just how offensive it is (more insidiously, they have also usually offered AIDS organizations a space for their public service announcements or bought promotional opportunities at LGBT events just to cover their asses).

Not surprisingly, during the last few years, Spanish-language radio stations have taken notice of its success and have adopted their format and even given it the same name to their morning shows.

Case in point: Today, the South Florida Sentinel reports on the formation of the Hispanic Jewsish Initiative in the wake of similarly offensive shenaningans by Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero, the Cuban-American crew that steers the Miami version of "El Vacilon" on 95.7 FM's El Zol.

Members of the initiative, which was created under the Florida chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, claim that a recurring skit features a character named David Goldstein who represents some of the worst Jewish stereotypes and is presented as rabidly anti-immigrant.

The paper also reports that to the radio show not only features an image of a Nazi eagle and swastika under the character's "profile" but also takes note of "Al Jackson," an African-American character in some of the skits, whose "profile" shows a "manipulated mug shot of a man whose lips balloon from his face" (as you can see above as lifted from here).

The stations that run the separate versions of "El Vacilon" are both owned by the giant Spanish Broadcastring System but neither SBS nor the Miami show producers returned calls from the paper.

RE-EDITED: When I first checked the show's website I was suprised to notice that their web addy is mariconson.com. At first I thought it might be a homophobic pun ("Maricon son" literally translates into "Fags they are") but a blog reader has pointed out that this might not be the case.

Back in 2004, Miami's "El Vacilon" drew international attention for prank calling Cuban president Fidel Castro and passing themselves as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. (they were later fined $4,000 by the FCC).

The blog reader says that "Maricon son" is what Fidel actually called the DJ's after he was told that the call was a prank.

Letter to the NY Times: When You Raped Me

I sent this letter to the New York Times tonight. Let's see if it's printed in this weekend's Sunday Styles letters section.
---
New York Times

Sunday Styles Section

To the editor:

In "Bawdy Radio Show is Now a Superstar" (Sunday Styles, Oct. 30), the Times profiles the Spanish-language radio show "El Vacilon de la Mañana.” Though the article mentions that some consider the show to be obscene, the only comparisson offered is Howard Stern. Perhaps these two examples will show how it stoops even lower:

In a prank phone call, a man is told that his wife has been unfaithful and has just tested HIV positive. He is also told that he might be infected and might die within hours unless he reaches a hospital. The man begins to sob and only breaks into laughter when the prank is unmasked.

In "Cuando Me Violaste" (When You Raped Me), a song skit set to a romantic bachata rhythm, a man with a fey voice dedicates the song to his rapist:

Here I am sufering, dying, Ramon (of love)
I have not been able to be the man I used to be
My ass you left destroyed… You dislocated my butt
Through where you passed through, I can now fit an avocado

DJ Luis Jimenez and the show’s producers act like the victims of zealous moralists while they make millions and proudly hide behind the fact that the FCC has never lobbied fines against "El Vacilon."

But, while the FCC may certainly think that skits about anal rape as a love song do not break their obscenity rules – or, more likely, they do not have the Spanish-language staff that can act as monitors – there are certainly many of us who will continue to challenge "El Vacilon" for the mysogyny, racisim and homophobia that they continue to perpetrate on a daily basis as "humor" at the expense of others.

[Oh my! Google translates freakily into Spanish here]

Spanish Language Media No Longer Immune

History was made. Yesterday, a San Francisco man was awarded $270,000 from Univision Radio (the largest Spanish-language radio broadcaster in the Unites States) in an arbitration court desison. Univision was found liable for "outing" the man during an on-air phone prank on a morning show. Roberto Hernandez, the victim, argued that the forced "outing" had a "devastating" effect on his personal and professional life.

I am aware that a few years ago the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined a Puerto Rican radio station for broadcasting obscene language but this is the first time that I am aware that a court or regulation enforcement agency has forced a Spanish-language media coropration based in the United States to pay for these kind of stunts.

And the fact is that we are not talking the usual radio shock-jock banter that people hear on, say, Howard Stern, or elsewhere. A local radio show here in New York, "El Vacilón de la Mañana" (97.9 La Mega FM) which is syndicated nationaly, practically invented the format (jokes, prank phone calls and parody songs all morning long with brief news and wheather alerts) and caught a lot of people unguarded when they actually beat Howard Stern's ratings consistently and became, from time to time, the most-listened radio station in the New York metropolitan area, regardless of language. Now the "La Mega" format is being exported to other cities around the United States and even rival Spanish-language stations in each market are imitating them.

So what is so offensive? A couple of examples:

In a song skit called "Cuando Me Violaste" ("When You Raped Me") set to a bachata rhythm, a guy sings about being raped by another man the previous night. He sings about how huge a hole the guy left afterwards and how much it hurt (while siging longingly and lisping a few words here and there).

In a "Vacilón" prank phone call a man is told that his wife has tested positive for HIV and that he needs to rush to the hospital for testing before he dies. The man, who does not understand what HIV means asks for clarification to which the pranker says "SIDA, amigo su mujer tiene SIDA!" ["AIDS, my friend, your wife has AIDS!]. At that moment the man starts losing his composure, gets agitated, and the radio jokey actually tells him that this is why it's so important to rush to the hospital: Because - if he also has it - he could die in a couple of hours. They also tell him that his wife has admitted sleeping around with other men. The guy on the phone sounds as if he's on the verge of tears but towards the end he seems to realize this is too much and asks if it's a prank. When he is told that it is, he lets out a sigh of relief and laughs along. Never mind the misinformation spread through these skits (HIV is not the same as AIDS, someone diagnosed with HIV or AIDS can live a long life, etc.).

You actually do not need to rely on my descriptions: These and other skits are included in one of the four popular CD compilations that "El Vacilón" has released commercially (where this type of material is defensible as a Free Speech issue). But so far, no fines from the FCC for the live broadcast of the same skits (which are not defensible if broadcast on live radio or television under FCC regulations).

They get away with it because nobody at the FCC seems to speak or undesrtand Spanish or care much about the most-listened radio show in the New York City metropolitan area. They get away with it because they began to run some HIV prevention messages during the commercial breaks as a shield. They get away with it because agencies like mine see the huge listenership as a means to reach as wide a Spanish-speaking population with an HIV prevention message and go to the show to 'inform' the community (but then get ridiculed the moment they leave the studio as when the HIV disclosure skit mentioned above was re-broadcast the moment members of my agency had left). They get away with it because so many people in the community don't see anything wrong with the skits.

At the very least, after that last experience, the top brass at my agency said that they had learned their lesson and will not be back on the show. But it certainly has undermined the on-going efforts to keep them from spewing so much mierda.