Audio By Carbonatix
The lights on the telephone silently flash red. The phone rests on a table in a soundproof room inside the radio station La Poderosa (WWFE-AM 670). Until recently, five days a week, Col. Matias Farias sat hunched over the table before an extended microphone. The retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer was the host of the morning programs El Mundo al Dia (World Update) from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., and Fuego Cruzado (Crossfire) for another hour until 10:00.
On this day in early April, after two hours of airing complaints by senior citizens living in local subsidized housing and a representative of disgruntled county taxi drivers, the Colonel has opened the lines to caller commentary for the final hour.
At his home in North Miami-Dade, a man known to Miami’s Spanish-language radio listeners for 24 years as the Lawyer of the Kennedys also sits poised before a telephone. He dials all but the last three numbers of the show’s call-in line, then pauses rather than complete the call. After the first caller has finished talking and as Farias concludes his response, the man quickly presses the final three buttons on his telephone. Seconds later he is live on Farias’s program.
The Lawyer of the Kennedys knows his time is limited, but there are many issues he wants to raise. Everywhere he looks he sees corruption; it summons him to battle like a bugle blast. While callers often begin by complimenting the host and the show before plunging into their discourse, not so the Lawyer. He believes such pleasantries are displays of servility aimed at ingratiating the caller with the host to get more airtime. As such compliments are beneath his dignity.
He skips the formalities and instead shoots out a torrent of concerns. In less than a minute he will cover several topics. First, he says with a touch of glee in his voice, he wants to mention how Church & Tower, the company created by deceased exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, had its contracts to build schools and a jail for Broward County yanked because of a series of problems. He then moves on to a controversial road-construction project on SW Eighth Street that he believes is taking too long and hurting local businesses.
“How is it possible that these things continue happening here?” he ends rhetorically.
This is familiar territory and Farias sidesteps it by switching immediately to the next caller. “Go ahead. You are on the air,” he intones.
This is a daily routine, or it was until Farias disappeared in mid-May. (Callers to the house of Farias, who testified on behalf of Gen. Manuel Noriega at the Panamanian strongman’s trial, are told he is traveling outside the country. Station director Emilio Milian says he doesn’t know where Farias went or why he left but that he is expected to return.)
The Lawyer of the Kennedys, who, like many of the callers in this story requested that his real name remain anonymous, is believed to be the longest practicing member of a dying breed. They call themselves los opinantes, people who regularly call the shows where Cubans still dominate on Miami’s Spanish-language AM radio. They are left over from the golden era of Miami’s Cuban radio. Their time, however, seems to be drawing to a close as they become victims of a mixture of economics and mortality, the last bitter fruits of a protracted exile.
“Obviously [the popularity of Cuban AM radio] has waned,” says Max Castro, a senior research associate at the University of Miami. “It is a simple question of demographics.” In 1970 Cubans accounted for 90 percent of the Hispanic population in the county. By 1990 the number had dropped to around 59 percent. And Miami’s Cuban community has evolved throughout the years as well. The average Cuban that came to Miami in the Sixties was a Spanish-speaking 30-year-old with children. Today those children have grown up as part of American culture and they speak English. (Broadcasters are now trying to pitch a revamped, lifestyle-oriented Spanish-language talk radio to this younger audience.) Their parents, those who listen to AM radio, are part of advertising’s undesirable age group: the elderly.
Still a few die-hards call the remaining radio programs several times per week. The numbers are difficult to calculate, but participants estimate the number of opinantes to be anywhere from twenty to fifty. During elections, when corruption scandals and campaign controversies boil over, or when Cuba is in the news, the call-ins increase. There used to be many more.
Cuban radio in Miami reached the height of its popularity in the Sixties and Seventies. In part the exiles simply continued a tradition that had flourished on the island. Radio has long been a political tool in Latin America, and Cuba was no different; however, the Cubans added their own innovations. Cuba was among the first nations, starting in the Forties, to have a successful 24-hour news radio station, called Radio Reloj.
In the United States radio became a community builder among Miami’s Cuban exiles. Stations held fundraisers to help fellow exiles in need. They collected and aired information about citizenship and government programs. They also were overtly political, rallying the community for demonstrations and anti-Castro events. More chillingly the radio stations were used to cow dissent. One listener remembers a program where the host would choose a person, often in Miami, to “put on trial,” then open the lines to callers so they could vilify the accused. Miami’s Cuban radio bore fruit as a political tool to organize and energize the exile population in the Eighties, when Cuban politicians began to win local office.
By the Nineties radio here started its decline, in part because of demographics but also because of consolidation and competition from other media sources, particularly television. “It robbed a lot of the audience,” Max Castro says. “Many people are watching the [soap operas] or the news. They aren’t listening to the radio.” Other competitors, perhaps not surprising given the advanced age of many listeners, are medical programs, which account for about one-third to one-half of today’s programming, he explains.
Yet Castro is not surprised that the call-in shows continue to fill a need for some. “It gives [callers] a sense of belonging and acts like a lifeline for some of them,” he says.
Most of the callers are shielded behind colorful aliases: the Metaphysical One, Chichi the Parliamentarian, Maria Prozac, Guijicantor, and the Zionist, to name a few. The monikers are bestowed by moderators or fellow callers. Listeners have learned to recognize the callers’ respective personalities. Many, like the Lawyer of the Kennedys, represent a particular political or religious viewpoint. Some are given names based on their delivery style. Maria Prozac, for example, would speak so quickly and in such an agitated, distracted manner, that fellow callers suggested she try the popular antidepressant. Every day they complain, argue, and sometimes provoke anger on the only three stations that will still take their calls: La Poderosa; Radio Mambi (WAQI-AM 710); and Radio Unica (WRNU-AM 1700).
Maria Figueredo (or as some know her, Maria the Hialeah Machine Gun) maintains a steady rapid-fire commentary off the air, in her Hialeah kitchen as she froths a syrupy mixture of sugar and espresso to make Cuban coffee. Her words come in a sharp staccato manner and they are unsparing in their criticism. A shoot-from-the-hip approach earned her a reputation as an acerbic wit among radio listeners, but these days she is an infrequent caller. Her chief targets are fellow Cuban exiles, whom she faults for failing to wrest power from Fidel Castro.
“Nobody is doing anything,” she complains as she pours coffee into shot glasses. “They go on marches. They collect money. Where is all that money? The entire world is in business. That is all it is, pure business. I tell you sincerely, I am disillusioned. I had hoped to go to Cuba alive with my children so they could know my family.”
The 69-year-old Figueredo has not seen or spoken with her relatives since she left the island in 1959. Her boyfriend, a labor leader, was in prison at the time of her departure. (He stayed in Cuba and was married there. She married in Miami, had two children, and then divorced.) During her exile her parents died. Figueredo says she watches as exiles travel to Cuba bearing gifts and packages. “That is not the way you topple Castro,” she exclaims. For her it is clear: Until the Cuban leader is gone, she won’t step foot in her homeland. “I am a political exile. I didn’t come here on vacation,” she says stoically.
She has also made it clear to her grown children who have expressed an interest in crossing the straits: They will lose their mother if they do. “I’ve told them that if they go, they won’t talk with me again,” she insists.
Like many of her fellow callers, the memory of her struggle to become established in Miami and the bitterness of exile have not abated through the years. She arrived on Christmas Eve and within two days was working at a firm that decorated hotels. “In the beginning Miami wasn’t anything easy,” she remembers. “I wanted to kill myself because I was so sad.”
She rented a studio apartment in Hialeah for $14 per month. It was full of cockroaches and rats. Today she sits in her immaculate one-bedroom apartment. Pictures of her children hang on the walls and plastic flowers are arranged in vases on the tables. She is disparaging of more recent arrivals from the island. Those who come now are already well-off and just want to make more money, she believes. As for the older exiles who arrived in the Sixties, she thinks they should acknowledge history has passed them by.
“!Viejos! Old people are the ones who call [the radio shows],” she says. “The invalids in their beds, what are they going to do? They [call] to keep the illusion alive, but for me it’s gone. After all these years they talk about the same things. Here nothing changes, there are just fewer programs.”
But like a family to which one continually returns, she still listens. “Everyone knows everyone,” she remarks. “We have been doing this for 30 years.”
She ticks through the names of the opinantes, offering short sketches of their on-air personalities. The Metaphysical One, who talks about miraculous cures, the supernatural, and of late, home gardens in anticipation of Y2K problems, is crazy, Figueredo asserts. When she comes to the Lawyer of the Kennedys, Figueredo recalls he was the first to dub her the Hialeah Machine Gun.
The Lawyer of the Kennedys received his nickname in 1975 from one of the pioneering hosts of Cuban open-mike radio, Luis Fernandez-Caubi, who died in 1997. For most of Miami’s older Cuban exile community, Pres. John F. Kennedy is second only to Fidel Castro among the reviled powerful men who denied them their homeland. Kennedy’s refusal to give air support to the Cuban commandos during the Bay of Pigs invasion continues to earn both him and Democrats in general enmity from many in el exilio.
Not so for the Lawyer. He makes the case that Kennedy was handed a mission flawed from the outset and did all he could under the circumstances. “The only person defending [Kennedy] on the open mikes was me,” he says. “That’s why [Caubi] baptized me the Lawyer of the Kennedys.”
Besides, the Lawyer proclaims unabashedly, he is a proud member of the Democratic Party, and of the liberal wing at that. “When I got my citizenship I registered as a Democrat immediately,” he says.
It is midmorning between radio shows (which are aired primarily in the early daylight hours or the late afternoon and evening) and the Lawyer is sitting in the recreational room of an apartment complex for low-income seniors, where he and his wife reside. It’s a new building on a quiet, airy side street near the Broward County line. On the walls of the room hang pictures of cats and dogs fancily dressed and engrossed in human activities such as shooting pool or playing cards.
The 77-year-old Lawyer first came to Miami as a refugee from Batista’s regime in 1957. He returned to Cuba when Castro triumphed, only to again become disillusioned. “I supported the revolution but I couldn’t be in agreement with [Fidel],” he says today. His outspokenness earned him a visit by state security officials who searched his home. In 1967 he and his wife left for exile in Miami once more. In the United States he built a business as an upholsterer. (The Lawyer is not actually an attorney.) The couple raised three boys and have four grandchildren. In 1987 the Lawyer retired. Increasingly thereafter his passion turned to radio.
Old age brings its inevitable indignities. He comments mournfully that these days the obituary pages are filled with Cuban exiles like himself. Skin cancer scarred his face and almost claimed his right eye before doctors halted its progress. Bouts of hypertension led to emergency hospital visits as well as a few domestic spats. His wife of 52 years chides her husband that his participation on the radio raises his blood pressure. In what appears to be a well-worn routine, he counters that his calls are no different from her fixation with soap operas. She points out that she doesn’t yell at the television during her programs.
If corruption can stimulate the Lawyer’s ire, his commentary has the same effect on many radio listeners. His combativeness and controversial stands are a boon to radio, he says. “I am good for ratings,” he insists. He is against the Cuban embargo, which combined with his support for Kennedy, is proof positive to many that he is a Communist, the vilest label known to some in South Florida.
“You could say he is a sympathizer with the Cuban government,” comments Matias Farias, who like other hosts has never met most of the callers to his show. The Lawyer rejects the designation and insists he is a Democrat. “A Democrat is the same thing as a Communist here,” he responds dryly.
The Lawyer’s words have landed him in trouble in the past. He claims callers have threatened him on the air and even called his house. Several programs refuse to take his calls, a problem that is shared by the habitual opinantes. He is relatively resigned to this treatment, except in the case of a show from which he is banned, Habla el Pueblo (The People Speak), also on La Poderosa, hosted by the station’s director Emilio Milian.
Emilio Milian sits stiffly in La Poderosa’s sound booth. He wears a conservative suit and a clipped mustache. His thinning hair is neatly parted. Many consider Milian a Miami martyr for free expression. In 1976 his legs were blown off by a bomb planted underneath his car. Those responsible for the deed were never apprehended. It is popularly believed that exile hard-liners angered by Milian’s tolerance of divergent viewpoints were to blame. (Milian himself is vehemently anti-Castro.)
Callers often compliment him for being a cultured gentleman. He hosts the only show that is entirely for listeners who want to call to express their opinions. (Habla el Pueblo is on weekdays at 6:00 p.m.) There is no set topic on the show. On a Thursday night in late March Milian is perhaps more somber than usual. His 86-year-old mother died the week before. He has spoken about it on-air and many callers preface their comments with expressions of condolence.
One of the first opinantes is an elderly man known as El Bayamese. A long-time caller to Milian’s show, El Bayamese is known for erudite commentary. Callers who follow him will often remark on how well-spoken he is. Tonight he wants to talk about the stock market and an article he read in the Wall Street Journal. After years of such calls, Milian finally met El Bayamese in person when the elderly man made a surprise appearance at Milian’s mother’s funeral.
Tolerant as he may be of the views of others, Milian draws the line at the Lawyer of the Kennedys. He will not accept his calls. “He is a stupid illiterate,” Milian says, but then adds, “I didn’t ban him because his views are different from mine.” Milian says the Lawyer’s ejection resulted when the frequent caller used an expletive on-air. “I don’t allow that,” Milian says.
The Lawyer has not gone quietly. He routinely calls the show and laughs inanely before being cut off by Milian. He does this, the Lawyer explains, to let Milian know he can get on the program whenever he wants. The Lawyer is the only person banned from the show, says Milian. Even a man listeners call the Zionist for his bizarre anti-Semitic comments is allowed on-air, though his words disgust Milian, the host says. (Among the Zionist’s colorful commentary are lines such as: “All Jews are not Communists, but all Communists are Jews.”)
Freedom of expression and censorship are hot topics among los opinantes. The issues are of particular concern, they say, because the outlets that will allow listeners to call and express their views are disappearing. In 1996 the Federal Communications Commission allowed a single company to own up to eight radio stations in one market. The move has allowed for a consolidation within the industry that critics charge has made radio programming more profit-driven and less diverse. In Miami two companies, Heftel Broadcasting and the Spanish Broadcasting System, own nine local Spanish-language stations.
Advertisers whose optimum audience is between ages 25 and 53 are withdrawing support from exile programs. In addition, as Miami-Dade’s Hispanic population diversifies, stations are trying to move away from Cuba-centric programming. In efforts to reach younger listeners, music and sports are gaining ascendancy. Broadcasters are pitching talk radio to a younger audience. Most notably WQBA-AM 1140, which was once called La Cubanisima, switched its format more than a year ago and now goes by the name La Radio Que Habla (The Radio That Speaks). Many of the long-time opinantes resent the switch and think the station erased its Cuban identity. “It was very painful when they said we were de-Cubanizing the station,” says Nelson Albareda, public relations director of Heftel, which owns the station, and the son of Cuban exiles.
But Albareda says since the changes, which include a move away from more politically oriented topics, Arbitron ratings for the station have doubled across the board.
Marta Flores, whose program La Noche y Usted (The Night and You) on Radio Mambi is a popular open-mike show, insists that increasingly many of her callers are younger. “There is a rebirth,” she believes. “It’s not just old people.”
But the older opinantes believe they are being shut out and that WQBA and other stations refuse to accept callers who won’t use their real names. Other programs have the audacity to insist callers stick with the specific topic of the program, and if they diverge, they are pulled.
“They demand that you stay on the topic,” says Felix the Cat, another habitual opinante.
El Gato, as he likes to call himself, claims that stations such as WQBA have computer-screening devices that filter out the calls of people like himself. Radio Mambi and WQBA deny this charge.
To fight for their rights, the Lawyer of the Kennedys and Felix the Cat are trying to form an organization they call The Association of Those Who Opine on the Open-Microphone Programs.
“We consider ourselves a civic power,” says El Gato rather grandly. “We are all gente del pueblo (common people) and we combat corruption and fraud in the City of Miami.” He is dressed in a bomber jacket, his shirt unbuttoned down to the top of his large gut. At 70 years old, he has a full head of white hair. He carries around a folded and greasy looseleaf page with the names of personalities who will form the group once it gets off the ground.
The Lawyer of the Kennedys says the organization will demand that owners of stations and the program moderators respect free expression. “If you say something they don’t like they cut you,” he complains. “They say you are Communist or something. That is the argument that they use before the Cuban community to inspire fear and eliminate you. We want them to let everyone in.”
But the Lawyer doesn’t believe this should mean people can say anything. Despite his problems with Milian, he says he is against the use of swear words on the radio and believes such language should be banned outright. “That is not liberty of expression,” he insists.
The Lawyer’s one concern about his partner in this civic undertaking is that El Gato will use the association on behalf of his favorite politician, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo. El Gato has multiple radio personalities, and some of the other monikers by which he is known are the Lawyer and Bodyguard of Carollo. El Gato says he admires the mayor as a politician because he is not corrupt. He is quick to rush to Carollo’s defense whenever the mayor comes under attack on Spanish-language radio, which is often. In the past Carollo’s critics have been supporters of former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez. The battles between the two men prompted a miniresurgence for call-in radio shows.
Listeners are quick to identify three main Suarez partisans who have called open-microphone shows frequently on his behalf: Calderin, JJ, and Espinosa. It was widely assumed the men were paid by Suarez to fill the airwaves with praise for him during a tumultuous time that saw Suarez win a mayoral election only to be removed over voter fraud. Suarez insists he has never rewarded the men to call on his behalf. “I guarantee you that I have never paid those folks,” he says.
The ex-mayor insists he had not even met one of his most faithful radio supporters, Espinosa, until recently. “We had always wondered if this was a real person,” he says. “He was so favorable and articulate.” Finally a friend tracked down Espinosa down and brought him to a local restaurant where Suarez eats on Saturdays.
For his part Jorge Espinosa, who uses his real name on-air, says he defended Suarez for three reasons: He was a good Catholic, a decent man, and the opponent of Carollo. “I really began to support Suarez when Mr. Carollo ran for mayor again,” he says.
Espinosa is passionate in his dislike of the Miami mayor. Carollo has been a boon to Spanish-language radio by the strong feelings he engenders, both for and against, among listeners.
The 62-year-old Espinosa, who proclaims himself an avid fan of Spanish-language radio’s open-microphone shows, laments their slow demise. “The young Cubans don’t listen much,” he says. Espinosa left Cuba in 1960 at the age of 23. He started work as a dishwasher and valet. He says he learned English in part by listening to open-mike shows on English-language radio. Eventually he established a successful export company. Much of his time is spent commuting between Miami and West Palm Beach; while driving he listens to the shows and calls in on his cell phone. “It gives you a platform to express your feelings,” he says.
For his part Carollo insists he doesn’t pay much attention to the radio. “I don’t have the time really to hear radio either in Spanish or English,” he says. “I don’t know who these people are or whether they are for me or against me.”
Tomas Regalado — city commissioner, radio host, and Carollo enemy — scoffs. “No, no. On the contrary,” he says. Indeed hanging on the wall of El Gato’s apartment, are pictures of El Gato with a smiling Carollo, along with a 1998 proclamation from the mayor recognizing him for work on behalf of a citizen’s police patrol and for his “defense of the principles of integrity and transparency in our government.” It hangs next to a Carollo family Christmas card.
In addition the Carollo family works full-time making sure the mayor is represented on the airwaves, according to Regalado. The most potent weapon Carollo has is his mother, agrees Suarez. “She is just incredible on the phone,” he says. Graciella Carollo is known to urge her friends to call programs when Carollo is scheduled to appear so they can block his critics from getting on the air.
But the significance of AM radio for politicians is diminishing along with its audience, notes Regalado. In the past it was essential that politicians buy spots on Spanish-language talk radio, he says. Now that the emphasis is shifting, politicians have to appeal to FM listeners as well. “The changes in the radio have also changed the political strategy of the candidates,” he explains. “You have to be funny to get into an FM morning and afternoon drive.”
Regalado says the reason today’s callers are so notable is because there are less of them so they appear more often. “This is rather new,” he says. “In the past more people spoke so it wasn’t the same people again and again.”
Gonzalo Soruco, a professor of communications at the University of Miami, believes Spanish-language radio in general has become more “Anglo-oriented.” The program content and the marketing are now closer to their English-language cousins. “To some degree, it is a loss to Miami,” he contends. “[Radio] played an important role and maintained a certain cohesiveness.”
El Gato sits at home breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank. He has recently been released from the hospital after a triple-bypass heart operation. A row of ten prescription pill bottles are lined up before him on the table. He lives in one of Miami’s low-income housing developments where the elderly are feted by politicians at election time and largely forgotten the rest of the year. His illness and an ongoing debate over tactics with the Lawyer of the Kennedys has delayed their efforts to create The Association of Those Who Opine on the Open-Microphone Programs.
But El Gato’s chronic heart disease has yet to diminish his passion for the radio. It is a few minutes before Emilio Milian’s program on La Poderosa and El Gato has written a speech in a school notebook on the inadequacies of the new county ethics commission. “I will die fighting on the radio,” he says as he picks up the phone.
