'Travel Tips for Aztlan' rides cutting-edge of Latin radio

The duo's on-air partnership reflects the increasingly symbiotic tie between Chicano music, made by U.S. natives of Mexican descent (Torres' specialty), and the contemporary musical scenes in places like Monterrey, Mexico; Buenos Aires and the U.S.-Mexican borderlands (Gonzalez's forte). "Mark has all the experience of the radio, the culture, he knows a lot about politics and issues," Gonzalez said during a recent lunch interview. "So he's got that like really good. And I'm more like the kind of crazy, alter-music" person.

"The 'wacky sidekick?' " Torres chimes in, joking. "My perspective comes from the Chicano music scene, and although I've had lots of Spanish-speaking groups on my show, I think Mariluz is a great ambassador, because Spanish for her is a first language."

Rock on

Gonzalez said her awareness that Latinos could rock out just as hard as Anglos came when she was a nerdy junior high school student. "It happened one day while watching Soda Stereo's "Cuando Pase El Temblor" and Los Prisioneros' "Sexo" on MTV. "I was like, 'What's going on -- they sound like the Cure, but they speak in Spanish.' And I felt like I can relate more, because it was Spanish."

Torres' path was different. Growing up in Los Angeles, he developed an intimacy with the local music environment and an encyclopedic knowledge of East L.A. cultural history. He first glimpsed bilingual, bicultural L.A. at such legendary haunts as the Troy Cafe, co-founded by Sean Carrillo and Beck's mother, Bibbe Hansen, where a swirling, recombinant mix of artists and activists came to drink strong coffee and plot cultural uprisings.

"You'd see bands perform there," Torres said. "And I was like, 'Oh my God, there's so much talent here, let's see if we can squeeze 'em on KPFK.' I came up with a proposal in 1990, and it took me five years to get a program director who would eventually realize that there was a Latin audience in Los Angeles."

Torres' connection with KPFK began in 1989, when he started volunteering as a board operator at the L.A. affiliate of the politically left-leaning Pacifica Radio, the nation's oldest public radio network. He now works as a senior producer in Pacifica's KPFK-based national archives, helping to convert its huge library of tape recordings to digital and package them into new programming.