JOSE CANTU CHAMPIONED THE DOWNTRODDEN

By Juan Montoya

In these days of shock jocks and venomous conservative talk-radio hosts, it’s hard to imagine a newscaster whose only passion was to champion the rights of the poor and powerless of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
However, longtime Valley residents who were around the late 1940s and early 1950s still talk about Jose Rangel Cantu, a broadcaster who used radio to champion the rights of Hispanics through his “Programa Popular” which aired in the afternoons.
“He was the son of the people,” said Roberto Anduiza, who worked with Cantu for many years. "He was a man of struggle, who knew firsthand the necessities of the people. In his own particular way, he wanted to open the eyes of the people so they could discover the possibilities and their potential.”
Cantu was born Feb. 23, 1912, in Matamoros, and lived in Brownsville many years before he started working in radio. Researcher Carlos Larralde said his father abandoned the family when Cantu was very young. He was only two when his mother Refugia moved to Brownsville, desperate to earn a living. He worked as a shoeshine boy and delivered groceries to help the family. Later, he became a house painter.
Encouraged by his mother, he practiced articulating and speech before a mirror. He soon found he had a gift for making people laugh, and he included comedy into his sales pitches at the paint store.
It was there that he met store clerk Maria de Jesus Solis, known as Jesusita, or Chucha.
Over time, when he had become a radio announcer, he would use his trademark phrase “Me estas oyendo, Chucha? (Are you listening, Chucha?).”
After he married Chucha in 1936, she encouraged him to try speaking commercials on the radio. Hearing about a job opening, he applied with KGBS radio station north of San Benito. The station was an affiliate of the Colombia Broadcast Service and under broadcaster Primitivo Mendez, Cantu began to learn about the broadcasting business.
That introduction soon enabled him to land a job in Brownsville’s KBOR radio station. His natural ability to make people laugh soon earned him a niche at the station, something not unnoticed by Minor Wilson, manager of KBOR. He decided to try him out for a Sunday afternoon variety show. The format would feature local talent and local news of interest to Hispanics. With Cantu’s natural charm and wit, the show “Programa Popular” soon became a favorite of listeners across the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
It was just after the Second World War, and the region was growing by leaps and bounds. Services like water, electricity, sanitary sewer, police protection, and street paving could not keep up with the growth. Invariably, the poorest barrios in the city were in the worst shape. Need was everywhere and Cantu, a man of conscience, was there to expose the neglect and abuse existing in the area.
According to the late Frank Ferree, known as “The Angel of the Border” for his own work among the poor on both sides of the border, Cantu was “a man who fought for the needs of the people and who would respond without fear for the people of the border in their hour when they most desperately needed help.”
Wilson recognized Cantu’s radio charisma at once.
“He was a natural,” Wilson said. “ He just went on the air and told it like it was. There were no nerves, no profanities and no mistakes when he spoke.”
His show soon attracted local performers eager for an audience to launch their careers. Singers like Lydia Mendoza, Chelo Silva, Delia Gutierrez Piñeda, Eugenio Gutierrez, and the young Ruben Vela performed to appreciative radio audiences. Mendoza, from Houston, sang “Mal Hombre,” and it became one of her biggest hits. He encouraged her and her relatives to form a group, and they did.
In time, he became the most famous broadcaster in the Valley, attracting fans in every barrio in the city. His stand on behalf of the poor in the area made him immensely popular. The late Bernie Whitman, who had a pawn shop in Market Square, said his popularity with the lower economic classes he defended was legendary.
“He could go in the barrios and neighborhoods, everywhere, and you could recognize his distinctive voice,” Whitman said. “The trust people had in him was tremendous. Everyone had faith in his integrity and he didn’t give them cause to lose that trust.”
Cantu’s militancy in defending the poor knew little bounds. He unmercifully lashed merchants who charged exorbitant prices for their products, farmers who paid meager wages to local workers, city officials who did not provide the same municipal services to the poor sections of town that were available to richer areas, and the plethora of injustices that prevailed at the turn of the 1950s.
One of his most popular themes was pleading with border officials to open the international bridges to Mexican farmworkers so they would not drown trying to cross the river. Perhaps one of his most controversial issues was the semi-slavery conditions of women in Matamoros’ red-light district. No one, neither crooked businessmen, nor neglectful public officials, escaped his wrath.
Still, Carnation Dairy Products, Royal Crown Hair Dressing, and other well-known companies sponsored the program, unmindful of the criticism from conservatives who considered him a radical.
Historian Bruce Aiken wrote that when Cantu’s died on June 7, 1952, after crashing into a tree outside Brownsville and was instantly killed, the people believed he had been killed for his criticism of powerful men, notably the Del Fierros, a notorioius Matamoros clan. It was rumored that his brakes had been sabotaged. There were tales that a woman from Matamoros who had been in the car suffered broken legs and was removed from the scene and whisked away. Some said it was his stand against prostitution in Matamoros that had gotten him killed.
As the time of his show approached that day, a multitude of people gathered around the station created a traffic jam. Many did not want to believe that their champion was dead. When another announcer came on the air and confirmed the news, cries of anguish erupted from the crowd and even grown men were seen dabbing the tears from their eyes.
Brownsville was overwhelmed by Cantu’s funeral, where honors were bestowed on “a friend of those in poverty.” It is estimated that 8,000 people tried to attend his funeral Mass at the Immaculate Conception Church.
“No one could control him,” Whitman recalled. “He didn’t sell himself. His greatest contribution was to disseminate information that the people needed, because no one else had the courage to do it.”