Gerson Borrero, freestyle ranter

Politicians, get in line -- the fire-breathing editor of New York's oldest Spanish language newspaper will happily tear you a new one.

By Rachel Scheier

Oct. 31, 2001 | NEW YORK -- Gerson Borrero has been sued, boycotted, shouted at and punched. A few months ago, he got fired from the best-paying job he's ever had. He is foulmouthed, likes to insult people publicly and, not surprisingly, has a lot of enemies. Among the people he's insulted in the past are practically every politician in New York, President Bush and Jennifer Lopez. He once got dozens of angry calls when, on the radio, he questioned the sexual orientation of Jesus Christ. ("All I'm saying is life is long -- he had to do something for pleasure.") He doesn't like to say where he lives, because people threaten to kill him all the time. One union leader described him as "evil, except that is not a strong enough word."

Life, in other words, could not be better.

Borrero is the editor in chief of El Diario La Prensa, New York's oldest Spanish language newspaper. His promotion last year to the top editorial job at the paper, where he had been a columnist for several years, surprised a lot of people who knew him, because until that time he had been quite happily occupied venting his outrageous critiques, both in his columns and on a popular weekday radio show.

"He's a smart guy, but he's very abrasive," one journalist who knows him says. Before Borrero became a controversial commentator, he worked in public relations. He advised some political candidates, and he helped found the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, a research and advocacy group. Over the years, he got to know a lot of journalists and politicians around the city. He spoke out in favor of public school reform and against police brutality; he led a protest when Madonna rubbed a Puerto Rican flag between her legs.

But, Borrero is the first to acknowledge, times have changed. A quarter of the city's residents are now Hispanic. To be Latino these days, especially in New York, is to be courted by advertisers and politicians from every corner. The Bronx borough president, Fernando Ferrer, recently came close to becoming the city's first Puerto Rican mayor. So, when the editorship of El Diario was offered to Borrero, even though he hates "administrative crap," he recognized it as an opportunity for "greater influence."

Borrero gave up his column at the newspaper when he took the top job, but he kept doing his public affairs radio show called "Bajo Fuego" or "Under Fire," which was drawing high ratings on WADO, a popular Spanish-language radio station in New York.

On the three-hour daily show, Borrero was opinionated and prickly on the issues of the day and whatever else happened to be on his mind, from police brutality to baseball -- a sort of liberal, Spanish-speaking Rush Limbaugh. But the shock jock is still a new concept on Hispanic radio, and "Bajo Fuego" drew a lot of complaints. (Borrero's own mother refused to listen to it because it made her nervous.) Mostly, though, listeners found Borrero's show provocative and his irreverent style entertaining. Then last May, three local members of Congress who had been favorite targets of Borrero's -- Democrats Nydia Velazquez of Brooklyn's 12th District, Robert Menendez of the 13th District in New Jersey and Jose Serrano of the Bronx 16th District -- complained to executives at WADO's parent company about Borrero's "personal attacks" against them. (He called Serrano a "spineless human being" and frequently accused Velazquez of having "no political ovaries," to cite just two.) "We made it very clear that we did not care for WADO's journalistic standards and would not support its community programming," said a joint statement from the three. Station executives confronted Borrero and asked him to soften his critiques. He refused. He was fired a few days later.

So far, he seems to be taking the incident in stride. The only thing Borrero likes more than trashing people, after all, is when other people trash him. "It's the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of my career," he says. Indeed, in the weeks following his firing, WADO was deluged with angry calls from listeners. Borrero began giving interviews, and soon stories appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as a piece by metro columnist Clyde Haberman decrying the politicians for engaging in censorship. (None of the three responded to requests for comment.) Even public figures who had been skewered by Borrero in the past came to his defense.

"I wear it with real honor, the fact that I pissed off three politicians enough for them to misuse their power against me," Borrero says. "Oh, I tell you, so far it ranks among the best things that have happened to me in my life." On the other hand, since he no longer has a platform to express himself, Borrero's friends and family members have been finding themselves suddenly trapped in a room with him or on the phone, converted into audiences for his impromptu rants.

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