ARRIBA!

Shortly before five o'clock one morning not long ago, a dozen people waited outside the locked glass door of a nondescript office building on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Sunrise was still an hour away. Teen-agers buried themselves against the chill in hooded cotton sweatshirts; an older woman wrapped herself tightly in an acrylic shawl. They hardly spoke; mostly they stared glumly at their feet. Inside, they knew, was the man they consider confessor, mentor, social worker, civic conscience, scold--Renan Almendarez Coello, better known to millions of Spanish-speaking radio listeners as El Cucuy de la Manana (the Bogey-man of the Morning).

Brenda Gonzalez, a round-faced teen-ager from East L.A., told me that eight days earlier her fifteen-year-old sister, Maria, had been struck in the head by a bullet while they were driving home from school. "When we opened the door, she was sideways, and her eyes were looking up at Heaven," she said. Gonzalez wanted to ask El Cucuy to announce that the family was going to hold a car wash to help pay for funeral expenses. When Gonzalez finished speaking, a big, sad-looking man in a cap embroidered with the Virgin Mary stepped forward and introduced himself, in Spanish, as Arturo Santos, from Guatemala. He said that his younger brother, Jorge Jose, had been shot dead on the street two days earlier, and he showed me a photograph of a long-haired man in a black leather jacket and sunglasses.

At that moment, a sharp-looking young man in an open-necked black shirt appeared on the other side of the glass door. After hesitating a moment, he let the entire crowd into the lobby. He walked me to the elevator and introduced himself as Ernesto de Santiago, a member of El Cucuy's small on-air cast. As the door closed, he gestured toward the cluster of people and said, "Asi es, diario." This is how it is, every day.

When we arrived at the top floor, de Santiago led me through a door marked with a lit "On Air" sign, and we stepped into a large room filled with light and noise. At a central island of computer screens, control panels, and microphones on stalks sat a stocky, animated man wearing headphones: El Cucuy. Almendarez, who is fifty-two, is short, with longish shiny black hair, a boyish smile, and features that suggest both the Native American Indian and the Spanish roots of his birthplace, Honduras. He wore a lime-green shirt, a blue tie, and a red-and-black floral-printed satin vest. Around him, several young men and women were laughing and shouting in Spanish into microphones of their own. The din was overwhelming: canned laughter, an instrumental version of "La Bamba," barking dogs, crowing roosters, gongs. On the walls hung American flags, a rendering of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and many posters featuring Almendarez's beaming face.

"One hundred and fifty-eight days until Christmas Eve!" he shouted above the din. "One hundred and sixty-five days until New Year's!" After some noise and laughter, he punched a button; the music switched to soulful Andean flutes and, in a whiplash change of mood, he dropped his voice to a whisper. "A thought for the blind," he breathed. "These people develop senses different from our own. While the wise ones stumble against a wall, the uneducated, the irresolute, the lazy, and the conformist remain peacefully in the corner." He pushed another button, a recorded crowd applauded, and he underwent another flash personality transformation. "Get up!" he shouted, throwing his arms in the air. "Getting up is only the start! We face thousands of challenges!"

Almendarez's morning show, which has been on the air since 1989, and on KLAX La Raza since 2004, is a seven-hour torrent of puns, pranks, and play-acting, with the loopy mood and cacophonous, somewhat forced hilarity of a drunken office party. It is one of the biggest Spanish radio shows in the nation, which helps make KLAX one of the top radio stations--in any language--in Los Angeles. As many as three million people listen to El Cucuy every weekday from four to eleven and Saturdays from five to ten. Most shows begin with the deafening burr of an alarm clock and Almendarez yelling, "Arriba! Arriba! Arriba! Arriba! Arriba! Arriba!" Up! Up! Up! Up! Up! Up! "This is why we came to the United States!" he ...