Can they say that?

Lurid talk with guests and callers about sex acts. Scatological references complete with occasional sound effects. Derisive jokes about homosexuals.

Is it Howard Stern on late-night cable? No, this is Spanish-language radio in Los Angeles, in flagrante and in broad daylight.

While the nation’s guardians of public decency have been focusing attention on the exposed breast of Janet Jackson, Latino DJs have been carrying on with raunchy talk-radio shows that sometimes out-shock Stern. But unlike the public fuss made over Stern and the Jackson incident during the Super Bowl, daytime indecency on Spanish-language radio has developed mostly under the radar of mainstream moral monitors.

Spanish-language shock jocks are getting away with it, critics say, because of the language barrier and cultural differences: The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the airwaves, employs only two Spanish-speaking investigators to deal with 705 Spanish radio and TV outlets in the U.S. What’s more, recent immigrants, a target audience for Spanish-language radio, are not as likely to file government complaints. And although some of the DJs indulge in risque banter on air, many are part of a tradition of community activism that engenders a loyalty not usually found in English-language radio.

So the bad behavior continues.

“These cochinos [pigs] felt they could say or do anything they wanted because nobody was listening,” says Alex Nogales, a longtime activist with the Los Angeles-based National Hispanic Media Coalition, an advocacy group that pushes for better representation of Latinos in the mainstream media. “And they were right.”

Over the last decade, Spanish-language shock jocks have cropped up like 900 numbers in major markets in New York, Florida, Texas, California and elsewhere. And with very rare exceptions, they test the limits of decency with no repercussions for their radio stations -- aside from increased ratings.

In Los Angeles on any given day, Latino DJs talk sex with callers, tell racy jokes with sexual sound effects and even wedge salacious wisecracks into otherwise normal interviews with guests.

Renan Almendarez Coello, Southern California’s most popular morning DJ known as El Cucuy de la Manana (The Morning Boogeyman), regularly peppers his seven-hour show on La Raza, KLAX- FM (97.9), with jokes about flatulence, erections, ejaculations and gay and lesbian sex.

On sister station El Sol, KXOL-FM (96.3), a flirtatious former DJ known as El Chulo, until recently on morning drive time, engaged a cooing caller named Lily in a midmorning discussion about the sexual pros and cons of women shaving their genital area.

“Isn’t it appalling that we allow this to happen?” asks U.S. Rep. Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino), co-chairman of the Congressional Sex and Violence in the Media Caucus. “Whether in English or in Spanish, they should be monitored and should be controlled.”

In a letter sent earlier this summer to FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, who has spearheaded this year’s crackdown on broadcast indecency, Baca rapped the agency’s “apparent failure to adequately scrutinize Spanish-language radio broadcasts for indecent content.” And he urged the FCC -- which counts on listeners to bring complaints -- to hire more Spanish-speaking investigators to help with the exploding Latino media market, the fastest-growing segment of the broadcast industry.

The number of Spanish radio and TV outlets has almost doubled in the last decade, but of the FCC’s 20 investigators, only two speak Spanish, the congressman notes.

That’s a problem, Baca says, because the commission must rely on translated transcripts of allegedly offensive Spanish-language broadcasts, tapes of which must be submitted with complaints to the FCC.

Offensive content, sometimes couched in slang and double-entendres, is often lost in translation, he argues.

Complaints against Spanish-language radio or television shows account for a tiny portion of the total complaints received by the FCC over the last five years -- 32 out of almost 1.1 million. As of April, the FCC had received only two complaints against Latino broadcasters this year.

“The Spanish-speaking community is no less deserving of protection from blatant indecency than other audiences,” Baca wrote in the letter to Powell.

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Chains patrol indecency

The FCC crackdown on public indecency was sparked earlier this year after Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” revealed her bare breast to millions of television viewers. In the wake of the uproar, the commission condemned as “indecent and profane” the use of an expletive by Bono at the televised Golden Globe Awards in 2003, reversing a previous ruling that had let the rock star off the hook. And the FCC fined radio giant Clear Channel Communications $1.75 million to settle complaints that it aired indecent comments by Howard Stern and other disc jockeys.

Critics are concerned that the crackdown has overlooked Spanish radio, which has surged from 6.2% to 9.2% of all radio listening in the top 100 markets and a full quarter of listening in Los Angeles. But Spanish-language radio executives say the country’s crackdown climate has encouraged self-censorship.

Leading Spanish radio chains -- Univision, SBS and Liberman -- say they have tightened or reaffirmed policies to prevent violations of FCC decency standards. Those standards prohibit indecent programming, defined as patently offensive sexual or excretory references, at times when children are likely to listen, specifically between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Pornographic programming is banned at all hours.

At SBS, the Spanish Broadcasting System that owns La Raza, now the No. 2-rated station in L.A. overall, President Raul Alarcon Jr. laid down the law in a national conference call to his programmers and radio personalties.

“When the whole situation happened with nipple-gate,” says Bill Tanner, SBS’ executive vice president of programming, “he [Alarcon] made it clear in no uncertain terms that there are a whole number of things that are off limits.”

At Univision Radio, the industry leader with 72 stations nationwide, President Mac Tichenor Jr. also stressed compliance in an earnings conference call in May.

“We’ve sat down with all of our talent and made sure they understand the rules,” Tichenor said. “The talent has been uniformly and universally cooperative and supportive, and I am confident they understand exactly how to abide by the rules.”

But asked specifically what Univision did in response to the recent crackdown, a company spokeswoman cracked: “We got rid of El Cucuy.”

Almendarez, a native of Honduras, recently walked out in mid-show at Univision’s La Nueva, KSCA-FM (101.9), in a bitter dispute over what he said were working conditions for his team, La Tropa Loca. The network later released a statement implying the dispute had been over content.

Almendarez soon resurfaced as morning drive-time jock at rival La Raza, where he shot to the top of the morning radio heap. In the recent spring ratings, Almendarez far outranked his nearest morning competitor, KFI’s Bill Handel, who had the top English-language show in the time slot.

In a recent interview, Almendarez defended his humor as “picardia,” a popular form of Latin comedy based on wordplays and double-entendres. And he emphatically rejected what he considers the explicit sex and crude language used by some of his colleagues.

“That’s too much,” he says, wrinkling his nose in a gesture of disgust. “That’s not me, no, no. I believe in radio well done, in that wholesome picardia that requires mental agility. When I hear another DJ that has all that, that’s when I’ll say, ‘There’s my replacement.’ ”

Asked to comment on recent examples of sex-related talk or jokes by SBS DJs, Tanner said they’d have to be judged case by case, and in context.

Tanner said last month that he found El Chulo’s discussion of shaving female genitals inappropriate and “racier than we probably should have on.” The DJ recently resigned, but Tanner declined to comment on the reason, citing confidentiality.

At the same time, Tanner declined to condemn the suggestive sexual jokes of El Cucuy, who remains on the air.

“I think people appreciate that Renan is an earthy humorist,” says the veteran radio executive who hired El Cucuy at both La Nueva and La Raza. “He really speaks the way the people speak on the street. “

So why aren’t there more complaints?

“I think it’s partly the listeners’ fault,” says Jerry Velasco of Nosotros, an advocacy group for Latino actors. “Our people are not used to writing letters of complaint, because in the countries they come from, they feel they don’t have a voice.”

In the U.S., Velasco notes, Latino advocacy groups are often focused on the mainstream media. Nosotros, for example, was founded by actor Ricardo Montalban partly to improve the image of Latinos as portrayed in film and television.

“So it’s our fault too as organization leaders,” Velasco says. “We’re so Americanized we concentrate only on the problems of English-language media and we forget the Spanish industry.”

What’s more, many listeners of Spanish-language radio have different expectations of their disc jockeys.

El Cucuy has been dubbed the Hispanic Howard Stern, but he’s more akin to a cross between Stern, Oprah and Dr. Laura without the degree. He has developed a public persona as a champion of the people, raising millions of dollars for charity and helping individual listeners with problems including evictions, depression and on-the-job injuries, mixing his trademark sexual cracks with heart-tugging interviews.

“Spanish radio is still extremely community-oriented,” says Jackie Madrigal, Latin formats editor for the trade journal Radio & Records. “Listeners call the stations for everything and anything, from the phone number to the nearest Target store to the location of the nearest emergency room.

“So even though Spanish-language radio can get raunchy, it’s still watching out for its community. That’s why no matter how raunchy these jocks may get, people are very faithful to them because they help.”

Bishop Jaime Soto, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, is not so willing to forgive.

He and other bishops fear the encroaching corrosion of traditional standards of decency in Mexico and Latin America, where conservative values still hold the line against the more virulent forms of shock radio. Soto says his Latin American colleagues sense those standards are quickly starting to break down as the global culture propagates American influence into the smallest villages.

“I think it’s very harmful, particularly to younger people,” says Soto. “So we have an obligation as pastors to be as persuasive as we can in telling people they deserve better than what they are being given.”

It’s not just priests who are concerned.

Veteran Los Angeles DJ Pepe Barreto, who spent 18 years on KLVE-FM (107.5), now owned by Univision, laments what he considers the rapid decline of traditional Latin radio in Los Angeles.

“Before, it was rare to find a guy on the radio who wasn’t clean,” says the Peruvian-born DJ who went to rival El Sol. “All the DJs were well-mannered, courteous and clean. They watched their vocabulary but still entertained. Nowadays, things are backward. Now it’s rare to find a DJ who entertains, informs, plays music and uses decent language.”

Barreto, who recently earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, used the ceremonial occasion to lodge a gentle critique of his industry. The honor “proves that clean radio can still be successful,” he told the gathered crowd of admirers and media.

Privately, he wonders how long that will hold true.

“I feel like the last of the Mohicans,” he jokes. “I’m not the only one, really, but every day we are fewer and fewer.”