LONG BEACH, Calif. — Julio Gutierrez, who goes by Jules, is a first-generation son of immigrants from Sonora, Mexico. It's a background he's proud of, but growing up, Gutierrez said he often heard people in his community using the term "chunti," which is Mexico City slang. 

"It's pretty much a way of saying a ghetto Mexican or ghetto Hispanic," Gutierrez said. "Growing up, it was almost a fear to be called a chunti because it was like, you've been caught. You've been found out."

For the past ten years, Gutierrez has been in the adult beverage industry, starting first in brewing and, most recently, in craft cocktails. He said that he's never seen true Latino representation in the industry in the last ten years. Even though he points out, the entire cocktail industry has been built on the backbone of Hispanic communities (think: rum, tequila, pineapple, mangoes, and such). 

"[The cocktail industry] has never been marketed to us as Hispanics, which is a shame because there's this whole community of people who could connect with it," Gutierrez said. "If you look at a lot of the mezcal companies that are blowing up right now, even their marketing is done in English."

Gutierrez's answer was Chuntikis, a cocktail popup that, at its very heart, is about telling stories and giving representation to the Latino community. Using tiki cocktails as a base, Gutierrez carefully layers flavors that each play a role in telling the story of some aspect of Latino culture. 

"So I'm using, essentially, [tiki] blueprints, like specs and measurements for the cocktail but swapping a lot of ingredients that I think tell more of the story," Gutierrez explained.

He makes one cocktail, for example, that tells the story of Mexican revolutionary hero Francisco "Pancho" Villa by layering brandy and apples. 

"The legend says that by the time that he and Emiliano Zapata finally met in the center of Mexico, he was so drunk off of celebrating," Gutierrez said. "And it's known that he celebrated with brandy."

Apples were an intentional inclusion in the drink because, Gutierrez said, apples are one of the main crops from the town where Pancho Villa was born. 

Gutierrez crafted a special cocktail for Pride month that celebrates the work of Juan Gabriel, one of Mexico's most beloved singers who hid his sexuality until the end of his life. 

"He indirectly came out, and that was a big deal for a lot of second- and third-generation Mexicans who just embraced that idea," Gutierrez said.

The cocktail tells the story of Juan Gabriel's brief stint with Japanese fame, even recording songs in Japanese by layering classic Japanese flavors like lychee and sake. 

In his quest to make craft cocktails a more inviting place for the Latino community, Gutierrez writes all his drink descriptions in Spanish first, then English. The name Chuntikis? That's a clever play on words, intended to remove the stigma from the slang word chunti and turn it into something to be proud of.

"I realized that it's really not a bad thing to be a chunti," Gutierrez said." But if you think I am one….sit down, and let's talk about it."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified Julio "Jules" Gutierrez's last name. It has been corrected. (June 19, 2021)