The Criminalization of Venezuelan Street Culture
On the morning of April 23, 2024, Claudio David Balcane González, a twenty-six-year-old musician from the state of Aragua, in Venezuela, arrived at the Texas border. In the previous three months, he had travelled through nine countries, before securing an appointment with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through CBP One, an initiative of the Biden Administration to create a more orderly system for asylum claims. Border Patrol held him at the station until midnight, asking about his background and his many tattoos, which include a rose, a clock, a crown, and two guns. Eventually, he was released with a future immigration-court date. Balcane went to meet a friend in San Antonio and posted a picture with him on Instagram, with the caption “If you can dream of it, you can make it happen.”
Balcane, who performs as Davicito59, began making music at thirteen and spent years busking on buses around Maracay, the capital of Aragua. He started out as a rapper, but his focus has since shifted to dembow, a genre that originated in the Dominican Republic and has become explosively popular among Venezuelans in the U.S. A month after Balcane entered the country, he released a song called “Yo me voy por el Darién,” which describes the perils of crossing the jungle that separates Colombia from Panama—jaguars, soldiers, criminals—and the hopes that kept him going. “We ate rice with vulture meat but held our heads high,” Balcane sings. “We had left home with a mission: to make it big.” He called it “el nuevo himno de los caminantes”—the new hymn of the walkers—and it quickly gained a following on social media. Balcane was soon collaborating with more established musicians, including John Theis, a pioneer of Venezuelan dembow in the U.S. At a concert in Detroit, Theis teased Balcane onstage. “This dude is here signing baseball caps!” he said. “You weren’t signing caps in el Darién.”
Balcane’s real breakthrough came in February, when he teamed up with Junior Caldera, a popular dembow singer in Venezuela, and Luxor, a fellow-immigrant and a relative newcomer to the scene. The track, called “Donaltron,” is set to a hypnotic, frenzied beat, with lyrics that criticize the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown and plead with the President to show mercy. “I promise you I won’t smoke—I won’t drink more beer,” Balcane sings. “Well, only a little, that can’t hurt!” The video, clips of which have been viewed millions of times on TikTok and Instagram, shows the musician facing off with a dancer in a rubber Trump mask at locations around Chicago, including the city’s Trump Tower. “Just give me a couple of months to score an American girl,” Balcane sings. “I’ll give you a few cachapas in return.”
The song received mixed reactions online. Most listeners seemed to find it funny and refreshing, but others, including many Venezuelans, responded with disdain. “Those of us who behave make no noise, so they think we don’t exist,” one commenter wrote. “Those who misbehave, a small fraction, make a lot of noise and the rest of us get fucked.” Other posters were even more aggressive: “Please deport him to a remote island.” Someone else added, “Guantanamo.” Many of the commenters tagged Trump, ICE, C.B.P., and D.H.S.
Two months after “Donaltron” was released, Balcane was intercepted by federal agents while leaving his apartment in Chicago. He was thrown to the ground and handcuffed; an agent kneeled on the back of his neck. When he protested, saying that he was an artist not a criminal, an agent told him, “We know perfectly well who you are. That’s why we are here.” (A senior D.H.S. official said, “Any accusations that an unusual amount of force was used are false.”)
Balcane was taken to an ICE facility in the city, where agents accused him of belonging to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump Administration has designated as a terrorist organization and claims is invading the United States. The agents provided no evidence other than Balcane’s tattoos, which they said were affiliated with the group. While searching his phone, they played the video of “Donaltron.” “How funny that he is singing against deportation and is about to be deported himself,” one agent remarked.
Balcane relayed his story from a detention center in Wisconsin, where he awaits a hearing on May 29th. Santa Rita, where he grew up, is a dangerous area on the outskirts of Maracay, but people close to the musician deny that he is affiliated with Tren de Aragua; he has no known criminal record in the U.S. or in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru, where he previously lived. Balcane has stated that he fled Venezuela after receiving threats for songs that were critical of the country’s President, Nicolás Maduro. In 2016, he was waiting at a bus station when two men attacked him, hitting him on the head with the butt of a gun. “My music has always been a way to express my reality and my nation’s struggles,” he wrote in a declaration. “It addressed democratic erosion, economic collapse, and the violence used to silence dissident voices.”
The “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” which became public through a court filing in March, lists elements thought to indicate affiliation with Tren de Aragua and assigns a point value to each. Suspects scoring eight points and above can become “validated” members. In addition to traditional criteria like criminal history, the guide instructs officers to check for “symbolism.” This includes tattoos that denote loyalty to the gang (four points); insignia, logos, notations, drawings, or dress that show allegiance to it (another four); and social-media posts that include its symbols (two more). A set of accompanying documents note that members of the gang may have tattoos ranging from the Michael Jordan logo to an AK-47. A list of additional identifiers includes donning “high-end urban street wear,” merch from U.S. sports teams with Venezuelan players, Jordan sneakers, and Chicago Bulls jerseys.
On social media, Balcane regularly wears sports attire and designer replicas, and proudly displays his tattoos. (Roses, clocks, crowns, and guns are all cited in the D.H.S. documents.) His songs sometimes make references to drugs and weapons—a line might mention prepping coke or carrying a Glock. But, as an artist who has worked with Balcane, whom I’ll call Carlos, put it, “You listen to his lyrics and fifty per cent are drawn from his reality and the other fifty are commonplace in rap. A rapper might say, ‘My bars are an atomic bomb and your ear is Hiroshima.’ That doesn’t mean he’s about to drop an atomic bomb.”
“Cuidadito,” a collaboration between Balcane, Theis, and Brayita58, a dembowsero from the state of Carabobo, which borders Aragua, shows a group of migrants in streetwear, including Bulls merch, crowding into a Chicago subway car. Several have visible tattoos. The musicians’ style perfectly matches the description of alleged Tren de Aragua members in government documents. In this context, the song’s chorus—“Watch out, I’m from Venezuela, we’re the new kids in town”—which intends to signal the arrival of the dembowseros in the U.S. Latino music scene, seems to confirm the government’s worst fears.
One of the central characters of the Venezuelan imagination, and therefore of dembow, is the malandro. Loosely translated as “thug,” it describes both actual criminals and the style, behavior, and dialect of young men from poor neighborhoods. Much like the use of “thug” in American rap music, dembowseros have reclaimed malandro and its traditional signifiers, transforming an epithet into a term of art. In Theis and Caldera’s song “Malandrito,” it’s the bad boy all the girls want; in Balcane’s “Bur d’ Malandro,” it’s the guy who acts all tough but will get crushed in a rap battle.
