The residents of the Brickell neighborhood of Miami were reportedly terrorized on Tuesday by graffiti messages alluding to Venezuela’s socialist regime and its dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
“The Bolivarian Fury and the colored rooster are here,” the graffiti read,
The picture of the graffiti, originally posted online by Univision journalist Maria Alesia Sosa, reportedly went rapidly viral on social media as many users expressed their surprise and concern upon seeing a pro-Maduro graffiti in Miami, given its status as home to one of the largest Venezuelan diaspora communities in America.
“Bolivarian Fury” is the name of an ongoing brutal crackdown launched by Maduro in January against political dissidents, activists, and critics of the rogue socialist regime in Venezuela. At the time of its announcement, Maduro claimed that the “Bolivarian Fury” campaign was necessary to stop assassination plots against him.
In the past several months, the Maduro regime has used “Bolivarian Fury” to arrest dozens of civilians and members of the military, including activist and lawyer Rocío San Miguel, who the Maduro regime accused of being involved in the dubious and unproven assassination plot against Maduro.
The crackdown also saw the arrest of several members of Vente Venezuela, the country’s only mainstream center-right party. Vandalism also struck the headquarters of other political parties, radio stations, and media outlets critical of the regime. The arrests of Vente Venezuela members occurred in the months before the July 28 sham presidential election, which Maduro claims he “won” despite widespread rejection of the results internationally.
“The colored rooster” that the graffiti in Brickell also mentions refers to a moniker Maduro adopted during the presidential campaign originating in a popular children’s song. In July, Venezuelans in New York angrily denounced that Maduro’s colored rooster slogan and logo briefly appeared on an advertisement display in Times Square.
Brickell, where the pro-Maduro graffiti messages were found on Tuesday, was the stage of a protest in September 2018 organized by local Venezuelan diaspora outside the Nusr-et Steakhouse to protest against its owner, chef Nusret “Salt Bae” Gökçe, who at the time had infamously hosted dictator Nicolás Maduro in one of his luxury restaurants in Istanbul, Turkey.
The protesters called for a boycott of the restaurant after Gökçe hosted the lavish dinner for Maduro in Istanbul at a time when Venezuela faced one of the worst chapters of the ongoing — and inevitable — economic and societal collapse of socialism in the country. Following mass outrage from Venezuelans around the world, Gökçe deleted his videos with Maduro from his social media accounts.
The pro-Maduro graffiti in Brickell surfaced days after thousands of members of the Venezuelan diaspora held a peaceful rally in Bayfront Park on Saturday to denounce Maduro’s attempts to cling to power and his refusal to step down amidst growing evidence that suggests his claimed “victory” in the July 28 sham presidential election was not legitimate and that opposition candidate Edmundo González was the actual winner. Similar peaceful rallies also occurred on Saturday across more than 300 other cities around the world.
The graffiti also surfaced amidst reports of a growing presence of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization in U.S. cities. The gang, long believed to have deep ties to the Maduro regime, has expanded its presence in the United States. Authorities confirmed that the gang has an active presence in Miami, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta as of June.
Police officials from Dallas, Texas, reportedly announced on Tuesday that gang activities linked to Tren de Aragua have been detected in the northern area of the city. The Dallas Police Department is reportedly “collaborating with other agencies to address possible crimes” associated with Tren de Aragua, but declined to provide specific details about ongoing investigations. Jaime Castro, president of the Dallas Police Association, stated that law enforcement in North Texas “will not tolerate the presence of this gang.”
The National Sheriffs’ Association released a statement last week calling for action against the Venezuelan transnational gang after law enforcement officials across the country were notified that Tren de Aragua had given the “green light” to its members to attack U.S. law enforcement officers.
“When we allow a brutal and violent gang, like TDA, to operate in the United States, we have failed in terms of border security,” Sheriff Kieran Donahue, President of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said in the statement. “TDA is the latest example where failed policies have allowed violent gangs and criminal cartels into our country who subsequently commit heinous acts of violence and cause fear in our communities.”
Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich denounced Tren de Aragua as a state-sponsored terrorist group linked to the Maduro narcoregime during an event in Chile in April, asserting that the gang’s operations are “not autonomous” from Venezuela’s rogue socialists.
“The Tren de Aragua does not strike in just any way. The Tren de Aragua strikes with a procedure, with a matrix of operation, with a logic that always does exactly the same thing,” Bullrich explained at the time. “It settles in a certain place. It comes with a group in general of Venezuelan nationality.”
“Consequently, it is important to analyze whether it is an organization that is autonomous from the state or not autonomous from the state. I tend to think that it is not autonomous from the state,” she continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.