The blow hit hard. It was incomprehensible, yet entirely predictable. In December 2024, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro accused Caracas four-piece Rawayana of a “humiliating outburst against Venezuelan women.” The psych-tropical pop band, until then an explosion of rhythm and colourful pride for Venezuelans, were officially barred from returning to their country.
The stadiums they were scheduled to play a few weeks later – ten completely sold-out shows across Venezuela – were dropped from the tour. On social media, the band wrote: “Until further notice, this is how we say goodbye to our country,” thanking their fans and everyone who worked to make the concerts happen. “Now it’s time for us to conquer the world.”
The trigger for all this? A Venezuelan raptor-house song titled “Veneka,” which had no direct political connotation. It wasn’t a protest; it wasn’t a manifesto. Like all their songs, it was a celebration of their country’s culture, with the reclamation of the “Veneka” slur, often used against Venezuelan women migrants in other Latin American countries, at its core. “Their goal was to prevent people from enjoying the concerts,” Alberto Montenegro, frontman of Rawayana, tells Dazed, speaking in exile from the Dominican Republic. “They had no problem with ‘Veneka.’ That was just the excuse.”
“The real problem is that we started to be seen as a threat,” Montenegro continues. “Our concerts are massive gatherings of young people in a politically charged environment, and they wanted to control our message. I received threats through various channels telling me not to go [to Venezuela], that if I spoke about certain things, there would be problems.”
Until that moment, Rawayana had largely been seen as a joyful celebration of Venezuelan culture. But as Venezuela’s crisis deepened, bringing economic collapse, the largest exodus in Latin American history and growing restrictions on dissent, the reality of the country inevitably seeped into Montenegro’s words. “I fight for my country, seeking to represent what we truly are,” he explains. “I fight so that they don’t steal our identity, something I believe many have tried to do both inside and outside of Venezuela. ‘Veneka’ is a humorous song, but it was important because of the dignity it showed at a time when an election had just been stolen. Our music tries to resist these blows to our dignity.”
While the controversy continued to escalate, however, Rawayana’s international reputation rose. In February 2025, the group won its first Grammy for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album for ¿Quién Trae Las Cornetas? (Who Brings the Trumpets?) and, a year later, they released their first album with elements of direct political protest: ¿Dónde Será El After? (Where is the Afterparty?), an upbeat tropical dance record which uses satire to channel the exhaustion of a generation navigating Venezuela’s political repression and economic collapse.
The album’s opening track, “Si Te Pica Es Porque Eres Tú” (“If It Itches, It’s Because of You”), released two days before Maduro’s capture by US military forces, begins with the seemingly prophetic line: “Rawa wishes you a happy new year, and may those sons of bitches finally leave.”
Below, we catch up with Rawayana frontman Alberto Montenegro about life in exile and Venezuelan identity in the wake of Maduro’s kidnapping.
How did you react when you found out about Maduro’s capture?
Montenegro: It’s insane to see a foreign force enter your country and do something like that. It’s like when you’re kidnapped; you don’t have a good solution. You have a better or a worse solution, but there’s no good solution.
I feel like we have a bad solution and we still don’t know the consequences. We don’t know what’s going to happen. It seems like everything will make sense now, but it also forces us to stare straight into the wolf’s den. The feeling was one of surprise. The wolf arrived. And now what’s going to happen?
And then ‘Si Te Pica Es Porque Eres Tú’ went viral…
Montenegro: I just looked at the songs we had just released and thought, ‘Damn, what have I gotten myself into? What can I say?’
‘Si Te Pica Es Porque Eres Tú’ is born from a national sentiment. I thought about that when I wrote it: ‘This is a national feeling, and that’s why it will be powerful.’ And I believe that in the future, there will be a group that thinks differently than I do who will also be able to sing that song. That’s why I released it, because it resonates with the whole world. We all want the people we don’t want around to stay out of our lives. The crazy thing is that it happened right after its premiere; it does feel like we manifested it.
We must build something new, because if we go back to the past, we’ll inevitably return to what we’re experiencing now.
Do you think things are going to change now?
Montenegro: I’m always optimistic and I believe we’re learning many lessons as a society. Honestly, I don’t know much about many things, but all I feel is that these years of disaster and absurdity have been for learning and maturing.
Sometimes there’s this idea that we want to go back to how things were before Chavismo [Maduro’s brand of politics], but the reality is that the problem started long before, and I’m not optimistic about chasing nostalgia. I think we must build something new, because if we go back to a past that was supposedly good, we’ll inevitably return to what we’re experiencing now.
I’ve been living in Ireland for a couple of years, and something I’ve noticed is that I feel much more Mexican when I’m away.
Montenegro: I feel the same way, but I think that there comes a point when you must make a decision, especially if you live in exile: Do I want to live in the nostalgia of not being able to return or do I want to live in the moment and look ahead?
This album title is a question directed towards the future: where will the after party be? It’s an exercise in trying to look ahead. I don’t want to be trapped in nostalgia my whole life; I want to live in the present. Today I’m in the Dominican Republic, on a beautiful beach, and tomorrow I don’t know where I’ll be, but I know that if I live learning every day, tomorrow everything will be alright and the after-party will be great.
[In Venezuela] we dance our sorrows, we sing about our grief. I think that’s part of us, beyond it being a deliberate act of resistance, it’s who we are.
What do you think makes Venezuelan culture unique?
Montenegro: I’m impressed by our ability to laugh at everything, even to the point of irresponsibility. But there’s a beauty in that. While we are experiencing a profound social conflict with our self-esteem, our sense of humour has somehow allowed us to look ahead without much drama. This may have its downsides, but if we approach it from a positive perspective, nothing can hold us back if we’re laughing.
For Venezuelans, nothing is so dramatic; everything makes us laugh. We laugh at ourselves. We say, ‘Damn, there’s no electricity, no water, no food’. But then we say, ‘Let’s grab that mango and have a good time.’ We have the power to stay positive, and that has helped me a lot during the most difficult moments of my life.
My family and I were once kidnapped. They were robbing us, holding guns to our heads, and my mother started telling jokes to the kidnappers. They were laughing along with her. I think it’s a beautiful thing, and it helps us become leaders in the world.
The album is very political, but it’s also joyful. Is that typical of someone from Venezuela?
Montenegro: A couple of days ago I was singing ‘El Niágara en Bicicleta’ with Juan Luis Guerra, doing an introspective exercise about our personalities, those of us who live near the Caribbean Sea.
It’s crazy to think that people dance to songs like that, but it’s natural. We dance our sorrows, we sing about our grief. I think that’s part of us, beyond it being a deliberate act of resistance; it’s who we are.
¿Dónde Será El After? is out now.
