- 1 Our translation: “Walk straight ahead, do not look to the side/ You are a saint, but you are not a (...)
Camina p’alante, no mires para el lao/Tu tienes un santo pero no eres babalao1
Calle Luna Calle Sol, Willie Colón, Hécto Lavoe
- 2 Our translation: “In the name of barking, of gunshots and the [ma]landro spirit.” The original Span (...)
En nombre del ladre, el tiro y el espíritu [ma]landro2
@malandrophotos
1This article is born from an exploration of the conflict present in the image of the “malandro” for those, who like myself, were born in Venezuela. The malandro symbolises a very distinct relationship with violence, in which marginality, terror, migration, identity and sacrality intermesh. The term malandro (delinquent, thug or rogue) is generally used to designate people from city suburbs, from barrios (favelas) who commit criminal acts (theft, extortion and murder). However, even though the malandro seems to embody the violence which has made Venezuela one of the world’s most dangerous countries, its image is also difficult to dissociate from a culture, an ethos and a form of spirituality inherent to the Venezuelan identity, to “Venezolanity,” and it therefore simultaneously provokes contempt and a strange feeling of belonging.
- 3 Santeria is a religion that emerged in Cuba in the nineteenth century and spread to other parts of (...)
- 4 Malandra is the feminine form of malandro, used with nouns that take the feminine gender in Spanish
2The imaginary of the malandro does not only circulate in the most dangerous quarters, but also among the highest levels of the Venezuelan state, thereby crossing social, geographical, physical, metaphysical and digital boundaries. Derived from the Santeria religion3 and the syncretism between African, Spanish and Indigenous cultures engendered during colonisation, the “Corte Malandra”4 is a form of popular religion founded on devotion to spirits representing iconic figures: malandros who after death became saints believed to offer protection to their devotees. With the spread of malandro culture on social media, “malandro saints” found a means of rapid dissemination in the form of digital memes, propagating an imaginary which seemed to bring together a dispersed community, one of the biggest diasporas of Latin America.
3This article launches a reflection on the sociocultural and epistemological implications of the image of the malandro in the context of digital meme practices. First, we ask to what extent digital practices associated with malandro culture memes, and more specifically images of the Corte Malandra, can elucidate the complex cultural relationship that Venezuelans have with violence. Then we also interrogate the fact that study of these images and of the sociotechnical practices linked to them necessitates the incorporation of definitions of the meme which precede its current conception as a digital phenomenon. We contextualise the image of the malandro by focusing on the figure of Saint Malandro, a unique feature of Venezuelan culture.
4We then introduce certain theoretical bases for understanding memes, focusing in particular on the meme’s anthropological conception (memetics) and its later conception as a digital object. We do this so as to analyse the sociotechnical specificities of malandro meme circulation, using three examples taken from Instagram.
5Lastly, we highlight the limits of our study in the hope that it will serve as a point of departure for further research on malandro culture as a socio-digital phenomenon.
6It is important to note that the angle adopted in this study is influenced by my own status of Venezuelan emigre, who like many others has been pushed to leave the country due to violence. My subjective experience therefore cannot include all the different ways in which each Venezuelan relates to this phenomenon. My aim, above all, is to open a discussion and to elicit multiple perspectives on a subject as sensitive as that of violence.
- 5 See the photographs of the following article published in the daily paper El Nuevo Herald : https:/ (...)
- 6 Our translation of: “qué malo estar en la cárcel/ Y que soledad que soledad se siente/ cuando se de (...)
7The Corte Calé faith, also known by the name Corte Malandra, emerged in Venezuela in the 1970s.5 This form of spirituality venerates delinquents instituted as saints to whom magical powers of protection are attributed. The main shrine, in the Cementerio General del Sur, the general cemetery in south Caracas, is decorated with semi-mythical figurines taken from the Caracas criminal community. Images of the malandros Ismael Sánchez, Machera, la Chama Isabel, “El Ratón” and “El Negro Antonio” appear alongside a variety of profane objects and practices: candles, flowers, religious prints and prayers mingle with the figurines which sport baseball caps, sunglasses and pistols. They receive offerings of knives, toy guns, cigarettes, marijuana, anis and spirit liquor, while devotees sing salsa songs in the background: “How painful it is being in prison/ And how lonely, how lonely you feel/ When you long for sweet freedom” (Sexto Juventud).6
8The term malandro, derived from the Italian malandrino [villain] and from the Latin malandria [species of hare],7 generally refers to a delinquent from low-income neighbourhoods, such as the barrios [favelas or slums]. The Corte Malandra faith is inextricably linked to urban violence which has progressively worsened since the 1970s (Castillo, 2009), leading to Venezuela being ranked among the most dangerous countries in the world in 2016 and 2017.8 This violence, coupled with a political and economic crisis, helped engender one of the biggest diaspora communities in Latin America, with 7.8 million refugees9 displaced throughout the world. In this context, the malandro became the emblem of urban crime and terror, both omnipresent in disadvantaged urban areas (Ferrándiz, 2002; González, 2009), but also a form of Venezuelan idiosyncrasy.10
- 11 In English “The Terror of Guarataro.” Guarataro is one of Caracas’ oldest neighbourhoods, situated (...)
- 12 Our translation of: “Era una persona alegre, nunca se metió con nadie del barrio, dice una vecina d (...)
9The image of the malandro masks the ambiguous relationship that Venezuelans have with violence. Ismael, leader of the Corte Malandra, was renown in the 1960s for crimes that had earned him the nickname “El Terror del Guarataro.”11 It was said, however, that he had never killed anyone, and that moreover, he used to help the poor: “He was full of joy, he never had trouble with anyone in the neighbourhood,” declared one Guaratoro inhabitant. “Instead, he stole meat from a meat truck and distributed it to the neighbourhood” (Zamora & Lopez, 2009).12 Of Chama Isabel or Isabelita, another leading figure of the Court, the legend says that she was the daughter of a rich family, who was raped at the age of 12, and who married a black man from Barlovento who cheated on her with one of her friends. Thereafter she took revenge on all men. Isabel is thus invoked to protect women from abuse by men (Castillo, 2009). While these narratives are difficult to corroborate, the imaginaries mobilised by these saints have a real impact on the ethos of the barrio, an ethos which values solidarity, justifies vengeance and condemns betrayal.
10The phenomenon of Corte Malandra spiritism is moreover indissociable from the vast pantheon of saints that make up the cult to Maria Lionza. This form of popular Venezualian religion emerged in the early twentieth century and has its roots in the syncretism of Spanish Catholic, Yoruba African and Indigenous beliefs and practices, resulting from colonisation (Castillo, 2009). Maria Lionza, the central deity and Indigenous queen, symbol of nature and fertility, followed by El Negro Felipe, associated with the historic figure of Pedro Camejo, hero of Venezuelan independence, and El Cacique Guaicaipuro, Indigenous warrior and symbol of resistance to Spanish colonisation. A multitude of male and female saints from various origins and hierarchies complement these “three powers.” At the bottom of the hierarchy is found the Corte Malandra, whose saints are considered to be bearers of a “lower mystical light,” of lower prestige or an inferior spiritual content, and who are therefore close to souls in purgatory (Castillo, 2009).
- 13 Our translation of: “Somos los ladrones, la tierra, la mierda.”
- 14 Our translation of: “Al que le gusta Corte malandra,” says spiritualist Wilmer Villasana, “es porqu (...)
11Saint Malandro falls in a morally ambiguous area where sin, temptation and human vice encounter benevolent acts of those seeking redemption after death. The saint’s behaviour often is driven more by ruse than by saintly rules. For example, during possession rituals of the Santeria, malandro spirits slip into the body of the person serving as “spiritual medium” even without them having been invoked, in the lapse of time when the medium has been de-possessed by one spirt and awaits another (Ferrándiz 2002). “We are thieves, earth, shit,”13 declares Saint Ismael through the voice of a medium (Matos Contreras, 2019, p. 67). Some devotees explain that malandro spirits seek to repair acts committed when they were alive, delivering from evil those currently involved in illicit activities (Castillo, 2009), rendering them thus morally good. These spirits are also invoked to provide magical protection before undertaking a criminal act: “If you love Corte Malandra, it’s because you are doing ‘jobs’, committing ‘mischief’, isn’t that so, brother?”14 (Zamora & Lopez, 2009).
12Concurrently malicious and generous, real and mythical, the image of the malandro spirit animates the matter of objects and the bodies of its devotees in a ritual that blurs the frontiers between this world and the other world, between the profane and the sacred. Religious images and statues, spiritual possession accompanied by consumption of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, and the pulsing rhythms of salsa structure the mediation between modes of sociability from the streets and modalities of sacrality.15 “Use today’s music, says Ismael, [that way] each spirit will stay in their thoughts, for tomorrow I will ensure that music is heard in all corners of the streets”16 (Matos Contreras, 2019, p. 68). The mediation between the sacred and the profane is reflected even in the syncretism of iconography: objects such as baseball caps, Nike sneakers and guns sit alongside flowers and candles around the shrines where devotees go to pray.
13The growing spread of content from malandro culture, notably through the circulation of memes on social media, has transformed Corte Malandra idols into mediatic figures on the Internet.17 Like the religious prints described earlier, Corte Malandra memes transmit a set of values, behaviours, modes of life and spiritual beliefs specific to the malandro imaginary and its distinct relation to violence. Nonetheless, as we will see further on, the specificity of the digital meme and its inherent sociotechnical practices as a digital object, introduce the possibility of a resignification of the images—those of saints, as well as those of malandro culture in general—and their relation to Venezuelan violence.
14Memes owes their fame to the Internet, however their conceptual genealogy precedes the technical platform which today provides its milieu. In effect, the definition of digital meme is characterised by a theoretical back-and-forth which has accompanied the term since its beginnings. Introduced for the first time in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, the concept of meme aimed to apply evolutionary theory to cultural change. In this broad definition, memes correspond to small units of cultural information that can be transmitted, analogous to genes which are transmitted from person to person through copy or imitation, following a logic of adaptability and longevity (Shifman, 2014). Under this conception, a successful meme is one that manages to “survive” for long thanks to its capacity for adaptation and its reproducibility.
- 18 “Viruses of the Mind” is in effect the title of an article published by Dawkins (1993) in which he (...)
15Susan Blackmore (2000) maintains that memes have a tendency to form mutually compatible groups called “memeplexes,” which aid their longevity. Memes that converge within a memeplex replicate themselves more efficiently than they would in isolation (p. 169). Blackmore takes religions and cults as examples of this phenomenon. The congregation of memes in a memeplex—iconographic objects, narratives, gestures, rituals, and others—facilitate their spread among individuals, as if we were dealing with “viruses of the mind,”18 thus influencing behaviour.
16This first conceptualisation of memes elicited two main criticisms. The first was addressed at the too hasty analogy that memetics made between culture and genetics, which implied considering individuals as being subjects that could be “contaminated” by memes, neglecting the complexity that is inherent to culture (Shifman, 2014). The second criticism concerned human agency. When an individual becomes part of a memeplex, such as a cult or a religion, they adopt a range of behaviours aimed at facilitating the spread and longevity of memes (Blackmore, 1999): people “work for memes they carry” (p. 170). This stance was reproached for how it reduced the agency of subjects to the simple “will” of memes.
- 19 See (Shifman, 2014) on the various interpretations of mentalist, behaviourist and memetic.
17While the definition of meme as a memetic concept was trapped in a debate on the dichotomies of body-spirit, genotype-phenotype,19 with the emergence of digital culture, the meme became a defined digital object, a result of collective human agency (Shifman, 2014; Wagener, 2022). Memes as used by internet users evoke the rapid spread of certain “ideas” through “multimodal” digital objects combining visual images, text and sound (Wagener, 2022). Thus, while the memetic theory of Dawkins and Blackmore is based on abstract and controversial cultural units which minimise the notion of human agency, in digital culture, the meme is linked to observable audiovisual objects such as videos posted on YouTube or user-generated humorous images (Shifman, 2014).
18Within the digital culture context, it thus becomes possible to propose a “clear definition of these very peculiar objects” (Wagener, 2022, p. 49) and render them analysable. According to the “pragma-semiotic” approach (Wagener, 2022), digital memes constitute multimodal techno-discursive units of an eminently interactive and meta-referential nature, which go beyond pure technics. Memes correspond to “post-digital” discursive phenomena, which rub out the boundaries between the digital world and physical reality, thus interrogating the interaction between imagination, technology and desire (p. 26). For Wagener (2022), the meme constitutes a “new language” that is post-digital and whose “semiological anatomy” is based on three “organs”:
191. The pragma-sign, that is the signs (visual image or text in the meme) considered in their practical use, and their interpretation in a given context.
202. The pragma-design, or the way in which the meme’s signs are used to perform a communicational function (e.g.: humour, critique, etc.).
213. The pragma-context, that is the social, cultural and technical context in which the meme is disseminated and interpreted.
22“Creativity,” an inherent characteristic of digital memes, becomes an expression of agency. According to Shifman (2014), the digital meme is composed of a set of elements which share the common characteristics of content, of form and/or position, of being deliberately generated and of being disseminated, imitated or transformed by numerous users through the Internet. As Wagener explains, this creativity or agency is indissociable from the socio-technical system of the Web 2.0. While the digital meme attests to the creativity of individuals, it is also intimately linked to the socio-technical possibilities (the affordances) provided by the Web 2.0, founded on the generation of content by users.
23In this perspective, the digital meme results from creative practices of internet users who transform cultural content via imitation and remixing, whereas in Blackmore’s concept, the meme represents a cultural unit with the capacity to influence human behaviour.
24As mentioned, the digital meme presented a mode of propagation for the Corte Malandra faith, conveying a sacred-profane relationship to violence particular to Venezuelan neighbourhoods. The dissemination of malandro imaginary was not immune to new hybridisation and invention, that result from the technical possibilities offered by digital media.
- 20 See the photographs of the following article published in the daily paper El Nuevo Herald : https:/ (...)
25Corte Malandra dissemination can be characterised by a memetic dynamic, as described by Blackmore. The iconography of the saint—baseball cap, sunglasses, cigarette, hands in pockets, gun in belt—is associated with rituals including prayers, salsa song lyrics, alcohol drinking, and spiritual possessions.20 This memeplex, combining practices and images, was traditionally disseminated through statues and devotional images, considered as having magical protective powers for devotees.
- 21 Our translation of: “Aquella persona que tenga su fe puesta en mí y obtenga esta estampa será prote (...)
“All those who have faith in me and obtain this print,” says the prayer on the back of an Ismael print, “will be protected from all witchcraft, all spells and all malice linked to my court. Amen. (Recite Our Father and one Hail Mary).”21 (Castillo, 2009)
26If we follow Blackmore’s memetics, it could be said that Corte Malandra, as well as any form of Santeria, render explicit the idea that individuals work for the memes they carry. From prints and prayers, to the rituals involving bodily possession of the “medium,” the image of Corte Malandra saints spreads and “lives” through diverse social practices, both offline and online.
27The Instagram account @brujeriatoday, boasting more than 12,000 followers, proposes witchcraft services such as spiritual consultations, love spells and spiritual cleansing. Its 240 posts include digital Corte Malandra memes aimed at reproducing the spiritual practices previously described. In one post,22 we see the statue of Ismael with typical attributes, accompanied by an excerpt from the salsa song “Panteón de amor,”23 imitating the ritual codes of the faith.
28The meme is an invitation to live fully without getting bogged down with moral debates: “Ismael Sanchez says that it’s not about being good or bad, but about not being anybody’s fool.” The caption of the post exhorts “Put AMEN in the comments and receive his protection.”24 Several followers responded to the invitation posting “amen” and emoticons of praying hands and thank you’s, as well as emoticons of hearts supposed to express love.
- 25 This account was recently deleted from Instagram.
29While the memetic idea that memes can influence individual behaviour is an interesting one, it must be nuanced in light of the specificities of digital memes. Such memes, as we have seen, result from a sociotechnical interaction between the agency of users and the affordances of what is called “participatory” internet. An example is the Instagram account of Pedro Alvarez, alias @malandrosphs,25 which has more than 100 posts and 96,000 followers. He shares images found on the Internet, which he modifies by adding “malandro phrases,” aphorisms reflecting Venezuelan popular culture. Among his creations are a series of Saint Ismael memes which mix humour with moralising phrases on street life, reinterpreted thanks to the technical possibilities of digital social media. While in traditional forms of worship, iconographic invention remains true to the original image of the saint, with digital memes, users modify and re-signify images of saints through text editing practices and the juxtaposition of images that social media enables.
- 26 The author of the Instagram post had given permission for his images to be reproduced, but his acco (...)
- 27 Our translation of: “Es más peligroso la envidia de un amigo que el odio de un enemigo.”
30Let us examine the structure of one of such meme26 using Wagener’s pragma-semiotic approach. The first semiological organ concerns the “pragma-sign,” in this case indicating the significative universe of Corte Malandra, as well as street wisdom: “Envy from a friend is more dangerous than hate from an enemy.”27 The “pragma-design,” second organ, corresponds to the layout of the meme, linked here to malandro iconography, to the aesthetics of Ismael prints, to the sententious tone of the phrasing, as well as to the visual codes of digital memes: text under the image, white background, black lettering.
31The strength of our case study, however, resides in its third “organ,” the “pragma-context,” that is the modality of emergence, enunciation and reception of the meme as a “techno-discursive” unit. Our meme addresses the deceitful world of the streets and the need for caution in friendship. In the world of a malandro, being careful in friendship can be a matter of life and death. Betrayal by friends is a common theme, symbolised by figures such as Saint Tomasito, who is said to have been gunned down by 132 bullets from accomplices during an attempted bank robbery (Castillo, 2014). This intertextuality reinforces the street ethos, where the betrayal of friendship is punished by spirits.
32From a rhetorical viewpoint, @malandrosphp uses the image of Ismael as a topos of authority, conferring a moral and religious tone to the phrase about harmful friendships in the criminal world. Yet, in the caption, an emoticon of a ghost with tongue sticking out suggests a humorous nuance (pragma-design) which subverts the sententious tone of the phrase, lending some playfulness to the subject of violence.
- 28 The author of the Instagram post had given permission for his images to be reproduced, but his acco (...)
- 29 Our translation of: “En un mundo de vivos, el más vivo es el que se hace el muerto.”
33In another meme28, we see (pragma-design) a tattooed man in the middle of a Santeria procession, with the Venezuelan flag in the background. The man’s tattoo shows “Ismael Sanchez” with the typical attributes: baseball cap, sunglasses, cigarette, and white-collar shirt. The text “In a world of the living, the most alive pretend to be dead”29 refers (pragma-sign) to the universe of the Santeria, and this is confirmed by the image of the procession, while also making a reference to the malice of the street suggested by the double meaning of the term “vivo” in Spanish: both “living” and “alive,” the latter in the sense of alert or sharp. In Venezuelan popular language (pragma-context), the word “vivo” is used to refer to a someone who is clever and sharp, who can take advantage of the slightest opportunity, regardless of what the rules are. Morally ambiguous, wavering between the street way of life and law breaking, “viveza criolla” represents a rule of survival in Venezuela, a distinctive mark of “Venezolanity,” of being Venezuelan (Flores, 2020) and above all of the malandro.
34It is precisely from the malandro locus of enunciation, from the “sharpest” that the following syllogism emerges: if being sharp, “vivo,” resides in making exceptions to rules, and in Venezuela it is a rule to be sharp, then the truly sharp is someone who pretends to not be sharp, who pretends to be dead. This moral, which describes a way of life, or rather of survival, for Venezuelans, acquires even greater force because it comes from a saint, a dead person who acts in the world of the living.
35It would be premature to propose a definitive conclusion on Corte Malandra memes, and even more so on malandro culture, given the brevity of this article. However, I believe that what is presented here can open at least two paths of reflection of interest for further development:
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one on the epistemological approach to memes;
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the other on the sociocultural role that malandro saint memes play in the Venezuelan community.
- 30 Also refer to the field of study on digital religions, and notably Campbell & Bellar (2023) and Dou (...)
36From an epistemological viewpoint, Corte Malandra memes invite reflection on the articulation of certain aspects of the concept of memes as an anthropological concept (memetics) with those of memes as digital objects. While the memes of saints studied here correspond to a sociotechnical phenomenon of invention and remix characteristic of digital culture, to exclude the power exerted by the image of saints on their devotees would be to delegitimise the experience of those who practice this form of popular religiosity. That does not mean that we consider, as does Blackmore, that human subjectivity can be reduced to a complex of memes (memeplex). Corte Malandra may not guide our acts, but in-depth study of Corte Malandra digital memes could present an opportunity to reflect on the “interfaces” that exist between technics, aesthetics and religion (Simondon, 2014), as well as on the power of images, and notably of memes, to move [mouvoir] and affect [émouvoir] people (Mondzain, 2003).30
37On the other hand, as a Venezuelan, I consider that these memes can be analysed as vectors of identification and resignification of the phenomenon of Venezuelan violence. In a context of mass dispersion provoked by the Venezuelan diaspora, the spread of malandro imaginary on social media seems to put a fragmented society in contact with the violence which affects all Venezuelans. Through the appropriation and reinterpretation that digital practices allow around malandro memes and their saints, violence becomes something that belongs to us, a part of our heritage, even though this feeling of belonging is not free from pain—as is often the case with relationships to one’s country. Thus, malandro memes, as a memetic concept and digital object, can act as a key, among others, for better understanding the complex relations that link violence to Venezuelan identity.