Long standing Venezuelan artist Jesús “Chyno” Miranda, known for his stint in the boy band Ciega and the Latin Grammy-winning pop act Chino & Nacho, has on socials for a few days been going off—and down the nasty rabbit hole of racism, unfortunately.
This tirade against “violent protests” and “brutality” (from protestors, not police) is only the beginning of his anti-movement messaging, though.
Let’s begin with the clip:
Here’s a translation from Juan Escalante, who also helped widely circulate the EasyNotic clip.
Miranda is mad because he can’t leave his house?
This sounds, at first, like his motivations are selfish. They are, in part, but there’s more prejudice behind his rant than that.
The Venezuelan artist currently lives in Miami. For the record, according to his Instagram story of less than 24 hours ago, Miranda has left his house. To get some food. Without incident.
“When your protest turns violent, then your cause and your message are less effective.”
Miranda’s understanding of violence is a bit off: Destruction of property is not an act of violence; the systemic killing of unarmed black people by police is.
In the ongoing protests since George Floyd’s murder, attacks on actual citizens by protestors are nonexistent. Police across the U.S., however, have attacked protestors, reporters, and medics.
But Miranda is just “…trying to live in peace.”
This part is loaded with privilege. Miranda is not Black, but very light-skinned—white-passing, some might say. For that reason, he does not experience the systemic oppression that Black people endure their entire lives. Again, there’s a selfishness to his plea, but he wraps it up with a “F*ck you, to all of you”—an utter lack of empathy for the Black people whose lives are negatively affected, or cut short altogether, by the systemic racism that guides law enforcement’s policing of them.
To more thoroughly understand Miranda’s statements, let’s analyze some of his recent tweets, too.
This tweet affirms that Miranda is considerably more concerned about the protection of private property than the movement to end police killings of Black people. He wants to dictate how Black people protest—it should be peaceful, he says—but as non-Black person, he’s got no business doing so.
Unsurprisingly, responses show the dichotomy of Latinx opinion on anti-racist protesting: Some understand why it’s come to this and support the movement, while others condemn the protests, either in defense of private property, or by leaning on the reliably annoying, uninformed and baseless, “It’s the left, what do you expect?.
Here, things get confusing: In this tweet, Miranda calls for Venezuelan press to stop protestors from divulging personal information because it could later lead to legal action. That’s helpful, right?
There’s a post on the Chino y Nacho Instagram that seems to support the #blacklivesmatter movement:
But we fear it may be more a “we’re all one race” type of message, which invalidates the specific struggle and oppression of Black people.
In fact, Miranda isn’t so sure racism even exists in his home country.
Miranda is willfully-ignorant on other subjects, too, like this May 1 Instagram video, where he’s kissing his wife in public and worrying about how people might negatively react to this. (You’re straight, cisgender, and white-passing. What kind of issue was he expecting?)
He throws in some (pretty weird and random?) misogyny via Twitter also:
“Careful my princesses with confusing being a feminist and being feminine! They’re two totally distinct things,” he wrote.
Chino y Nacho have recently launched a comeback single. Ahead of it, Miranda posted on Instagram:
He says he’s been ready to return to music since he was born. We’re not sure he’s right about that.