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Nine years after fleeing Venezuela, firefighter Thony López became essential in Santo Domingo after the Jet Set nightclub collapse. His work blended rescue with emergency psychology, exposing gaps in disaster protocols and the role of migrant brigades across the Americas.

When the Noise Became Dust

In the hours after the Jet Set discotheque collapsed on April 8, 2025, the work was physical first. Concrete. Twisted metal. The tight, breath-held geometry of rubble. It was also human, in the most immediate sense, because the catastrophe left two hundred thirty-six dead and more than a hundred injured. Every decision inside that wreckage carried a weight that did not fade when the sirens did.

Thony López, a Venezuelan firefighter who arrived in the Dominican Republic nine years ago, marked by the crisis back home, describes that rescue as the event that has affected him most. The sensory memory is not glamour or shock, but dust and strain, the kind that coats your mouth and makes voices sound farther away than they are. He was there as part of the Santo Domingo firefighters, doing rescue work and also, in public retellings, something less visible: emotional containment for victims.

That second role became sharper after the first day, when many volunteers from different countries showed up, and then the help thinned out. López kept working in the rubble when the crowd effect dissolved, and the long emergency started to look like what it really is, a marathon of attention and nerves.

He said he came to the Dominican Republic after watching what was happening in Venezuela and deciding to leave, like many Venezuelans, to give his family security. “I arrived in the Dominican Republic after seeing what was happening in Venezuela, and because of that, I decided to leave the country, like many Venezuelans, to give security to my family,” he told EFE.

The trouble is that migration stories are often told as endings or escapes. His reads like a transfer of skills across borders, followed by a test, under the worst conditions, of whether the receiving country is prepared to use those skills effectively.

The Rescue You Cannot Photograph.

López says his vocation began with his father, also a firefighter, who passed the profession down to him. In Venezuela, he belonged to rescue groups and citizen security teams. Still, he left due to the difficult situation his family and he faced. In the Dominican Republic, he says the vocation continued, and his professional background helped him integrate into the Santo Domingo fire department.

“When I arrived here, my vocation continued. Whatever country we are in, vocation remains part of us,” he told EFE. He specializes in emergency psychology, and Jet Set became the place where that specialization stopped being a credential and turned into a necessity.

He reflected there that even in a catastrophe, victims have dignity. That is a moral statement, but it is also operational. It changes how you speak to people, how you move around bodies, how you treat families who are waiting, how you treat fellow rescuers who are running on adrenaline until they suddenly are not.

“The psychology of emergency is as vital as rescuing people. It is vital, because we need to protect and address what has to do with the psychic health of victims and rescuers,” he told EFE.

What this does is push the public conversation beyond heroism and toward systems. Emergency response is often measured in speed, equipment, and extraction. López is arguing for protocol, for training, for a language of care that can be repeated under pressure. He says the experience led him and his team to understand that emergencies should be humanized and that everything related to psychological first aid needs to be properly protocolized for interventions in any event.

The wager here is whether governments and institutions treat that as optional. In practice, psychological first aid is not an add-on. It shapes outcomes, including whether survivors return to daily life with support or with silence, and whether responders carry trauma home without tools to process it.

A Brigade Built From Exodus

After the rescue, López was contacted by the Legión Internacional Brigada Venezuela, a network formed by Venezuelan firefighters living in multiple countries. The organization is not only focused on catastrophes and major events, but also on emotional care for the firefighters and emergency workers themselves.

That focus connects directly to López’s point. It also reveals a larger reality across Latin America and the Caribbean: migration has created transnational pools of expertise that move faster than institutions do.

The Legión was founded in Lima in 2018 after its commander general, Venezuelan Richard Perales Gerdel, arrived in Peru amid the Venezuelan exodus. According to United Nations data cited in the notes, about 7.9 million people have left Venezuela in search of protection and a better life. Most, about 6.7 million, have been taken in by other Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Perales says the Legión emerged to support Venezuelan migrants in emergencies. Still, so they could contribute in any emergency, wherever they were. “It was created to support Venezuelan migrants in emergencies and disasters, but also so they could contribute in any emergency situation in the country where they were,” he told EFE. He said the organization includes doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, rescue personnel, and even police officers.

Over time, the membership widened beyond Venezuelans to include people of other nationalities, reaching a total of six hundred members. Perales said the organization consolidated in 2022 as it expanded across Latin America and Europe to offer integrated cooperation with allied fire departments during disasters. From Lima, he described activations in Spain tied to the devastating dana in October 2024, and more recent activations linked to wildfires in Chile. He said the network also operates in countries including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay.

The policy dispute, then, is not abstract. It is about coordination and legitimacy. How do states integrate migrant expertise into official response without turning it into informal labor they can rely on when convenient and ignore when not? How do they build shared standards for safety, training, and psychological first aid when responders may belong to both a national department and an international volunteer network?

Jet Set, in López’s telling, was the place where those questions stopped being theoretical. It was where dust and grief made the limits of protocol visible, and where a Venezuelan firefighter, shaped by one crisis, found himself inside another, insisting that dignity is not only a value. It is a procedure.

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A downpour in Old San Juan did not stop a centennial tribute to Catalino Tite Curet Alonso. At his grave, bomba drums and dancing carried his lyrics back into public space, reopening questions about cultural policy, preservation, and Puerto Rico’s voice abroad.

A Cemetery Bomba Under a Hard, Clean Rain

The micro scene is wet and simple. In the cemetery of Old San Juan, where Catalino Tite Curet Alonso is buried, people gather under copious rain. Family members stand close. The group Plenibom plays bomba, an Afro-Puerto Rican rhythm that hits the body before it reaches the intellect. A couple dances in front of the others while the music cuts through the weather.

They play Sorongo. They play Las caras lindas. They play Se escapó un león. In that moment, the tribute is not abstract. It is not a plaque. It is not an anniversary post. It is music in the open air, in a place where people do not usually dance.

Tite Curet is remembered on his centennial as a master of songs that evoke pride and admiration. His ability to craft melodies for legendary salseros like Ismael Rivera, Héctor Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, Rubén Blades, and La Lupe made his work feel inevitable, creating a deep sense of cultural pride among Puerto Ricans.

Hilda Curet, one of his daughters, watched the homage and felt a profound sense of gratitude and a gentle ache. ‘I feel very honored and happy,’ she told EFE, sharing how he wrote at least 1,400 songs, including works for Menudo, Nelson Ned, Tony Croatto, and orchestras of Roberto Roena and Tommy Olivencia, which highlights her pride and emotional connection.

“I would have liked my dad to be alive so he could see all the celebration and what the Committee has done to spread the legacy of his music across Puerto Rico and internationally,” she told EFE.

That line lands because it is both personal and political. A family wanting a father to witness his flowers is a human truth. But it is also a statement about recognition delayed, about how often the island’s cultural architects become fully visible only when they are gone.

A Writer Who Never Drove, Always Listened

Curet was born on February twelve, 1926, in Guayama, in southern Puerto Rico. His daughter said he was crossing borders from a young age and may not have known the reach of his music, including the fact that one of his songs ended up in film soundtracks such as The Godfather II.

From Guayama, he moved to Barrio Obrero in San Juan, a neighborhood known for musical fervor in salsa, bomba, and plena. This is where the method becomes part of the legend. He observed. He analyzed. He took the lived experiences and anecdotes of people around him and turned them into songs.

The everyday observation implied by the notes is the way public life becomes material when a writer is paying attention. A conversation at a corner. A complaint was heard on a bus. A story repeated in a doorway. For Curet, the city was not the background. It was the source.

He used public transportation or walked because he did not drive. He collected experiences and wrote them down in a notebook, recorded them on tape with his voice, or typed them on a typewriter, then delivered them to singers.

This is where the tailoring metaphor becomes concrete. A composer without a car, moving through the city at street speed, gathering language in fragments, then shaping it into something that could hold a stadium. The trouble is that modern cultural policy often measures value through scale and export. Big venues. Big streaming numbers. Big international deals. Curet’s practice suggests another measure, the slow accumulation of listening that produces songs sturdy enough to travel.

His catalog includes La Perla and Las caras lindas for Rivera, Periódico de ayer and Barrunto for Lavoe, Anacaona and Mi triste problema for Feliciano, Plantación adentro for Blades, La cura for Frankie Ruiz, and Marejada feliz for Roena and his orchestra.

Hilda Curet remembers the daily discipline behind all that output. “I always saw him writing. He never got tired of writing. It was a gift, because he did it well, and something in the family, because he came from a family of writers,” she told EFE. She noted that he worked for the United States Postal Service while also writing music columns for magazines.

It is a life that makes the romantic image of the composer look more like labor. Two jobs. A notebook. A typewriter. A mind that keeps turning.

A Legacy That Demands Institutional Care

José Rodríguez, president of the Committee Camino al Centenario Catalino Tite Curet Alonso, frames the centennial as an obligation to public memory. He said the author’s life must be celebrated and remembered as one of the greatest composers the country has given to popular music.

Rodríguez insists on the nickname that best explains the craft. “Tite is and will be the tailor of composition, because what he created for artists was a custom suit, a number made to measure. He created it directly for that singer’s personality, and it was a success,” he told EFE.

He also argues that Curet’s work traveled the world because it carried social denunciation, including racial realities, along with other textures of daily life. “It is an icon of popular music and salsa. In every country where Tite’s music has been heard, there should be space to reflect on his career and legacy,” he told EFE.

That is the policy question behind the rain-soaked tribute. Reflection depends on institutions that value popular music as heritage, inspiring hope and collective responsibility. Archives, education, and public funding are essential to treat songs as vital historical documents, not just entertainment.

The centennial is being marked with art exhibitions and conferences in Peru, Panama, and New York, as well as in other parts of Puerto Rico, including Ponce, which has dedicated its famous carnival to him.

The wager here is whether Puerto Rico can hold this kind of legacy in public view beyond anniversaries. A cemetery gathering under heavy rain is moving, but it is also fragile. It depends on volunteers, committees, families, and memory. Curet wrote at street level, for the people who rode buses and walked. Keeping his work alive requires the same street-level commitment, plus the institutional will to treat popular music as part of the island’s cultural infrastructure.

In Old San Juan, the drums kept going anyway. Rain or no rain. That is the point. The songs were built to endure. Now the question is whether the systems around them will do the same.

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