Infierno Sweet

The art of the effect

When lighting technology had not yet reached the region's minitecas, Goyito was already staging a show. Infierno Sweet surprised people with resources few had seen: gunpowder cannons that went off in the middle of a set and left the crowd stunned, beams of light thrown by a bank of cocktail lights and, above all, the magic of the bubbles floating in the air.

That bubble machine became its signature. Anyone who lived a night of Infierno Sweet remembers it: the gunpowder, the light and the bubbles turned any hall into an event. The effect was not a decoration, it was part of the outfit's identity.

The merger with Energía and the sound clashes

With the guerras de minitecas already under way, Infierno Sweet merged with Energía —keeping its own name— to make the leap into competition. The result was a lineup of luxury: four turntables in action, with Carlos Luis Valenzuela and Enrique Rojas at the controls of the mixes; Carlos Simoza on hosting and voice; and Goyito in charge of the lighting and the effects almost no one else had.

Between the blast of the cannons that stunned the crowd, the beams of the cocktail lights and the bubbles suspended in the air, Infierno Sweet never stopped making an impression. And in the middle of it all was Simoza's voice: in the thick of the party he lit up the floor with jingles full of energy —“¡Suena, suena, suena… Infierno Sweet!”—, while for the opening of the night he saved an intimate, solemn introduction, wrapped in his Roland echo chamber, with a line that its followers still repeat:

«Desde el soberbio Orinoco…»

Bigger stages

Infierno Sweet took its show to the most important stages in Guayana. It gave majestic performances to a full house at the Club Náutico Caroní and played weighty venues such as the Colegio de Ingenieros and the Sindicato Sutra Hierro.

It shared stages and festivals with minitecas such as Hot Way, Roseland, Saxon, Anaconda, Western, Cowboy and Betelgeuse. At the Fiesta de las Quinceañeras it reached another dimension: it went up on the same stage as the orchestra Los Melódicos, rubbing shoulders with the country's front-rank live music.

The tour to Monagas (1982–1983)

Between 1982 and 1983, Infierno Sweet undertook one of the longest tours remembered of a miniteca from the area: a run through the state of Monagas where it shared the stage with outfits such as Dinamita. The tour was commanded at the console by Carlos Luis Valenzuela.

The miniteca came back to Ciudad Guayana without its discjockey: Venezuela's military service claimed Carlos Luis Valenzuela, who stayed behind doing his duty. From that time there also remains the memory of Rafael Agüero, a collaborator of the outfit during its time on the scene.

The farewell and the leap to Hot Music (1984)

In 1984, Infierno Sweet says goodbye to the field. Part of its crew does not stop: it makes the leap to a higher level and joins Hot Music, “La Number One” of Guayana, where Enrique Rojas, Carlos Luis Valenzuela and Carlos Simoza would write the next chapter of this story. But the memory of the cerrito —the gunpowder, the lights and the bubbles— stayed engraved. That was Infierno Sweet.

Social media

• · Social media and contact: still being traced — do you have information? Write to us through the contact form

Credits and sources

• · Account given by its protagonists to CulturaMiniteka.com: José Gregorio Bello “Goyito” (founder and owner), Carlos Luis Valenzuela, Carlos Simoza and Enrique Rojas, together with accounts from followers of the miniteca.
• · Internal cross-reference within the MiniTK Archive: the entries for Hot Music and for the miniteca Energía, and for the discjockeys Enrique Rojas and Carlos Luis Valenzuela and the voice Carlos Simoza.