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The Neotropical deer genus <i>Mazama</i> is characterized by homoplastic morphological characters, a high karyotypic diversity, and a polyphyletic condition. The species of the genus have been recovered into two multigeneric lineages, the subtribes Odocoileina and Blastocerina, of the tribe Odocoileini (New World deer) in the family Cervidae. Within the Blastocerina, gray brockets include two non-sister species, <i>Subulo gouazoubira</i>, occurring south of the Amazon region, and <i>Passalites nemorivagus</i>, occurring in the Guianas and in the Amazon region. We clarify the taxonomic status and phylogenetic position of <i>Mazama americana citus</i> Osgood, 1912 (referred to as either <i>S. gouazoubira</i> or <i>P. nemorivagus</i> by other authors). We collected a topotype of <i>M. a. citus</i> from the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, characterize it morphologically and cytogenetically (conventional banding and fluorescence in situ hybridization), and carry out a phylogenetic analysis of its whole mitogenome and Cyt<i>b</i> alongside two additional specimens of <i>M. a. citus</i> from northwestern Venezuela. Our analyses reveal the topotype to be a large gray brocket with a cinnamon band above the eyes and 2n = 61 and FN = 70 karyotype. Using cattle whole chromosome painting and bacterial artificial chromosome X probes, we determined its karyotype to differ in at least 10 rearrangements from that of <i>S. gouazoubira</i>. Bayesian inference recovers <i>M. a. citus</i> within the Blastocerina subtribe, separated phylogenetically from other gray brockets (100% branch value), revealing the Osgood’s gray brocket to be a valid species that should be assigned to a new genus. We propose the generic name <i>Bisbalus</i>, with <i>Bisbalus citus</i> (Osgood, 1912) as the type species.