Carlos Baute's recitals: from "out with the monkey" to "drugs in the suitcase"

BarcelonaThe Venezuelan Carlos Baute, singer and telenovela actor, stirred up Madrid's Puerta del Sol a week ago. "Out with the monkey!", he shouted, joining the crowd that had gathered to applaud the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado. The words, which referred to the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, caused him more than one headache due to the racism they exuded, for which he, finally, apologized. The methods are new, but the premise is not.

Baute had already shown himself to be against the Venezuelan regime of former president Hugo Chávez, as he had dedicated phrases in his songs such as "you will continue destroying my nation" or "she must be removed, because this rat won't leave alone". Even so, in 2008 he refused to sign a manifesto supporting the singer Alejandro Sanz, after the cancellation of his concert in Venezuela by the Chávez government, for fear of reprisals. A fear that began to dissipate with the arrival of Nicolás Maduro to the presidency in 2013, the year in which he stated: "Today I would have signed it". In fact, the singer's emboldening did not stop there, and when asked what he would do if he could meet with Maduro, he stated that he would love to be armed, although he later added: "Armed to be able to threaten him and take him to jail". Nevertheless, the singer did not go to Venezuela for a while because he said that, literally, they could put drugs in his suitcase and his career would be over, in the purest Hollywood style.

"I am a natural seducer and I love to conquer. I have already chosen a partner, but before I didn't stop, I went from flower to flower", thus Baute defined himself in 2009. At that time he was acting as master of ceremonies for Elígeme, a television program for finding a partner described by critics as a "massive date in which 24 women sought, smiling and provocatively, their soulmate" and where the singer appeared "too sweet and fast-paced", openly flirting with the contestants. A modus operandi that he already included in his songs, stating, on repeated occasions: "I will always be behind you" or "You liked being chased".

For whom Baute was also not irresistible was for the singer Marta Sánchez, who in the year 2008 had, literally, hanging in his hands. The singer complained in an interview in 2011 that the joint hit, which at that time had 170 million views on YouTube (now it is about to reach 1,000 million), had only generated her 6,000 euros. "He is a guy who has many weapons to do well. He plays his part very well – the singer stated–. It hurt me that he had never been interested in how I was doing." A controversy to which the singer put an end four years later: "I owe him nothing, the manager I had, perhaps..."