Vice President Victoria Villarruel spoke in the last few hours to the controversy that arose on Saturday due to the phrase of Peteco Carabajal in his show of Jesús María, when she entered the place.
In an interview with Cordoba's Channel 12, Villarruel sought to tone down the situation. He stated that the episode in which the musician called on the audience not to stop before his arrival seemed funny: "I thought he was actually saying it as an irony, as if to say 'don't stop, but stop.'"
The vice president uploaded a fragment of the interview to her X account, in which she also declared: "I did not come to argue with Peteco Carabajal, I came to support Jesús María, to support the festival that does a fundamental job for more than twenty schools in the area, which is a self-sustaining festival full of people and is a pride of Córdoba."
Villarruel acknowledged, however, that his team later explained the context to him: "They explained to me who I was and that it was a repudiation of my ideological vision." But he avoided getting into the controversy. "I thought the Peteco thing was funny at the time and it's still funny now," the vice president closed in the video she uploaded to her networks.
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The vice president downplayed the folklorist's statements: "I thought Peteco was funny at the time and I still think it's funny now."
The Awkward Moment
During the opening date of the event, and while Carabajal was playing with her ensemble, Villarruel entered the venue and the spectators began to stand and applaud her.
Through the microphone and in the middle of his performance, Carabajal began to say, "Don't stop, no one has arrived." The next day, the musician would clarify that his harangue was not intended to be a repudiation of the presence of the Vice President.
"It wasn't a misunderstanding, it was an impulse of mine. We were working on the stage, everything was going well and we saw that people began to stand because they were attracted by the movement, and I wanted to prevent people from standing up, but not to do something against the vice president," Carabajal said.
Despite this, the other members of his group issued a statement on Sunday assuring that Carabajal's statements "do not represent them."
My statement to Channel 12 of Cordoba on the subject "Peteco". https://t.co/gEOJtCijob
— Victoria Villarruel (@VickyVillarruel) January 15, 2024