Cuban Dissidents Considerer a Good Idea Concert by Juanes
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- Arts and Culture
- Music
- Politics and Government
- 08 / 19 / 2009
Prominent Cuban dissidents offered support Tuesday for the plans of Colombian pop star Juanes to give a “Peace Without Borders” concert next month, distancing themselves from the disapproval expressed by much of the exile community in Miami.
Miriam Leiva, founder of Ladies in White, recalled that it will be a concert like the one organized by Juanes in 2008 on the Colombian-Venezuelan border with Miguel Bose “and other artists with heart and intelligence” at a time of great bilateral tension.
“Fortunately, those outside of Cuba who oppose the concert don’t have the firepower of the Colombian and Venezuelan armed forces, though they threaten the artists with a boycott the size of a world war,” the dissident said in an article that she sent to Efe.
Nor does Leiva agree that the concert should be rejected because it will be held in the Plaza de la Revolucion.
“(Pope) John Paul II said his last Mass in Cuba there, Fidel Castro included, on Jan. 25, 1998, and his message is still remembered. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the plaza, most of them of their own free will and not because they were summoned by the Communist Party.”
About the Cubans Silvio Rodriguez and Amaury Perez sharing the stage with Juanes, she asked: “Are those Pharisees enough of a reason to keep the people of Cuba from enjoying such outstanding artists?”
Spaniards “Ana Belen and Victor Manuel rightly said that singing in Cuba doesn’t mean having made any commitments to the authorities,” Leiva wrote. “They will help Cuba’s forbidden glories come back in a not too distant future. They will lift up a nation that is weighed down.”
Also supporting the concert was blogger Yoani Sanchez: “I think Juanes should come here and sing. If the subject is peace he must know that this island is not submerged in war, but it doesn’t have peace either.”
“He will lift up his voice before a people that has been divided, classified by political color and forced to confront those who think differently. A nation that for years has heard no talk of harmony and that knows the punishment awaiting those who dare to criticize,” Sanchez wrote on her blog Generacion Y.
“We need his voice, but only if he sings without forgetting any Cubans, without dismissing any differences. We’d like him to accompany his songs with the cadence of Willy Chirino, the trumpet of Arturo Sandoval, the rhythm of Albita Rodriguez and the sensual sax of Paquito D’Rivera, but none of them will be allowed to be there,” she said.
Opponents of the Castro regime in Miami are calling for boycotts of Juanes concerts and CDs, saying he would be tacitly supporting a regime that locks up peaceful dissenters and calling on him to sing for freedom not peace.
But young Juanes fans in Cuba say they would be the only victims if the concert were not held and are already making arrangements to attend the show on Sunday, Sept. 20.
Members of one Cuban-exile group in Miami used hammers last Friday to destroy copies of Juanes’ CDs in protest over the planned concert.
The Vigilia Mambisa organization placed the CDs on a sidewalk on Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana, the heart of the Cuban-exile community, and shattered them to pieces.
Source: Efe
Miriam Leiva, founder of Ladies in White, recalled that it will be a concert like the one organized by Juanes in 2008 on the Colombian-Venezuelan border with Miguel Bose “and other artists with heart and intelligence” at a time of great bilateral tension.
“Fortunately, those outside of Cuba who oppose the concert don’t have the firepower of the Colombian and Venezuelan armed forces, though they threaten the artists with a boycott the size of a world war,” the dissident said in an article that she sent to Efe.
Nor does Leiva agree that the concert should be rejected because it will be held in the Plaza de la Revolucion.
“(Pope) John Paul II said his last Mass in Cuba there, Fidel Castro included, on Jan. 25, 1998, and his message is still remembered. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the plaza, most of them of their own free will and not because they were summoned by the Communist Party.”
About the Cubans Silvio Rodriguez and Amaury Perez sharing the stage with Juanes, she asked: “Are those Pharisees enough of a reason to keep the people of Cuba from enjoying such outstanding artists?”
Spaniards “Ana Belen and Victor Manuel rightly said that singing in Cuba doesn’t mean having made any commitments to the authorities,” Leiva wrote. “They will help Cuba’s forbidden glories come back in a not too distant future. They will lift up a nation that is weighed down.”
Also supporting the concert was blogger Yoani Sanchez: “I think Juanes should come here and sing. If the subject is peace he must know that this island is not submerged in war, but it doesn’t have peace either.”
“He will lift up his voice before a people that has been divided, classified by political color and forced to confront those who think differently. A nation that for years has heard no talk of harmony and that knows the punishment awaiting those who dare to criticize,” Sanchez wrote on her blog Generacion Y.
“We need his voice, but only if he sings without forgetting any Cubans, without dismissing any differences. We’d like him to accompany his songs with the cadence of Willy Chirino, the trumpet of Arturo Sandoval, the rhythm of Albita Rodriguez and the sensual sax of Paquito D’Rivera, but none of them will be allowed to be there,” she said.
Opponents of the Castro regime in Miami are calling for boycotts of Juanes concerts and CDs, saying he would be tacitly supporting a regime that locks up peaceful dissenters and calling on him to sing for freedom not peace.
But young Juanes fans in Cuba say they would be the only victims if the concert were not held and are already making arrangements to attend the show on Sunday, Sept. 20.
Members of one Cuban-exile group in Miami used hammers last Friday to destroy copies of Juanes’ CDs in protest over the planned concert.
The Vigilia Mambisa organization placed the CDs on a sidewalk on Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana, the heart of the Cuban-exile community, and shattered them to pieces.
Source: Efe
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