In Cuba Concert, Even the Audience Was Staged

They were told that the Cuban government couldn't be trusted — warned by thousands that there was no way that outside promoters could stage and control a massive music concert under a very repressive communist dictatorship.

But Juanes and his friends persisted, as "useful fools" usually do.

Although the group of artists led by the Colombian pop singer was warned that the Castro dictatorship would use them to project an image of freedom that doesn't really exist on the communist island, these naive performers went ahead with their "Peace Without Borders" concert, attended by more than a million people, in Havana's Revolution Plaza.

And given the sizes of their egos, were it not for an unmasking video, they would be telling us that the whole thing was a huge success, that with 5 1/2 hours of music, they have begun to transform a 50-year-long entrenched dictatorship, and that they are miracle workers.

Many more people would be falling for their self-indulging rhetoric were it not for a video that reveals that they were much bigger "useful fools" than even their worst critics expected.

The video, shot only hours before the concert, shows the moment when Juanes and the other performers finally realized that they had been duped and betrayed by Cuban authorities and that the audience they thought would be given free access to the concert was made up mostly of hand-picked communists.

The footage was shot by journalists accompanying the performers at Havana's Hotel Nacional on the morning of the Sept. 20 concert and posted on YouTube. On it, we see and hear Juanes and some of the others angrily protesting as they discover that access to the concert is being scrutinized strictly by Cuban authorities.

"We are very upset, very upset," Juanes shouts repeatedly. "We can't permit that normal people aren't allowed in the show, that a person who has not brought a white shirt isn't allowed in," Juanes tells fellow performers Miguel Bosé of Spain and Olga Tañón of Puerto Rico.

Their confrontation with Cuban authorities gets to a point where Juanes and Bosé threaten to cancel the concert and leave Cuba. "We're leaving!" Juanes shouts. "This is finished."

The video shows that it was Tañón who persuaded the men to go on with the show, in spite of conflicting reports about whether the authorities finally relaxed their selective security at the plaza's four highly controlled entry points.

But the video also shows just what "useful fools" look like.

At one point, amazingly, Juanes actually acknowledged that he felt he was being followed since he arrived in Havana.

"I just realized a little while ago that since yesterday, the guy who's bringing me breakfast, the guy who is accompanying me, then I see him in the concert, and now I see him hiding there sending messages," Juanes shouts in the video, once again demonstrating amazing naiveté about the Cuban regime's Machiavellian tactics.

Going to Cuba and expecting not to be watched by spies is like going to Disney World and expecting not to see Mickey Mouse everywhere. They come out of the woodwork.

Yet the Colombian superstar and the other self-appointed peace ambassadors clearly were shaken by the pressure apparently exerted on them by the Cuban government. In the video, you see Juanes, Bosé and Tañón weeping as they realize that in spite of their sacrifices, the brutal police state is living up to its reputation.

"We have complied with everything," Bosé says. "Why do they punish us like this? Why do they mistreat us like this? Why do they humiliate us like this?"

At this point, of course, you feel like shouting back at the video: "Because you are in Cuba, dummy. Now you know how it feels!"

Granted, much to the surprise of many critics, including me, Juanes and Bosé sang a song about freedom. Instead of sticking with their phony "peace" theme in a country where the cry should be for freedom, Juanes even dared to utter the words "Cuba Libre," or "Free Cuba," near the end of the concert.

But it was too little too late. They already had been used by the Cuban government to put on a show in which even the audience was staged. They already had opened the way for Castro on the following day to charge in a newspaper column that the concert was a blow against the U.S. economic embargo against his regime. They already had shown that they are the kind of idealists who allow themselves to be used by leftist despots.

Nevertheless, instead of caving in at Revolution Plaza, imagine the statement they could have made had they actually canceled the concert, got on the next plane out of Havana and denounced the repression they encountered in Cuba. That would have been truly revolutionary. By walking out, perhaps they actually could have accomplished something.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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