Juanes concert supporters show changing paradigm

But Santos thinks that Colombian singer Juanes has a right to perform in Havana today.

And he objects to being vilified for expressing that view.

``Many in this community have said I'm not a good Cuban,'' he says. ``Just because I think differently than you . . . Why am I considered a bad Cuban?''

Santos had Juanes on his show in August, during which he called for ``respect for Juanes, freedom for Cuba.''

Reaction on the radio show was divided. But Santos said he's been inundated with negative comments on his Facebook page. One person wrote ``Miami made you, Miami will bring you down.''

To Santos, that anger is counter-productive. ``When something like this happens the exile community reacts the same way it always has,'' Santos says. ``There's millions of Cubans in that island who are subject to that tyranny for so many years. If we have an opportunity to talk to them, why shouldn't we?''

The Juanes Peace Without Borders concert has brought out the frustrations of a growing segment of Cuban Miami, many of them young, who are weary of the notion that equates any outreach toward the Cuban people with support for the Castro regime.

To them, this hardline approach has contributed to a 50-year stalemate.

``We continue the embargo, we ban our artists from performing and exhibiting there. It's like keeping the blinders on the community about Cuba,'' says artist Damien Rojo, 46, who came to Miami from Cuba with his parents in 1971. Rojo avoids discussing Cuba or the Juanes concert with them, because he says it always leads to fights.

``Unfortunately the thing that gets the buzz here [in Miami] are the people who are against,'' the Juanes concert, or changes in the relationship towards Cuba, says Juan Carlos Zaldivar, 42, an artist and filmmaker whose documentary 90 Miles looked at the attitudes of different generations of Cuban-Americans towards the island.

``The people who support the concert don't get as much airplay -- the only airplay they get is that they're going against the grain. What bothers me is the way it's framed. It's sexier to talk about the controversy than about change. . . . The way the dialogue is framed there's no room for discussion. That's why it never gets beyond confrontation.''

Juanes has said repeatedly that he hopes the concert, which includes 15 artists from six countries and takes place from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, will not only be a moving musical experience for the over half million people expected to attend, but might help change attitudes and ease the tense standoff tensions between exiles and the Cuban government.

``We have to be positive about the future,'' he told The Miami Herald in August. ``We have to change our minds, but not just the Cuban people. No, we all have to change our minds.''

Some commentators on exile television and radio have attacked Juanes as a communist, or as a pop musician clueless about issues and problems in Cuba, whose efforts would be used as propaganda for the Cuban government.

A poll on TV station America TeVé asked whether the Colombian singer was ignorant, a dreamer, or an accomplice of the Cuban government. Paparazzi stalked his Key Biscayne home, and he received a death threat on his Twitter feed that prompted police to patrol his house.

Hugo Landa, director of Cubanet.org, a website that publishes stories by independent journalists on the island (including articles both supporting and criticizing the concert), believes that while the discussion has been emotional and divided, it has been fair. ``Everyone has had the opportunity to express what he or she feels,'' Landa says. ``If you want to go with the flow and not be disagreeable, that's your personality. But the fact that a large amount of people disagree with you doesn't mean you are threatened.''

But others say that criticism of those who propose a different approach to Cuba still reaches such a high emotional and political pitch that it puts anyone favoring a different stance on the defensive, and forces the discussion away from the issue of Cuba and onto the legitimacy of the person advocating change.

``There are a lot of people in the community who are younger or who immigrated more recently who are really frustrated, and think we need to find a new paradigm to look at the Cuba issue,'' says Manning Salazar, who produced several Miami concerts by Cuban groups in the late '90s, during a period of unprecedented cultural exchange between the island and the United States.

``People who don't see Juanes' concert as an overtly political event in the way they see it here, as something that will prop up the Cuban regime -- we don't see it that way, but we're forced to address it that way because of the very vocal and powerful people here who do.''

Yet there are signs that the Cuban paradigm has changed. Older exile leaders like Carlos Saladrigas, co-founder of the Cuba Study Group, and younger ones like Miguel Arguelles, who graduated from Harvard with the support of the Cuban-American community, have supported the concert -- as has the group Raices de Esperanza, an organization of young Cuban-Americans who favor dialogue. A small demonstration by the group Vigilia Mambisa, in which they destroyed Juanes cd's and T-shirts, broadcast on TV and widely cited in stories on exile reaction to the concert, was rejected three to one as an embarrassment in a poll of Cuban Americans.

Even Francisco ``Pepe'' Hernandez, the 73-year-old co-founder and president of the Cuban American National Foundation, a Bay of Pigs veteran who once worked for a military overthrow of the Cuban government and lobbied the U.S. government to maintain and stiffen the embargo, now advocates limited dealings with the island. He favors the Juanes concert.

``For 50 years we have measured everything on whether it helps or hurts the Castro regime,'' Hernandez said. ``I think that we have to start thinking about whether it helps or hurts the Cuban people. Yes, I know the Cuban regime is gonna use [the concert] to get propaganda out of it. But I think the Cuban people are going to enjoy it a lot more.''

``If we want to build a future for Cuba we have to stop hating and looking in the rear view mirror, and look forward,'' Hernandez says. ``I think there are a lot of people, even in my generation, that are realizing this now. Whether it's because of frustration or because of age or because they realize their time is short, the reality is even these people are changing.''

Whatever people's opinions on the show, interest in South Florida is high. Both America TeVé and Channel 23, the South Florida Univision affiliate, will broadcast the concert live, as will a number of websites, including univision.com.

Hernandez plans to watch in his office. He thinks most of Cuban Miami will be watching with him. ``To some extent we all here in Miami are going to be united with the people in Cuba,'' he says. ``Isn't that great? That's what we want, the ability to communicate with our people there.''