Juanes: "Havana Peace without Borders Concert"

. At a recent New York City concert, Juanes, the multi Grammy Award winning Colombian singer, brought the house down with loud cheers and applause. It was great, very emotional.

 New Yorkers were showing support for his upcoming "Peace without Borders Concert" in Havana Cuba. The popular singer had held similar concerts, one on the Venezuelan-Colombian border with our Juan Luis Guerra, and one last year in Paris.

 Meanwhile, our "Old Guard" Cuban friends in Miami were protesting his tour by smashing his CD's with hammers. However, knowing some of those boys personally, they were probably smashing blank CD's -just for the cameras.

They are a humorous bunch indeed, since for the past 50 years-after the failed valiant heroic effort of the Bay of Pigs invasion- the Miami gang have been trying to bring down Fidel Castro shouting and screaming from their air conditioned homes.

When Fidel burped the wrong way some two years ago, Floridians thought his death was immminent. The Mayor of Miami reserved a large park for the Cubans to celebrate hid death. Well, the celebration fizzled, and the old fellow is still going strong.

 Unfortunately the Miami based Cuban controlled Spanish language media messes with the news. They give clipped, censored sound bites of Fidel and now Chavez. One has to watch Spain's television network to get factual uncensored Latin American news. Most disturbing was that this same Miami media group gave slanted coverage of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.

For many, Mexican anchorman Jorge Ramos lost credibility by becoming their frontman. He would repeatedly suggest that Latinos would not vote for an African-American President. Poor Jorge, you were so wrong. So three cheers and may the Juanes Havana concert be a success.

 One last thing. I remember back in College during a seminar discussion I volunteered a prediction - and a still untested hypothesis - that Fidel was a typical Latin American personalist cult leader. Once gone, his Communist doctrines would disappear. His statues would fall, like Trujillo's and more recently Saddam's.

However, we have been waiting for this event to occur. Those who would benefit most live only 90 miles away from Havana. Smashing blank CDs in protest instead of say, enjoying the concert or if not, returning with arms in hand like Fidel did in 1956. Wow...1956, has it been that long ? Then again I understand. It's hard to giving up the swimming pools and drinking those afternoon "Cuba Libres" in sunny Miami.