Juanes Cancels Oligarch’s “Concert for Peace” in Honduras

[Joanne98]

Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez, a.k.a. the Latin Grammy award winning pop singer known as Juanes, almost got sucked into a trap by the business interests behind the Honduras coup d’etat: a “Concert for Peace” that had been scheduled for Saturday, July 26 in Tegucigalpa.

All day long members the pro-coup faction on the #Honduras Twitter feed (mainly a gaggle of ex-Cubans and ex-Venezuelans who type a lot about “communists” and “reds” in their zeal to defend the coup) were agog, thanking the Miami-based Colombian Juanes and also Spaniard pop star Alejandro Sanz and Colombian Carlos Vives, for lending themselves to the spectacle of “peace” under a repressive coup regime.

Back on July 6, the 36-year-old Juanes - a public ally in his native country of rightist President Alvaro Uribe - posted via Twitter: “Honduras, I am thinking a lot about you… get well soon… not one more painful tear, not one more drop of blood.”

It was reminiscent of the moment back in 2001 when Mexico’s two national television networks organized a “Concert for Peace” as counter-programming to the Zapatista caravan’s arrival in Mexico City, announcing that the Mexican pop groups Los Jaguares, Maná, and Carlos Santana would perform. Singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas denounced the charade and Santana told reporters he had never agreed to lend his name to any such venture. The polemic led to one scene, covered by this reporter, on the Zócalo (city square) of Puebla, Mexico, where 50,000 poblano youths, upon the mention of Los Jaguares and Maná, began chanting in unison, “culeros, culeeeeeroooos,” roughly translated as “asswipes.”

Well, back in Miami today, Juanes thought better of ending up as a prop in a similar spectacle, and cancelled the Honduras concert with some Twitter messages of his own that read, in succession:

Honduras, the Peace Without Borders concert that we’ve been talking about is not going to take place…

This, for various reasons… artists and production scheduled and of course political uncertainty…

Which do not guarantee a truly clean concert for us…

All of us are with the people of Honduras and our greatest desire is that civil society return to normality…

We have to avoid political manipulation from any sector. Peace Without Borders is a politically neutral organization…

And its only flag is peace. A hug.

And with that, the 17-time Latin Grammy award winning pop star extricated himself from the manipulation that the coup backers tried had to rope him into… as goes the concert, so goes the coup... a metaphor for what Honduran Civil Society is also doing today.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/juanes-cancels-oligarch%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cconcert-peace%E2%80%9D-honduras

[Billy Burnett]

1. Maybe Maria Conchita Alonso could replace Juanes?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5214192&mesg_id=5216057

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Maria_Conchita_Alonso

Alonso is an outspoken critic of elected Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, whom she has described as a "dictator" like "Hitler", and those who vote and support him as "terrorists". She has appeared on Sean Hannity's Hannity's America on May 6, 2007, Hannity & Colmes on June 1, 2007 and Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor on August 13, 2007.

In the fall of 2008, Alonso endorsed the presidential campaign of Republican nominee John McCain, writing:

María's brother, Roberto Alonso, was one of the four speakers who gave a speech at the closing of Senator John McCain's campaign in Florida.