Colombian rocker Juanes will strap on his guitar to command the stage at 2 p.m. Sunday at Havana's historic Plaza of the Revolution, but the show has been sounding a discordant political tune for months.

Juanes has repeatedly stated that his ``Peace Without Borders'' concert ``is not political.'' But the event is highly charged with the political baggage that comes with Cuba's 50-year-old regime and its ever-growing exile community. And once again, a seemingly cultural event becomes a window into the role the arts and artists have historically played in promoting the Cuban government's agenda, and, in some cases, challenging it.

``Cuba is a country divided, and everything is affected by politics,'' says Cuba culture watcher Alejandro Ríos, who runs the Cuban Film Series at Miami Dade College. ``Juanes himself is political. His songs speak of social causes and issues -- he's no Britney Spears and bubble-gum pop.''

The event, expected to attract 500,000 people to the plaza where Pope John Paul II appeared in 1998, is a classic study in how the Cuban government uses the island's cultural elite to discredit dissidents, portray Cuba as a respectful, peace-loving nation and paint Cuban exiles in Miami as war hawks.

In La Jiribilla, a government-sponsored online cultural bulletin read around the world, a series of interviews with artists and combative essays from writers miscast the reaction in Miami to the concert.

To the casual reader, La Jiribilla can seem simply a cultural magazine. But its articles are laced with political invective delivered by intellectuals as they are interviewed about their artistic careers and the concert.

In its latest issue La Jiribilla follows Puerto Rican singer Olga Tañón on a visit to the 100-year-old Conservatorio Amadeo Roldán and quotes her: ``Cuba is more alive than ever.''

Tañón, who will sing at the concert Sunday, says she never had a school like the conservatory growing up and that she has been crying since she arrived in Havana because she's so happy she ``withstood the pressure to cancel'' her appearance.

In another a headline, La Jiribilla claims that Cubans in Miami ``are breaking Juanes' records with hammers.''

``What do they fear?'' the headline says.

Fact: Only the leader of a tiny activist group, Vigilia Mambisa, broke some Juanes CDs in front of television cameras.

``That a concert for peace ignites so much war for the simple reason that it is celebrated in Cuba is totally absurd,'' one of Cuba's top actors, Jorge Perugorría, is quoted as saying in the same issue.

Perugorría's comments have raised eyebrows among those who know him.

He rose to fame in the 1995 Oscar-nominated movie Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry & Chocolate), a groundbreaking film in which Perugorría plays a gay man who openly criticizes Fidel Castro's government for persecuting gays. Many of the film's stars are no longer in Cuba, including the other protagonist, Francisco Gattorno, who played a faithful Communist student. He has lived in Miami for years.

``Why would an artist of Perugorría's stature need to submit himself to something like that? Well, in Cuba defending the government is always rewarded with some goodie,'' Ríos says.

Surely, the concert has commanded headlines since Juanes reportedly mentioned it on Twitter back in June when he was visiting Havana, and has since been the subject of talk shows on radio and television.

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