Olga Tañon's concert at Hard Rock Live won't begin for several hours, but the show starts as the singer's giant motor home pulls up to the hotel entrance at the Hollywood gambling and entertainment complex. Out streams the Tañon tribe: Olga's daughter Gabriela, 12; her husband and manager Billy Denizard, grappling with the couple's two young boys; the children's nanny; Tañon's parents and assorted young people, all down from the family home in Orlando. They are met by a comparable crowd of publicists, TV reporters, Hard Rock functionaries and various hangers-on, all swarming the driveway, chattering in Spanish and blocking traffic.

Last to emerge is Tañon, brisk in tan camouflage crop pants and sneakers, long black hair tied back under a baseball cap.

``Where's my baby?'' she demands, reach9ing for 2-year-old Ian. She hoists two hefty tote bags over her shoulder, places Ian on her hip, takes Gabriela's arm, distributes greetings and kisses to her three publicists, a Hard Rock rep and a TV reporter and strides into the hotel, entourage swirling. When someone offers to carry her bags, Tañon shakes her head. ``They're not heavy.''

You can't squelch the Woman of Fire, as the vibrant Puerto Rican singer is known -- not with a few dozen pounds (her father worked for a moving company, after all) and not with the pressure and attention churned up by her participation in Juanes' Paz Sin Fronteras Cuba concert in September. After the Colombian rock star, Tañon was the secondary focus of the controversy leading up to the event, outspoken and unabashed even as Spanish-language media in Miami turned a critical spotlight on a longtime darling of music-awards shows and the Latin-celebrity pantheon.

MAKING HISTORY

Tañon's resolve paid off. She opened the Cuba concert with an incendiary performance worthy of her nickname, shouting to the sea of people filling Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion ``Together we're going to make history!'' She electrified el exilio as she offered a greeting from a Cuban man in Miami to his daughter on the island. On her return, popular Mega TV talk show host Maria Elvira Salazar gave Tañon roses on the air, burst into tears and told her ``Thank you, thank you.''

``I don't know why I did it. Pure hellaciousness, I guess,'' says Tañon, 42, sitting in her hotel suite, Ian clambering in and out of her lap and tugging on her hand. Even still, Tañon crackles with energy -- face alert, eyes bright, talking in a precise torrent. She says she was the one who called Juanes and asked if she could participate, her offer inspired by memories of growing up poor in Puerto Rico, unable to afford concert tickets, and also by a Puerto Rican priest and friend who had told her that her music was popular in Cuba. Cuban reconciliation may not have been her cause before the show, but tolerance and independence were, and the negative reaction got her feisty Puerto Rican back up.

``What I never expected is that they would try to mix me up with something political that I've never been,'' Tañon says. ``The fact that you don't think the same way I do doesn't mean that you can give me some kind of title just because you want. Because I'll never accept that.

``Why are you going to say I have to do such and such with my life just because you want me to? Especially when it's someone that I've always respected; then I expect you to respect me too. Yes, I am an intense person. I'm not going to play the victim here. But people have to learn to respect each other.''

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