Cuban dissident punk rocker Gorki Aguila said Friday he hopes to be able to return to his country despite his sharp criticism of the Cuban government and of the historic rock concert planned this weekend in Havana.

Aguila’s 15-day tour in the U.S. for his latest CD, “The Faded Red Album” – a dig at the Cuban government’s communist ideology – coincides with a massive, international peace concert Colombian singer Juanes has organized in Cuba.

“I’m scared, I’ve always scared. In Cuba you live with fear,” said Aguila, who has repeatedly been arrested there.

“But I have to do this. This is the path I’ve chosen,” Aguila told reporters in Miami.

The lead singer of Porno para Ricardo, or Porn for Ricardo, has a small but dedicated following on the island but is better known outside the country for his sexually explicit and irreverent criticism of Fidel Castro and his brother Cuban President Raul Castro. One of the group’s albums features the traditional communist hammer and sickle symbol, with a phallus replacing the hammer.

On Friday, Aguila dressed in jeans and a self-designed red T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase: “59: The year of the Error,” a nod to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Despite his in-your-face performances, Aguila was more thoughtful and earnest in person, expressing both a love for traditional Cuban music, such as boleros, as well as admiration for the island’s burgeoning rap movement.

“I want to return,” he said knocking on the wooden table. “I have my projects in Cuba, and more importantly, I have my daughter,” he said, adding that he would hold the Cuban government responsible if he is denied re-entry.

The Cuban government has accused Aguila of being manipulated by Cuban-American exiles looking to embarrass the island’s government. Perhaps because of that, Aguila said he initially was concerned about launching his so-called “Freedom Tour,” to coincide with Juanes’ concert.

His U.S. visit is sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group Global Cuba Solidarity Movement, an umbrella group for roughly 20 organizations in the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Some of the U.S. groups receive federal funding but not all.

Juanes requested Aguila’s group Porn for Ricardo play at Sunday’s concert. But the group has been banned from public performances and from Cuba’s airwaves.

“I do believe in Juanes’ good intentions. I just think his intentions are very naive,” Aguila said, adding that it was hard to believe the concert won’t be political when it will be held under a massive likeness of Cuban revolutionary icon Che Guevara.

“It’s time to call things by name. The bad in our country has a name: It’s called Fidel Castro. It’s called Raul Castro,” he said.

But he later said it was time to turn the stage over to Juanes and “see what happens.”

Aguila was first arrested in Cuba in 2003 on drug charges he says were politically motivated. On Friday, he recalled how two months before his arrest, a government official came to his house and demanded he sign a paper rejecting his previous anti-government statements, as well as change the name of the band.

Aguila declined and spent more than two years in prison. He said his band’s name is a counterpoint to the Cuban mantra of “Country or Death.” Aguila says porn is about pleasure and life, and Ricardo celebrates an individual, rather than the masses.

Aguila was arrested a second time in 2008 for “social dangerousness,” a vague charge often used against dissidents. He credits international solidarity groups such as Amnesty International for pressuring the government to release him within days.

Source: Miami Herald

For more information on the band and to buy the new album, please log on to: www.pornopararicardo.org