QUICK TAKES - Aug. 22, 2009

The business manager of Latin pop singer Juanes said the Peace Without Borders concert will go on as planned in Havana despite threatening messages the singer received recently on his Twitter account.

“The concert is still on, and Juanes is maintaining a positive attitude throughout all of this,” Fernan Martinez Maecha told the Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday.

The Colombian rocker has come under fire from some Cuban Americans in Miami who contend that the Sept. 20 concert endorses the Communist-led government of Fidel and Raul Castro.

“There is absolutely nothing political about this show, and like Pope John Paul II, who held a service of peace for millions of Cubans . . . years ago, Juanes’ mission is to do the same, but through his music,” Maecha said.

Event promoters insist the Havana concert will have no ideological overtones, even if it is being staged in Havana’s Revolution Plaza -- with its famed homage to fallen revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara on the side of a building roughly half a dozen stories tall. Among the other acts scheduled to perform are Cuban folk legend Silvio Rodriguez and Cuban salsa stars Los Van Van.