BY JORDAN LEVIN
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com

Gorki Aguila is that rarest of Cuban creatures, an independent and dissident musician.

It is a lonely thing to be, whether sitting in jail in Cuba, as Aguila once did for more than two years, or playing and recording secretly, with his raucous punk band Porno Para Ricardo, in warehouses and back rooms in Havana.

Or appearing by himself in Miami -- albeit before a phalanx of media at a press conference Friday -- as Cubans on the island and their counterparts in Miami geared up for Juanes' gigantic Peace Without Borders concert in Havana on Sunday. When word of the Juanes event leaked earlier this summer, many in the Cuban exile community asked why Aguila, whose politically provocative and often obscene songs openly attack the Cuban government, was not invited to perform.

INSINCERITY

Aguila, who is visiting Miami, New York and Washington D.C. to promote his group's fifth album, El Disco Rojo (desteñido) (The Red Album [faded]), shrugged off the significance of the Juanes event. "It seems to me that this concert is going to be manipulated by the Cuban government,'' Aguila said. "I think Juanes' intentions are very ingenuous, to be pretending to do a concert for peace, if you're not going to talk about the problems in Cuba. The evil in my country has a name, and it's Fidel Castro.''

However, Aguila withheld judgment on whether the Juanes-sponsored show, which includes 15 musicians from six countries and is expected to draw more than half a million people to Havana's Plaza de la Revolución on Sunday, would have its intended effect of easing tensions between Cuba and the world. "We'll see,'' he said. "If that happened I'd be very happy. But the Cuban government always finds a way to manipulate things.''

AWAY FROM HOME

The 40-year-old singer, who wore a red T-shirt saying "59 -- The Year of the Mistake'' referring to the year Castro took power, has been living in Mexico with his mother and sister since April. In August 2008 he was arrested in Cuba for the second time and charged with "social dangerousness'' and "subverting Communist morality,'' but pressure from international press and human rights groups helped get him released.

His visit to the United States is being sponsored by the Global Cuba Solidarity Movement, a Washington, D.C.-based group which seeks to raise awareness of human rights violations and the pro-democracy movement in Cuba.

A Miami press conference is usually the first step toward defection for a Cuban musician, but Aguila said he planned to return to Cuba, to be with his 13-year old daughter and to continue agitating with his band. "I want to return -- if they don't let me in, that's the responsibility of the Cuban government,'' he said.

NOT INTIMIDATED

But he said he was not intimidated by the possibility of reprisals for his visit to the U.S. or his outspoken comments.

"Everything I'm saying here I say in Cuba,'' he said. "I'm always afraid -- in Cuba you're always afraid. In Cuba they don't let me speak. But I speak. I consider myself a free man.''

Maintaining his and Porno Para Ricardo's independence is difficult, but essential, he said.

"We've had to renounce all the things the system offers, being on radio, on TV, in festivals,'' he said. "I have my weak moments,'' Aguila said.

"Sometimes I feel like Christ on the cross -- 'why did you abandon me' . . . But if I don't do what I'm doing I'd lose much of the sense in my life.''