A controversy erupted recently when it was announced in August that Colombian musician Juanes would perform at the Plaza de Revolution in Havana, a venue renowned for its use by the Castro government for speeches and political rallies. Juanes, who’s also considered a social and political activist, was both criticized and supported in the Cuban-America community for his desire to hold his “Peace Without Borders” concert. The hard-line exile community opposed the event because they perceived it as a highly visible show of support for Cuba’s communist government, which Juanes denied. Others took Juanes’s words at face value, and supported the performance for what he said it was: a concert to promote peace and unity between the U.S. and Cuba — no political agenda.

The concert went on as planned on September 20, with Juanes ending the show with a shout of “Cuba Libre!” Over one million attended — one-tenth of the entire country. The musical extravaganza’s symbolism was certainly not lost on anyone; his visit had been called “the biggest by an outsider since Pope John Paul II’s 1998 tour.”

“For me, to see more than a million people experiencing happiness, love and peace is incredibly powerful, because what happens in politics is people become divided,” Juanes told the Associated Press Television News. “With music we are all the same… music is for everybody.”

The symbolic diplomatic status of the concert was no doubt elevated even higher when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Juanes to extend her approval. President Obama for the most part, however, dismissed the concert. “These kinds of cultural exchanges – I wouldn’t overstate the degree that it helps,” he said, even though he said concerts like these can’t “hurt” Cuban-American relations.

Even still, reports widely alluded to the notion that cultural exchanges were a positive step in warming relations between the two countries. Reuters reported that one Miami businessman, Carlos Saladrigas, believed that the Juanes concert “opened the eyes of many exiles to the powerful possibilities of developing more cultural and academic exchanges between the United States and Cuba.” Incidentally, the New York Philharmonic was scheduled to perform in Cuba later this month, but the group has since postponed it’s plans because U.S. travel restrictions prohibit the group’s sponsors from traveling along to the Communist-led country.