When all else fails, play the generation card.

It's an all too familiar tactic.

When efforts to unconditionally lift sanctions towards the Castro regime fail, conduct an opinion poll claiming there's a generational gap amongst Cuban-Americans.

When polls fail to translate into election results, defame the first wave of exiles in the hope that perception becomes reality.

So, as expected, when the debate over Juanes' concert in Havana's Revolutionary Square intensified, the insults came rolling.

Everyone from Cuban singer (and Castro regime parliamentarian) Silvio Rodriguez, to Spanish singers Ana Belen and Victor Manuel, to Castro's Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, to Juanes himself, have begun insulting "older exiles," whom they call "intransigent," "resentful" and "worms."

However, as usual, this campaign distorts reality.

The most vocal critics of Juanes' concert happen to be young Cuban musicians, such as Amaury Gutierrez and punk rocker Gorki Aguila, who know all too well how the regime censors and represses Cuban musicians and manipulates these events for their domestic and international propaganda.

It's the exclusion of these young Cuban musicians from being allowed to perform in the concert, or on the island generally, that's at the core of this vocal opposition. In other words, whether Juanes likes it or not, his concert has already been censored by the regime.

Opposition has also come from artists that have arrived in the most recent generation of exiles, such as Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D'Rivera, and Zoe Valdes.

Ironically, those who argue that sanctions provide the regime a tool of propaganda (or an "excuse") for its dictatorship, don't seem to mind handing over this censored concert's propaganda on a platter.

But even if it were true that opposition was centered around older, first-wave exiles -- why the hatred and disregard for their historic pain, sacrifice and experience of that generation?

Do we insult and discard older Jews for their Holocaust experience?

There's a Spanish saying, "the Devil knows more due to age, than due to being the devil."

Let's learn to respect our elders.

Ok, Fidel and Raul can be the exception.

P.S. Don't miss this video clip on CHC TV.