It’s getting harder and harder for me to be objective about Hugo Chavez with all of the stuff he’s done this year to stifle his people’s access to media and now, music. Spanish pop star Alejandro Sanz, wildly famous throughout Latin America, was set to perform at Caracas’ El Poliedro venue and the tickets had been sold out for months, but Huguito has cancelled the show. Guess why: because in 2004, Sanz had something unfavorable to say about Chavez; when asked what he thought of the president back then, he said:

“I don’t like him, the same way I don’t like leaders of other places, and I don’t think my own has done a great job either. I don’t come to start a revolution, I came to sing. But if I could write a song to this country, it would be called 3 million signatures,” he said, referring to the number required for a referendum against the Venezuelan president.

According to Spain’s 20 Minutos, Venezuela’s Minister of Education admitted on the radio that Sanz won’t be allowed to perform because of his “despotic” comments about the President.

Via / 20 Minutos