When a global music star lands in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital, the public sees the concert. What they do not see is Vanessa González, the woman ensuring the artist’s preferred brand of vegan organic blueberry butter is waiting in the dressing room. An artist care and VIP logistics specialist, she has spent nearly a decade bridging the gap between international touring acts and the realities of the Paraguayan market. Hers is a profession that barely has a name in the country, yet it keeps the live entertainment industry functioning.
From acting classes to backstage passes
Vanessa did not set out to become an indispensable fixture on the Paraguayan events circuit. She trained as a journalist and worked across several media outlets before her background, she is an actress from a family of musicians, steered her towards the entertainment world.
The moment that sealed it came in December 2016, when Canadian rock band Simple Plan visited Asunción. González attended as a fan, and ended up on stage singing with them. “That was the backstage experience that made me say: this is my world. I do not want to do anything else,” she recalled. Ten months later, she was working professionally in the industry.
In 2017, she received her first major assignment: providing artist care for the musicians travelling with Colombian singer Carlos Vives during his appearance at a festival in Asunción. “It opens your mind to everything that exists and everything that can be done,” she said of that experience.
Vanessa González on what artist care really means
Artist care goes far beyond logistics. The specialist becomes the artist’s primary local contact from the moment they arrive until they depart.
“I am their person of trust. I am their face, their first face of the country. What tells them what they will find in Paraguay, what they see here, who Paraguayans are.”
As her career progressed, she expanded into VIP transport logistics: coordinating vehicles, managing hotel transfers, and ensuring every movement meets the standards set out in the tour rider, the formal document that outlines an artist’s requirements. Her client list has grown to include diplomats and figures from outside the arts, including a large sports organisation that visited Paraguay and told her people doing her job were hard to find.
“888 green M&Ms only”
Artists often include requests in their riders that appear absurd, sometimes deliberately so. A Latin artist once requested a bowl containing precisely 888 green M&M chocolates. Vanessa contacted the manager, who explained that touring teams occasionally embed impossible demands to test whether the local production company has actually read the document.
“That level of detail is what we need, they are genuinely controlling the entire operation.”
Other rider items present a more practical challenge: sourcing products that do not exist in Paraguay. A musician from a well-known punk band once requested a vegan organic blueberry butter, routine in his home country, but requiring considerable creativity to replicate in Asunción.
“That is where the back-and-forth begins. I tell them: I do not have that here in the way you want it. Can we prepare something similar? And we negotiate.”
“She said: let us improvise something”
Not all challenges involve dressing rooms. Vanessa recalled one of the most chaotic nights of her career, when severe weather shut down a major outdoor festival in Asunción. The artist she was accompanying was LP, the American singer-songwriter, making her first visit to Paraguay.
When the festival was formally cancelled due to heavy rain, LP refused to stand down. “She said: I want to play anyway. The people are waiting for me. Let us put something together, let us improvise something.” A smaller venue within the same entertainment group was identified, and LP performed there instead.
“I cannot explain to you what that event was. There was not room for another person.”
“There is a show behind the show”
Vanessa González is candid about her ambitions to make the backstage world more visible. Her long-term journalistic project is to document what she calls “the show behind the show”, the months or years of negotiations, the hundreds of crew members, and the human stories that unfold before a single note is played.
“A show is not prepared the day before. It takes months, even years of work just to begin the negotiations.”
She also pointed to a less-discussed benefit of international tours: the doors they open for local artists. During one visit by the band Bacilos, the group dined at a restaurant where a Paraguayan band happened to be performing. The visiting musicians listened, grew impressed, and struck up a conversation, an exchange that can quietly alter a local artist’s trajectory. Asked whether Paraguay is ready to host large-scale international acts, Vanessa was equally direct: “We have nothing to envy from people abroad. We are more than ready. It is a matter of giving us a vote of confidence.”
Wherever I point, I have someone I know
The most enduring reward of the work, Vanessa says, is the network it has created, touring parties of up to 200 people from across Europe, Latin America, and the United States. After a successful show, one artist invited her to join a private celebration, one of her personal highlights.
“She said: come, be part of this, because you made this easier and more bearable.”
That same artist later asked Vanessa to find a tattoo studio open on a Saturday afternoon in Asunción. They found one in the Villamorra neighbourhood, and the artist went with two friends. All three got tattooed.
“I look at the map today,” Vanessa said, “and wherever I point, I have someone I know.”
Vanessa González works independently as an artist care and VIP logistics specialist in Asunción, Paraguay, providing services to international touring productions and high-profile visitors. Follow her work on Instagram: @vane_gon
