{"id":471774,"date":"2026-02-11T01:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T01:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471774\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T01:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T01:12:09","slug":"at-the-super-bowl-bad-bunny-challenged-the-meaning-of-america-bad-bunny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471774\/","title":{"rendered":"At the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny challenged the meaning of \u2018America\u2019 | Bad Bunny"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, many of us have a favorite part of Bad Bunny<\/a>\u2019s Super Bowl half-time<\/a> performance. It\u2019s a dense, rich set that invites rewatching to take in every thoughtful, exuberant detail \u2013 even though it\u2019s barely 14 minutes long.<\/p>\n

My most beloved part occurs a little more than nine minutes into the homage, when the cuatro puertorrique\u00f1o appears. The stringed instrument has its own moment in the spotlight, shown in the talented hands of the cuatrista Jos\u00e9 Eduardo Santana just before Ricky Martin performs.<\/p>\n

I spent months last year reporting an episode of the podcast La Brega<\/a> about our champion instrument and why it inspires such pride in Puerto Ricans. Yet seeing the cuatro have its moment at the Super Bowl was not on my bingo card for this lifetime. The cuatro\u2019s presence in that arena invites deeper questions: what does it mean that a colony has a national instrument? Could it mean that Puerto Rico is actually a country?<\/p>\n

For Bad Bunny, who proudly advocates for Puerto Rico\u2019s independence and flies a light blue Puerto Rican flag associated with that stance, there is no doubt that the answer is yes. Puerto Rico<\/a> is an American country in the broadest sense of that weighted word: it is part of a bigger family, one that doesn\u2019t revolve around the US.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that Bad Bunny has been thinking of Puerto Rico\u2019s place in the Americas for some time, and of what real American citizenship means. There\u2019s a clue in his defiant banger La Mudanza<\/a>, the last track on his album DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS, when he name-checks the Puerto Rican educator and intellectual Eugenio Maria de Hostos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hostos died in the Dominican Republic in 1903, and famously said he\u2019d want to be buried in an independent Puerto Rico. When the day comes for Hostos\u2019 remains to be finally put to rest in a free Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny<\/a>, named Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio, tells us in La Mudanza that he wants one of his songs to be playing. And it\u2019ll be the sky blue Puerto Rican flag that adorns Hostos\u2019 coffin.<\/p>\n

Hostos was known as \u201cEl Gran Ciudadano de las Am\u00e9ricas\u201d \u2013 the great citizen of the Americas \u2013 who dreamed of unity for the Antilles and for the Americas. Benito didn\u2019t perform La Mudanza on Sunday night, but I couldn\u2019t help but think of Hostos as I watched Bad Bunny say \u201cGod Bless Am\u00e9rica\u201d before listing the countries of this hemisphere \u2013 his hemisphere \u2013 and leading a parade of flags that included the US on equal footing with its neighbors. He strode through a football game, the most \u201cAmerican\u201d of pastimes, and challenged the very meaning of the word.<\/p>\n

Bad Bunny holds the Puerto Rican flag of independence while performing at the NFL Super Bowl LX half-time show. Photograph: Chris Torres\/EPA<\/p>\n

For many of us who carry Puerto Rico in our hearts, there are certain words that are impossible to swallow. When we read a description of Puerto Rico as a \u201cterritory\u201d or \u201ccommonwealth\u201d, we know that the speaker is uncomfortable with the reality that Puerto Rico is a colony and that the US is a colonizer. \u201cMainland\u201d is another giveaway. Main to whom, exactly? The word telegraphs that the United States is the epicenter of the speaker\u2019s world, and Puerto Rico is some faraway place studied through a telescope. <\/p>\n

The term \u201cAmerican\u201d is perhaps the worst of these. It applies to every country in the hemisphere, and yet one nation, the US, has long claimed a monopoly on its use. Perhaps you\u2019ve heard a common refrain: that Puerto Ricans deserve dignity and respect because, as US citizens<\/a>, they are \u201cOur Fellow Americans<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

That was more or less the liberal response (\u201cHe\u2019s Puerto Rican, that\u2019s part of America<\/a>!\u201d) when rightwing critics objected that Bad Bunny isn\u2019t \u201can American artist\u201d and didn\u2019t deserve the glory of the Super Bowl half-time show. It\u2019s OK, they seemed to say, because Puerto Rico is a US colony, and US colonial subjects can hang out at the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

I admit that it can feel tedious to push back on the arrogance of using \u201cAmerican\u201d only to describe the US. Who wants to be the wet blanket in a US newsroom who reminds everyone that America is an entire hemisphere?<\/p>\n

But on Sunday night, Bad Bunny did it with joy. He invited the US to a party where it wasn\u2019t the center of the universe \u2013 and showed the empire that\u2019s OK. It can even be fun.<\/p>\n

Alana Casanova-Burgess is a New York-based journalist and host of La Brega<\/a>, a bilingual podcast about the Puerto Rican experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By now, many of us have a favorite part of Bad Bunny\u2019s Super Bowl half-time performance. It\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-471774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}