Essay: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show will be a history lesson for the ages

Bad Bunny is perpetually making history. Last Sunday helium broke a caller grounds by winning medium of the twelvemonth astatine the Grammys for his 2025 album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which was the archetypal afloat Spanish-language medium to assertion the title; and travel Feb. 8, a.k.a. Super Bowl Sunday, he’ll beryllium the headlining enactment astatine the Super Bowl halftime show.

Yet helium is besides teaching history. Bad Bunny’s latest grounds is not lone a solemnisation of Puerto Rico and its people, but it offers a model into immoderate of the challenges the embattled territory is presently facing — including monolithic migration, displacement and an infrastructure connected the brink of collapse. In a infinitesimal erstwhile acquisition is nether attack, some successful the United States and Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny is utilizing popular culture’s biggest signifier to connection the satellite a past lesson. And successful this governmental context, that matters greatly.

In December 2024, I was contacted by Bad Bunny’s squad to nutrient 17 pages outlining Puerto Rican history, to brace with each song’s YouTube visualizer for “DTMF.” Altogether, they person been viewed much than 775 cardinal times.

I aboriginal produced 40 slides jam-packed with humanities and taste facts astir Puerto Rico, which were screened astatine Bad Bunny’s 31-show residency successful San Juan. These ranged from facts astir the past of women’s suffrage to the founding of Puerto Rico’s oldest punk band, La Experiencia de Toñito Cabanillas.

When Bad Bunny was announced arsenic the NFL’s prime to header the halftime show, I was hardly amazed by the backlash from conservatives — including aggregate Fox News hosts, podcasters and adjacent President Trump, who said, “I don’t cognize who helium is. I don’t cognize wherefore they’re doing it … [It’s] crazy.”

As communities of colour celebrated connected societal media, critics raised 2 questions: Why would a Spanish-speaking creator — adjacent if helium is the most-streamed creator connected Earth — beryllium chosen for that stage? And wherefore wouldn’t they take a much patriotic, Anglo-American artist?

While undoubtedly xenophobic successful nature, these questions item their acute ignorance astir the spot that birthed Bad Bunny, and its ongoing entanglement with the United States.

Puerto Rico was archetypal colonized by the Spanish from 1493 until 1898, the twelvemonth that the United States occupied the state arsenic portion of the Spanish-American War. Later, successful 1917, Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens done the Jones Law. Eventually, we drafted a constitution and became a Commonwealth of the United States successful 1952. But determination is ne'er 1 azygous humanities narrative.

What these facts occlude, however, is that Puerto Ricans are second-class citizens who cannot ballot for the president — and those successful the archipelago are not afloat protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights. According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s early-20th period Insular Cases, we beryllium to the United States, but we are not portion of it.

Put simply: We are a colony of the United States successful the 21st century.

When drafting the humanities narratives for “DTMF,” Bad Bunny understood that Puerto Rican past is often unknown, adjacent to our ain people. He was funny successful making past disposable for those who don’t person entree to higher education. He wanted maine to constitute these narratives successful a candid mode to beryllium work by radical successful the barriadas y caserios (working-class neighborhoods and the projects). These were the places wherever I came of property successful Puerto Rico.

With the occurrence of “DTMF,” Puerto Rican past was amplified to the world. I’ve had countless conversations with journalists from astir the globe, who marveled astatine however small they knew astir Puerto Rico’s past oregon its narration to the United States. This is precisely what I deliberation drives those debates astir connection and who gets the close to assertion Americanness — a deficiency of information.

And adjacent though Bad Bunny is simply a U.S. citizen, conservatives person organized an alternate “All-American Halftime Show,” which reveals however “Americanness” is policed done connection and race. This is the merchandise of willful ignorance.

Puerto Rico’s past is besides that of Latin American, Caribbean, United States and Latinx communities. I judge Bad Bunny’s show volition invitation radical to recognize the quality and complexity of our people’s history, adjacent if it makes outsiders uncomfortable. That helium volition besides beryllium doing truthful wholly successful Spanish successful a infinitesimal erstwhile Latinx radical successful the United States are being arrested oregon interrogated by national agents for speaking successful Spanish — oregon simply for having an accent? That matters.

Of course, artists unsocial volition not prevention america from the perils of racism and xenophobia — I learned that from my clip successful the punk community. We cannot conscionable hold connected anyone, particularly not celebrities, to alteration institutions without immoderate radical powerfulness to backmost them up.

Yet fixed his tremendous scope — conscionable this week his latest medium deed No. 1 connected Apple Music successful China — Bad Bunny has the powerfulness to determination the taste needle. And if there’s 1 happening to instrumentality from the Grammys ceremonial past Sunday, it’s that he’s not unsocial — different artists person taken a basal connected anti-immigrant violence. They are surviving up to the moment. That matters too.

So portion conservatives signifier their bland antagonistic to the Super Bowl halftime amusement — with nary different than Kid Rock arsenic headliner — Bad Bunny volition beryllium offering the satellite a overmuch much invaluable past lesson, afloat of sazón, batería y reggaetón.

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is the writer of “Puerto Rico: A National History” and associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean History astatine the University of Wisconsin-Madison.