Thanks to Bad Bunny, it’s been a banner month for us Puerto Ricans.

Coming off the heels of his emotional, history-making Grammy win for album of the year, which made it the first time an all Spanish-language album has won the category, Bad Bunny continued to break ground on Sunday with his Super Bowl halftime performance.

As Latines in the United States, we’re still struggling to be properly and proportionately represented in Hollywood, politics and in the music industry, where Latin artists have been historically boxed into smaller roles, limited to exotic window dressing in the anglophone-dominated landscape of American pop. But through Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico had something to say: He tapped into his unique star power with his zeitgeist-defining magnum opus, his 2025 album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” Then, at the Super Bowl, he used a platform usually reserved for bombastic shows of U.S. patriotism to ensure that Puerto Rico, along with many other nations and territories that make up the Americas, would be celebrated, even as we are routinely being denigrated by American conservatives.

Sports have a rich history in Puerto Rico, from boxing to baseball — but with the exception of Super Bowl Sunday, American football doesn’t typically reach us. My parents, who have never watched a football game in their lives, excitedly watched back home on the island, while I, over a thousand miles away, watched from my freezing New York City apartment with my partner, wishing we were basking in the warmth of the Isla Del Encanto. But it didn’t matter where we were watching, as boricuas — and Latines — were united.

The Instagram stories on my feed were filled with Puerto Ricans and other Latines hosting watch parties, taking in this much-needed moment of sheer joy during a treacherous time when speaking in our native language, or being a brown-skinned person is enough of a risk factor in being abducted by ICE. Having had the privilege of seeing Bad Bunny at the Choliseo during his residency in San Juan last August, I knew this performance would not only be an impactful homage to my island, but the Super Bowl halftime show carried an underlying, defiant message, that no matter how much conservatives prop up hatred and fear-mongering toward Latines and immigrants, nothing will stop us from being proud of our roots.

And Bad Bunny’s performance literally started straight from the roots. Levi’s Stadium was transformed into a labyrinthine sugarcane field, perhaps as a nod to Central San Vicente, the first sugarcane refinery in Puerto Rico, established in 1873 in Bad Bunny’s hometown of Vega Baja. Opening the show was an acoustic guitarist donning traditional jíbaro clothing — a straw pava hat and white linen — whose words, “qué rico es ser Latino,” established instant solidarity with Latinos all over the world.

While launching into his 2022 dembow-trap hit, “Titi Me Preguntó,” Bad Bunny walked the cameras through the makeshift sugar cane field, which was tilled by dancers dressed as jíbaros. He was decked out in a custom all-white outfit, featuring a jersey bearing his mother’s last name, Ocasio, and the number 64, which is the number his uncle once wore as a football player.

Bad Bunny’s set was staged with many scenes from working-class life in Puerto Rico: a coconut stand, a piraguero, old men playing dominoes, manicurists, baddies, construction workers and a jeweler who buys back “oro y plata.” These scenes served as reminders that Puerto Rican music wasn’t made by and for the elite, but forged by everyday people with limited resources.

Everything about the performance was a wink to the Puerto Rico I grew up in: from the skirts worn by the backup dancers, reminiscent of Taíno taparrabos, to the temperamental power grids, and the garita, or the lookout tower inspired by Old San Juan. During the staged wedding sequence, I saw myself in the tired child napping over two chairs, waiting for the adults to wind down the party so I could go home to my own bed.

We’d seen the famously star-studded house, or the casita, in both his San Juan residency and international tour run, which was duly brought back for the halftime show. The Super Bowl edition of the casita was filled with Latinx pop culture icons like Cardi B, Pedro Pascal, Jessica Alba, Karol G, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Young Miko. But there was another set that was vital for this performance: a New York City backdrop that included a bodega, a barbershop and a bar modeled after Toñitas, a famous Caribbean social club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Bad Bunny not only name-dropped Toñitas in “NUEVAYoL,” but its owner and namesake, María Antonia “Toñita” Cay, made a cameo during the halftime show from behind the bar — serving him a shot. Since the 1970s, Toñitas has become a symbol of resistance amid growing gentrification in the neighborhood, where businesses owned by people of color have been shuttered and longtime Williamsburg residents pushed out by exorbitant rent hikes. It’s a rare safe space for Latines in the city, one where anyone is welcome, but unmistakably ours. As one of many Puerto Ricans who’ve relocated to New York City, it meant a lot that Bad Bunny paid tribute to boricuas in the diaspora, showing that this moment is, too, for those who carry our pride far from home.

Yet unlike Bad Bunny’s first Super Bowl appearance — back in 2020 for Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s joint headlining performance — this wasn’t an all-Latinx affair. Lady Gaga, who shared a touching moment with Benito at the Grammys, surfaced for a surprise salsa rendition of her collaborative hit with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile,” accompanied by Los Sobrinos. She had her own nod to the island with a brooch of a Flor de Maga, Puerto Rico’s national flower.

(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)

Advertisement

While it feels like a loss to omit Bruno Mars (who is of Puerto Rican descent), it’s understandable why Bad Bunny chose Lady Gaga as the only non-Latinx person to perform during the set. Not only is Bad Bunny a longtime Gaga fan himself, but they have both used their platforms to champion trans and queer rights. It’s evident she feels a kinship with Bad Bunny not just for dedicating his career to fighting for the same rights she did, but also for creating opportunities for marginalized people in the face of conservative backlash. While speaking to the press after the Grammys, she raved about how lucky we are to have a musical leader like Bad Bunny speak up for “what is true and what is right.”

Surprisingly, though, one of the most powerful political moments from the halftime show didn’t come from Bad Bunny, but rather from another Puerto Rican icon: Ricky Martin.

Martin, who made himself a household name in the States with English-language songs like “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and “She Bangs,” never tried to posit himself as a revolutionary. But sitting in a plastic chair modeled after the “DTMF” album cover, he sang an impassioned rendition of Bad Bunny’s protest song “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii” — in which he warns that Puerto Rico could face the same whitewashing that Hawaii experienced upon becoming a U.S. state, citing the privatization of our beaches and the gentrification of our hometowns as threats to our culture’s legacy.

Seeing Bad Bunny emerge with our original flag moments later only drove the pro-independence sentiment further; woven in a shade of baby blue, this version of the Puerto Rican flag was created to represent the island’s independence from Spain, but was outlawed from 1898 to 1957 once the island became a U.S. territory.

Bad Bunny carries the original Puerto Rican flag Sunday during the Super Bowl LX halftime show at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

The average Super Bowl viewer may not know about the light-blue flag, or understand the words behind the heartbreaking song about the perils of being a colony. But for those native Puerto Ricans watching, it was a triumphant reminder that Puerto Rico no se vende. It is not a tax haven for gringos, nor is it a “floating island of garbage”; it’s a gem that needs to be nurtured for generations to come. And to Puerto Ricans like me, that will never be achieved through U.S. statehood.

Because Puerto Rico is a colony, its citizens cannot vote in presidential elections, but it is still affected by the U.S. government. The island’s governor, Jenniffer González Colón, is a staunch supporter of President Trump who pushes conservative values — such as banning gender-affirmative care for trans Puerto Ricans under 21 and approving a law that grants personhood to fetuses from conception. It’s been difficult for Puerto Ricans to feel like we’re being heard when we’re trapped in a political situation we didn’t ask for.

When Bad Bunny was announced as this year’s performer, conservatives voiced their opposition on Fox News and social media, designating themselves as the true judges of who’s “American enough” to perform at the Super Bowl. They seemingly forgot that the U.S. has occupied Puerto Rico for over a century — and that performing in a language besides English doesn’t make Bad Bunny any less of a citizen of this country.

The right tried, and failed, to draw attention elsewhere, with conservative group Turning Point USA organizing an “All-American Halftime Show” headlined by Kid Rock and featuring additional performances by MAGA-friendly country acts like Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. While it drew in 6.1 million concurrent viewers, that number paled in comparison to the 135 million viewers who tuned in to Bad Bunny’s halftime show, according to initial reports from NBC and CBS News.

But there was one moment during the performance that stuck with me, when Bad Bunny gave an impassioned motivational speech in Spanish, urging the audience to recognize their worth.

“My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. And I’m here at the Super Bowl 60 because I never stopped believing in myself — and you should also believe in yourself,” he said in Spanish. “You’re more valuable than you think. Believe it.”

As agents of the federal government continue to kidnap immigrants and place them in what have effectively become concentration camps — taking the dignity of those who’ve left their homes behind searching for a better life, only to render their hard work and assimilation as worthless — Bad Bunny’s halftime show felt like a call to make us even louder and prouder. The U.S. can no longer deny us Puerto Ricans and Latines of our value; its time we act like it. It’s time we move forward with love for ourselves and our communities, no matter how much hate and fear they try to lodge into us.

After all, as Bad Bunny put it at the halftime show: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”