These days, when you read the news, there’s one name you can’t escape: Donald J. Trump. However, since ‘Super Bowl Sunday’ last weekend, the frontrunner for dominating the headlines is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known by his stage name, Bad Bunny.
Usually, the Super Bowl is a hot ticket for entertainment, as one of the most viewed events of the year. Every year millions watch the Halftime Show expecting a spectacle – celebrities and pyrotechnics. This year, millions tuned in for a political statement (available to watch here).
‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’
Undoubtedly, since the release of Debí Tirar Más Fotos last year, Bad Bunny’s profile has skyrocketed, as his album captured the hearts of millions.
DtMF is a musically versatile and wonderfully-crafted album that combined Puerto Rico’s rich musical traditions with lyrics commenting on its people’s struggles against colonialism and US imperialism.
After being oppressed and exploited for centuries as a colony of the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico came under the dominion of US imperialism at the turn of the 20th century.
It’s now an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the US: Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but they can’t vote in US presidential elections. Moreover, under US domination, Puerto Ricans face crushing poverty, government corruption, electrical blackouts, and police brutality.
Martínez’s message of upholding the defiant beauty and richness of his homeland and its culture in the face of its economic and ecological collapse, and his lamentations of losing loved ones to forced migration, struck a nerve across Latin America and beyond – including amongst Palestinians.
The album’s rollout and promotion – set against the backdrop of Trump’s anti-immigrant attacks at home, and now the US kidnapping Venezuela’s President, and the administration’s oil blockade of Cuba – has only added to Martínez’s appeal in the eyes of youth across the Americas.
Following the album, Bad Bunny hosted a 30-show residency in Puerto Rico, with special measures to prioritise local residents over ticket scalping bots.
The music video for NUEVAYoL – which highlights the role of Puerto Rican immigrants in building New York – features a fake recording of Trump apologizing for his behaviour towards Latinos.
Elsewhere in the video, the unofficial light-blue Puerto Rican independence flag – a defiant symbol given that it was banned for a number of years – waves from the Statue of Liberty.
Lastly, his world tour had no dates in the United States, which he explained was due to fear of ICE targeting his concerts to carry out raids.
‘Donroe Doctrine’
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show came mere months after the declaration of the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ – the Trump administration’s explicit announcement to the world that it will re-establish its imperialist interests in Latin America, which it views as the US’s ‘backyard’.
The White House kickstarted the year by kidnapping Venezuela’s head of state in an all guns blazing military attack, and then downgrading the Venezuelan government to a semi-colonial status to manage the extraction of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
These warmongers have now moved on to asphyxiating the Cuban Revolution, as well as bullying Mexico and other Latin American countries into abandoning their historic ties with Cuba – leaving the besieged island on the brink of collapse.
Meanwhile, in the US, for months the Trump administration has been waging a campaign of terror against immigrants and anti-ICE protestors. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have been making a sickening spectacle of their deportations on social media, and have been increasing their provocative physical presence in major cities.
In January, after an ICE agent murdered US citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, a mass movement erupted against ICE. The movement against ICE in Minnesota has been a great display of solidarity, creativity, and the revolutionary ferment that exists in American society.
Defiance on stage
It’s in this turbulent, polarised context that Bad Bunny performed at one of the most televised events in the world – with a celebration of Latin American culture, which showcased the present and historic struggles of the Puerto Rican people.
Notably, the performance was also mostly in the Spanish language, which is unprecedented for the Super Bowl.
The show opens with jíbaros (peasants) working on the sugar cane field, a nod to the history of colonialism throughout the Caribbean. Their pavas (straw hats) are a recognisable symbol of Puerto Rican national identity.
The set also included a replica of a Latin neighbourhood in NYC and the casita, a replica of typical Puerto Rican houses.
Ricky Martin gave a brilliant performance of LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii (“What happened to Hawaii”), which compares the plight of Puerto Ricans to the Hawaiian people. The song is a call to defend Puerto Rico in the face of gentrification and displacement from centuries of colonial oppression.
Then, Bad Bunny sang El Apagón (“The Blackout”) from the top of an electrical lamp post. This is a song that was written in protest of Puerto Rico’s collapsing electric infrastructure, especially after being sold to US private company, LUMA energy.
In 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by two devastating hurricanes, Irma and María. Hurricane María destroyed Puerto Rico’s already weak electrical grid; over 53,000 kilometres of distribution lines were damaged.
Initially, the death toll for hurricane María was 64 – the number on Bad Bunny’s jersey – but the impact of the electricity shortage took hundreds of lives, including those reliant on medical devices. The total death toll months later jumped to 2,975.
The response to this event was a complete disaster from both the local Puerto Rican authorities – a toothless comprador ‘government’ – and the US federal government. This happened during Trump’s first administration, which delayed 20 billion USD of relief and aid. The Puerto Rican governor was also caught up in a corruption scandal.
At the time, a movement of youth took over the streets demanding the resignation of the then governor Ricardo Roselló. Bad Bunny was quite involved in this movement: he cut short his tour to join the protests; and recorded a song denouncing the government, titled Afilando Cuchillos (“Sharpening the Knives”).
Martínez closed the Halftime Show by calling out “God bless America”, before listing every country across the Americas – not just the United States – while waving the Puerto Rican independentist flag. At a time when US imperialism is setting out to reassert ‘hemispheric dominance’ across the Americas, this was a bold statement to make in the belly of the beast.
Culture-war backlash
Unsurprisingly, the right wing has whipped itself up into a frenzy over the performance. Ever since it was announced that Bad Bunny would do the Halftime Show, all the reactionary gargoyles came out to attack this decision, and label it as “un-American”. Ironically, Puerto Rico is part of the US, and Bad Bunny is a US citizen.
Turning Point USA – the reactionary right-wing campaign group started by Charlie Kirk, who sadly couldn’t make the event – even organised their own alternative ‘All-American Halftime Show’, with conservative slop from Kid Rock and other patriotic poster boys, of course.
A Republican congressman even went as far as to demand an “official investigation” into the NFL, and deemed the whole performance as inappropriate.
He was particularly worried about Bad Bunny’s “inappropriate” lyrics, referring to the sexually explicit ones. They didn’t seem to have an issue with Kid Rock’s inappropriate lyrics and comments about statutory rape, or their beloved President’s repeated appearances in the Epstein files!
It’s safe to assume, however, that they were mostly upset about the performance’s political message and lyrics.
In one of his classic unhinged Truth Social rants, President Trump gave a scathing review:
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World. This “Show” is just a “slap in the face” to our Country.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the youth of the Americas strongly disagrees.
Voicing anger
Surprisingly, even some people on the left were disappointed by Bad Bunny’s performance. Instagram infographics were churned out attacking the ‘weakness’ of his political message and the fact that Martínez is a celebrity millionaire, and even accusing the show of being consciously-deployed imperialist propaganda!
One enraged commentator, apparently suffering from an acute case of brainworms, said that the Super Bowl show “functioned to absorb unrest, convert social conflict into spectacle, and offer superficial catharsis in place of structural change”.
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This postmodernist verbiage is complete nonsense. As if the strategists of US imperialism collectively decided to use a radical Puerto Rican musical artist to (somehow) deflect the growing radicalisation of workers and youth across the Americas!
Indeed, there is a big gap between reggaetón and the Communist Manifesto, and Bad Bunny isn’t quite bridging it. But that is irrelevant.
Of course, the US liberal establishment will always try to co-opt and blunt the anger of the masses into safe channels. The point here is to understand that the anger exists, and is expressing itself through popular forms of art and culture.
Art does not need to offer a precise political programme; what great art does best is hold up a mirror to the world, and amplify the psychological moods and strivings deep within society.
And that is exactly what Bad Bunny is doing: he is voicing the anger, the pride, the resilience, the sadness, and the passion of all oppressed peoples living under US imperialism.
Many identify with the message he is transmitting. Millions more are learning for the first time about the issues he raises: colonial oppression, Puerto Rican culture, the history of the plunder of Hawaii, electricity blackouts caused by privatisation, and so on.
Bad Bunny has accompanied a whole generation from their parties to their protests, without compromising his artistic vision. This is a strong message, and one that has reached billions. Some of his songs are explicitly political, and these were the songs that were defiantly included on the setlist – set against a backdrop of ICE raids and imperialist meddling.
Beyond what Bad Bunny says on stage, what we have in front of us are billions of young people that share his fire and rage. This cannot be ignored.
