At the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny challenges the meaning of “America” ​​| Bad bunny

forNow, many of us have a favorite part of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance. It’s a dense, rich collection that invites rewatching to absorb all the thoughtful, vivid details – even though it’s only 14 minutes long.

My favorite part happens a little over nine minutes into the tribute, when Puerto Rican quartet He appears. The stringed instrument is having its own moment in the spotlight, emerging in talented hands Quatrista Jose Eduardo Santana before Ricky Martin’s performance.

I spent months last year reporting on an episode of the La Brega podcast about our hero machine and why it inspires such pride in Puerto Ricans. However, seeing the Quatro have his moment in the Super Bowl was not on my bingo card for the life of me. The presence of the cuatro in that arena raises deeper questions: What does it mean for a colony to have a national instrument? Could this mean that Puerto Rico is actually a country?

And for Bad Bunny, who proudly advocates for Puerto Rican independence and flies the light blue Puerto Rican flag associated with that stance, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Puerto Rico is American A country in the broadest sense of this word: it is part of a larger family, a family that does not revolve around the United States.

Bad Bunny has clearly been thinking about Puerto Rico’s place in the Americas for some time, and matter of fact. American Citizenship means. There’s a clue in his defiant song La Mudanza, the final song on his album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, when he name-checks the Puerto Rican teacher and intellectual Eugenio María de Hostos.

Hostos died in the Dominican Republic in 1903, and said he wished to be buried in independent Puerto Rico. When the day comes when Hostos’ remains are finally buried in a free Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny, named Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, tells us at La Mudanza that he wants to play one of his songs. The sky-blue Puerto Rican flag will adorn Hostos’ casket.

Hostos was known as “El Gran Ciudadano de las Américas” – the Great Citizen of the Americas – who dreamed of the unity of the Antilles and the Americas. Benito didn’t perform “La Modanza” Sunday night, but I couldn’t help but think of Hostos as I watched Bad Bunny say “God Bless America” ​​before enumerating the countries of this hemisphere — his hemisphere — and leading a parade of flags that included the United States on equal footing with its neighbors. He wanders into a football game, the most “American” pastime, and challenges the very meaning of the word.

For many of us who carry Puerto Rico in our hearts, there are certain words that are impossible to swallow. When we read the description of Puerto Rico as a “territory” or “commonwealth,” we know that the speaker is uncomfortable with the fact that Puerto Rico is a colony and that the United States is a colony. “Mainland” is another giveaway. Main for whom exactly? The word telegraph suggests that the United States is the center of the speakers’ world, and that Puerto Rico is a remote place studied through a telescope.

“American” is perhaps the worst of these terms. It applies to every country in the hemisphere, yet one country, the United States, has long claimed a monopoly on its use. You may have heard a common phrase: that Puerto Ricans deserve dignity and respect because, as American citizens, they are “our fellow Americans.”

This was more or less the liberal response (“He’s Puerto Rican, and that’s part of America!”) when right-wing critics objected that Bad Bunny was not an “American artist” and did not deserve the glory of the Super Bowl halftime show. They seem to be saying it’s okay, because Puerto Rico is an American colony, and American colonial subjects might enjoy the Super Bowl.

I admit that it can be tiresome to resist the arrogance of using only the word “American” to describe the United States. Who wants to be the wet blanket in the American newsroom reminding everyone that America is an entire hemisphere?

But on Sunday night, Bad Bunny gladly did it. He invited the United States to a party where it wasn’t the center of the universe—and showed the empire that was okay. It can be fun.

• Alana Casanova-Borges is a New York-based journalist and host of La Brega, a bilingual podcast about the Puerto Rican experience.