A Gringo’s Guide to Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl
Image credit: @fubiz on Instagram.
“Ve y dile a tu abuela”. When Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny) wants you to tell your grandma something, you’d better do it. Following his announcement of his Super Bowl halftime performance, most people didn’t need to be told twice.
The controversy was disappointing but not surprising. The usual suspects derided it as “unamerican”, and it was all eyes on Benito. As Paul McCartney was treated as an honorary American, we can assume that the controversy stems from the fact that Bad Bunny *gasp* doesn’t sing in English.
On this side of the pond, we can be forgiven for not understanding American Football, the Super Bowl, or Puerto Rican Spanish, so I’ve taken it upon myself to prepare a cheat sheet, a gringo’s guide, to the defiance in the discoteca.
La Camiseta
Puerto Rico is a nation of baseball, boxing, and football. The latter is the kind without shoulder pads or ad breaks every five minutes. Therefore, we can safely assume that any aesthetic references to the American variant will be well considered. While there have been many theories about the meaning behind the number “64” on Martínez’ football jersey, the most poignant of these is that it is the official death count of Hurricane María, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. The electricity pylons with their cascading sparks also brought American apathy in the face of the disaster to the fore.
El Boxeo
While there was plenty to catch the eye during the opening number “Tití Me Preguntó”, it was difficult to ignore the boxers throwing punches above Benito’s head. Puerto Rico has always extolled its boxers, and their successes in American competitions is a way for the island to prove itself. The nod to Puerto Rico’s sport of resistance in the US’ most symbolic arena will not have gone unnoticed among Puerto Rican viewers.
Hawai
Ricky Martin (evidently still livin’ la vida loca) made an appearance to sing the refrain from “Lo que le pasó a Hawái”, Bad Bunny’s most overtly political song from 2026’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos. The song deals directly with the US’ tendency to homogenise and subsume the places it occupies, using the decimation of Hawaiian culture in favour of five-star resorts as an example. “They want to take my rivers, as well as my beaches, they want to take away my neighbourhood, and for my grandma to go away”.
América
While the set was almost entirely in Spanish, the few occasions in which Benito spoke English were precisely chosen. As fireworks were flying and DtMF geared up to see him out, he punctuated the final beat of “Café con Ron” with a rousing “God Bless America”, sending the crowd into a frenzy. The phrase in Spanish, though, has a key difference in meaning. In the Hispanic world, “América” is almost never used to mean “United States”, instead referring to every country from Argentina to Canada. Following this, Benito listed almost every country in the Americas as a parade of flags assembled behind him.
Seguimos
As the dancers and musicians followed him off stage, the order shifted and changed until the front of the party was taken up almost entirely by the flags of nations in a similar situation to Puerto Rico. The British Virgin Islands’ and Bermuda’s Union Jacks fluttered alongside the new flag of Martinique, with its pan-African ensign. The Dutch territories of Bonaire and Sint Eustatius joined them along with Granada, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela: all nations which have defied the United States in recent years. I’m sure the word “Greenland” came up in a planning meeting.
Despite the fractured history between the US and its neighbours, the show’s message was one of unity rather than confrontation. Standing up to the host while offering them a hand, Bad Bunny asserted the nations’ equality and celebrated what “American” really means. As a final flourish, he brandished a football stamped with the words “Together, We Are America”. As if anyone was still in doubt, he threw it to the ground and left San Francisco with the words “Seguimos Acá”: “We’re still here”.
Words by Will Garrood