The Bad Bunny Revolution

How the halftime show gave voice to unheard emotions

When Bad Bunny finished one of the coldest Super Bowl performances in history, dancing in a sea of flags and lovers, singing his song “DtMF,” I thought of the current moment in history — our anger and sadness at our country — and every act to silence or erase us: the powerlessness we as Black and Brown Americans who are often left out feel. The terror. Anxiety. Resentment. A feeling we have carried in our souls: this country is bullying us and it refuses to stop.

But his performance offered a refuge. As he stood in the midst of a sugar cane plantation, the sickles grinding away at the root, I thought of the ways the fields are so deeply ancestral for us. They represent the worst kind of origins, the sweetened rot that built this country. They represent the trauma and rupture of slavery that we feel in our bones and the ways we turned a mechanism of oppression into a site of freedom — singing, dancing, eventually dismantling the master’s house.

He stood among older domino players, and a New York-style bodega where Cardi B and Pedro Pascal made a cameo. He watched in satisfaction as a wedding took place. He ascended, triumphantly, toward the broken utility poles, performing “El Apagon” — a song referencing the 1898 American takeover of Puerto Rico — while the lights blinked as if in a storm, unashamedly and lovingly inviting the audience into the full range of the experience of his people. He took us on a journey home and he meant business.

As he performed the final song, behind him the billboard read: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.” The football he had been holding the entire time, one of the greatest symbols of American love and greed, was held by one of our most trusted and compassionate hands. In a golden bold print, his sermon appeared: Together, We Are America. At one moment, he held the ball and looked at it as if the words meant everything; and they do.

In a social media post, someone wrote, “Christian Americans are standing together tonight and tuning out of the NFL halftime show.” As I watched, I wondered to myself: If this isn’t Christian, then I don’t know what is. Green Day sang “American Idiot.” Coco Jones sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Brandi Carlile, a queer artist, sang “America, The Beautiful.” Then in dramatic fashion, adorned in a fully custom fit designed by ZARA, Bad Bunny said, “God bless America.” A few minutes later, the president called it “one of the worst” half-time shows “ever.” We know that is a lie.

What gets me is that Bad Bunny said “God bless America” in English and then named nations from literally every region of the Americas — North, South, and Central. But he chose to name the US and Canada last, effectively upending who gets to determine what America is and means. Right now, that’s immensely healing.

The writer Maya Angelou said, “You will forget what people said; you will forget what people did, but you will never forget how they made you feel.” We carry with us the feeling: we have marched and prayed and resisted and fought and built, and it feels as if what we as people of good faith and will have done just isn’t enough. We are sad and angry, but most of all, we often feel defeated and numb. Donald Trump and MAGA have been arrogant, abusive, mediocre, and bigoted. ICE has been violent and evil. They are displaying the white supremacist roots of the country: rolling back rights; separating families from children; deporting people; weaponizing religion; displaying no goodness or care.

We know the feeling: Americans have felt that no one is fighting for us. We have felt that those who are meant to protect us and defend us care little to stop them. We have seen people loud about Jesus but silent about oppression. We have felt their arrogance and ignorance and their bigotry. And we have been angry and have marched and wondered: “Who is fighting for us?” Then enters Bad Bunny. Struttin’, Puerto Rican and US flags together, the deeply spiritual drums moving all of us, and we feel it. We feel the resistance and the joy.

Just as this daring and beautiful show was taking place, Kid Rock performed to a MAGA crowd. And trust me when I say this: they are afraid. They fear that Bad Bunny can actually crumble the walls they’ve built. They fear that he defies their hatred of Black and Brown people. They fear that he tells them the truth about their white fear. They fear that he still helps us believe we deserve dignity and freedom. And if all you have is fear, you have nothing: not yourself, not others, not power, not a country.

Kid Rock performs at Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show”

And please do not miss this: there is a profound and deeply spiritual connection between Kendrick Lamar’s performance last year and Bad Bunny’s this year. The vehicles, the landscape, the storytelling, the dancing, the diversity, the moral and political clarity, the spiritual and emotional roots, the inclusion. It is as if they are telling us that all of our oppression and erasure is connected, and that oppression and erasure is all of our fight. Both Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny understand that the stage is not just the place you perform, it is a world to be entered. Both knew that the stakes were high — Kendrick performed after we endured one of the most brutal election losses; Bad Bunny performed in a moment where we are feeling the intense and violent fallout of those election realities. And yet, their performances were a portal — to Compton, to Puerto Rico, to home, to pain, to goodness, to places where we laugh, to places where we make love, to places where we struggle to breathe, to places where we learn to breathe again.

Then after both had finished telling America about itself, the backlash ensued.

Far Right influencer Laura Loomer declared in a tweet, “It is not White enough!” What a sad thing it is to watch people’s desire to destroy and control what America is, means, and can become. It is not just white supremacy. It is not just white hatred. It is white ingratitude.

It is white ingratitude that put on a segregated show with Turning Point USA, harkening to the ever present ghost of Jim Crow America. It is white ingratitude that sees no problem in spewing hatred in English but sees every problem with singing love in Spanish. It is white ingratitude that refuses to acknowledge how racist it is to dehumanize the musical and creative expressions of Black and Brown cultures while they divinize and celebrate the abuses of white history. If you are ungrateful for another person’s humanity and freedom, then you will do all types of things to devalue and disrupt it. Many white people are ungrateful for what Black and Brown people mean to America, what we have been, what we have done, what we have given them, and what we have endured.

What Bad Bunny did wasn’t just about music. It wasn’t just about entertainment or speaking out. It was about a demonstration of power and freedom and visibility and spiritual fortitude that we as people need right now. It wasn’t just about his people — it was for all of us. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens,” he said a week ago. “We are humans, and we are Americans.” All of us.

This is Benito’s revolution. In a radical and defiant act, he performed his whole set in Spanish. When asked about how the performance could present a “language barrier,” he said, “just learn to dance.” The revolution is not division but in dancing; not in bullets moving but bodies moving; not in separation and kidnapping but in being close and intimate. The message is clear: we’re in a storm, and the only way through is to look around at who we are and make it through together.

He does not desire to be more palatable to the “American” ear. He is the American ear. We are. He shows us that this country belongs to us — all of us. He shows us that Puerto Rico is not disposable; none of us or our homes are. And in this moment, that is magical, divine.

I don’t know much Spanish, but I know I needed to hear him speak in his mother tongue. I needed to be reminded that there is something powerful about being our authentic selves, whoever we are. That our language, our art, our platforms, our voice, and our energy are not less than, they are enough. If you know, you know. It is as if he says, yes, this country is trying to erase you and hurt you, but you possess a kind of divinity, a kind of power by simply being here right now.

This is the power to be yourself and to tell the truth about what you have experienced and what has been taken from you, and what you still have and the truth about America. And Donald Trump and MAGA hate him because he is putting a mirror up to their poor definitions of American exceptionalism.

If there is anything exceptional about our country, it is the exceptional way it avoids being honest with itself. It is the exceptional way the country has taught us to entertain and distract ourselves to death and to lie to ourselves about what is happening within us and around us. It is the exceptional way the country has failed at loving and reforming itself.

But when Bad Bunny finished, screaming “mucho gracias” in the air, he did what needed to be done: he gave us something much more than entertainment or distraction. Our bodies needed to move. We needed to see a little Latino child — who looked to be the same age as Liam who was wrongfully detained — shown that his future and his life is worth something. We needed the idea of America challenged and expanded. Love and joy isn’t just our birthright — it’s our sustaining grace.

Language is not a barrier that rips us apart. It is a bridge that brings us together and tells us: you have dignity. You have power. Don’t believe the lie: we are not playing Oppression Olympics. We get free together. Be yourself. Love your people. Love everyone. Never make yourself smaller. Artfully beat back every attempt at your erasure. Go be free. Go fight. Go dance. Go do it together. Dignity has many voices. Listen for the sound of liberation. The world is heavy. Lift what you can.

And tomorrow has come, and we are still singing, “Debí tirar más fotos de cuando te tuve, Debí darte más besos y abrazos las veces que pude.” And we won’t forget. We will remember the dead. We will fight like hell for the living. Bad Bunny’s act was more than a performance — it was a love letter, a poem, a story, a rallying cry that tells us: this world is yours too, live in it and survive.