Bad Bunny’s bombastic Super Bowl pre-game pledge to express his Puerto Rican pride by performing in Spanish has created the very national culture war buzz Super Bowl promoters hoped would increase viewer market share. No wonder the NFL Commissioner has doubled down defending the league’s bet riding on Bad Bunny’s prime time moment.
Performing in Spanish at half-time is hardly a cultural breakthrough. J. Lo and Shakira already did that in 2020, with Bad Bunny on stage for that show. Now, for his own half-time show to matter for 3 million Americans in Puerto Rico, in Spanish and/or English Bad Bunny’s message needs to remind America that Puerto Rico is still denied equal economic opportunity and fully democratic political rights.
A century of denied rights for U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico is why another 5 million Americans of Puerto Rican descent voted for equality with their feet and now live throughout the 50 states. Still, Puerto Rico remains America’s last large and populous island territory, never realizing the potential and promise secured only through full rights of national citizenship.
Americans are free to speak Spanish and English, so watching Bad Bunny perform in Spanish changes nothing for Puerto Rico. Of course, political factions in the states, and in the territory, want to control political spin to exploit Bad Bunny’s half-time gig. That includes the “sovereign nationhood,” “separatist” and “autonomist” and “independence” advocacy factions.
Each radicalized political faction on the island is forecasting a Bad Bunny triggered epic clash between “mainstream American culture” and “Puerto Rican identity.” [See, Javier Hernandez, “What Bad Bunny Super Bowl says about U.S. and Puerto Rico” The Hill, Oct. 16].
Misreading the room
Hernandez promises Bad Bunny, “…will not switch to English or water down his roots to please” the U.S. audience, which according to Hernandez tolerates ethnic and cultural diversity, “only when it meets American majority expectations.” But one strains to grasp the logic of his doubts that America will “…accept a globally admired artist singing in Spanish…”
Don’t tell that to Ritchie Valens (or Los Lobos or Linda Ronstadt or Jose Feliciano or…), and don’t mention “Despacito.” And never-mind the inconvenient truth that America loved it in 2020 when Jennifer Lopez basked in Puerto Rican ethnic pride, wrapped in a replica of the Puerto Rico territorial flag.
Backlash?
Hernandez ominously warns “backlash” against Bad Bunny manifests “deep tensions around language, identity and what it really means to be an American.” But for Americans in Puerto Rico, the choices are clear: Continue the current undemocratic territory status, transition to equal U.S. citizenship possible only with statehood, or accept a lower standard of living likely under independent nationhood.
In other words, Puerto Rico’s choices are as complex but necessary as those faced by Kansas, Alaska, Hawaii, and 29 other territories that became states. Instead of equality, the Hernandez narrative perpetuates the current state of developmental arrest that has created in America’s backyard a de facto have-and-have-not social divide.
The Hernandez reasoning invites the possibility of a grim future for the island, comparable to the science fiction dystopia depicted in the Hunger Games movie sequels.
We’re not there yet, but the parties in Old San Juan and at luxury beach resorts in Puerto Rico that will thrive on Super Bowl Sunday are in contrast to how 3.2 million U.S. citizens on the island will spend game day. Tens of thousands still live with uncertainty about electricity and water supply. Like some parts of North Carolina, Puerto Rico’s economy and infrastructure still struggle to recover from catastrophic hurricanes.
Hernandez asserts that Puerto Ricans must reject statehood to become a nation, insisting only loss of American identity will allow Puerto Rican identity to thrive. But after 125 years seeking equality, a majority of Puerto Rican Americans define justice and freedom as equal rights of U.S. national citizenship under the Constitution.
Since the Constitution applies in full only in states, there are no equal rights or equal justice under the Constitution without statehood. For example, only voters in a state are fully and equally represented in Congress and in the election of Presidents.
That is why the majority of voters in the territory finally realized U.S. citizenship and Puerto Rico cultural identity are compatible not incompatible. That is why statehood has been chosen by democratic majorities in multiple plebiscites.
The real world
Back in the real world when Super Bowl lights are turned off, post-hurricane Puerto Rico faces challenges comparable to Alaska’s 1959 transition from territory status to statehood. It was statehood that saved Alaska from political and economic failure after a massive earthquake in the early 1964.
A federal policy putting Puerto Rico on the path to future statehood would mobilize investment and private sector-led development that federal subsidies have failed to attain.
Hernandez may believe cultural identity and fully equal U.S. citizenship cannot co-exist. It will be a failure of Puerto Rico pride and the right to freedom if the Super Bowl half time audience and Big Bunny do not affirm the truth that equality is the only path to liberty and justice for all.
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