Reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime Sunday night was a hit with audiences around the world — but it touched no one more than his fellow Puerto Ricans.
After years of socio-economic crisis and steep out-migration from their home island, many Boricuas (the indigenous name for Puerto Ricans) found the lush tribute to their culture on one of the world's biggest stages a much-needed shot in the arm.
And it was one, they insisted, that also buoyed Latinos in general at a moment when many feel like a special target of discrimination amid a campaign of U.S. migrant deportation
“I was crying from the beginning ‘til the end — for the Puerto Ricans especially because we’ve always been treated as third-class citizens," Maruxa Cardenas, a board member of the Puerto Rican community nonprofit La Mesa Boricua in Miami, told WLRN.
READ MORE: The Bad Bunny brawl exposes English-only hypocrisy — and Spanish-only hypocrisy
Cardenas said the electric, 13-minute performance by Bad Bunny, aka Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, did nothing less than revive the Puerto Rican and Latino profile because "it highlighted the fact that we’re more than just an island — and that the Latino community, we’re not going away."
"It just had so much proud symbolism, from the jíbaros cutting cane in the fields to small vendors selling coconuts and piraguas (flavored shaved ice), to the migration to New York and our integration into the Anglo-Saxon world, all depicted with the dancing of salsa, reggaeton — he projected the joy and contribution of Puerto Ricans and the diaspora."
And he included, she pointed out, even the troubles Puerto Ricans on the island experience. Among them was their chronic blackouts, but also "being a small place that's too often been unjustly taken advantage of by larger places," including Spain and the U.S., which regulates how the territory conducts affairs like external trade.
"Iit highlighted the fact that we’re more than just an island — and that the Latino community, we’re not going away."Maruxa Cardenas
Much of the Super Bowl show was taken from Bad Bunny's chart-busting 2025 album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, a fusion of reggaeton and traditional salsa that is a personal homage to Puerto Rican culture.
This Super Bowl halftime billing had been a subject of controversy among "America First" supporters of President Donald Trump.
For starters, Bad Bunny does not perform in English. He has also been critical of Trump's sweeping campaign of deporting undocumented migrants — and the aggressive if not brutal tactics of immigration enforcement officers in cities like Minneapolis, which he has called the main reason he has not recently toured on the U.S. mainland.
Although Puerto Ricans both on the island and the U.S. mainland are U.S. citizens, Trump also has a strained relationship with them. In 2017 he dismissivley tossed paper towel rolls at hurricane survivors there, and at a 2024 Trump campaign rally, a comic called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Bad Bunny did not make any explicit political references in Sunday's spectacle, but Cardenas said his retort to anti-Latino bigotry was implicit.
Despite the conservative backlash, the National Football League stood by the Puerto Rican star, largely as an acknowledgment that he is one of the most popular and streamed recording artists in the world, and because Latinos are the largest U.S. minority — not to mention fans of professional football.
It was also a recognition that the U.S. has the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking population behind Mexico. Puerto Rico itself is a U.S. territory whose residents born there are U.S. citizens (although they may not vote in U.S. elections unless they live on the mainland).
'It showed class'
Bad Bunny — who is sometimes criticized for singing in a reggaeton-mumbling style that even Spanish-speakers at times can't make out — insisted in the weeks before the Super Bowl that "you won't have to speak Spanish to enjoy the show."
Much of the national reaction to Sunday's performance — which featured stars like Lady Gaga and fellow Puerto Rican Ricky Martin — has seemed to bear him out.
Puerto Ricans like Ernesto Morales said that was largely because of the show's Broadway-level production values.
“What I didn’t expect was how elegant it was," said Morales, a writer and media production professional who recently returned to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after many years living and working in Miami.
"Script- and production-wise, it was at a different level. It showed class.”
Like Cardenas, Morales also thought the show elevated both Puerto Rico and Bad Bunny in Americans' estimation.
"I cried, too, because it felt more like an Olympics opening ceremony," said Morales, "so it reminded me of my mom watching TV and getting emotional during every summer Olympics when she'd see that small but proud Puerto Rican athletic team walk into the stadium with the island's flag.
"She would have been up and dancing last night watching this being presented during the most red-white-and-blue event in the world, transmitted to more than 100 million people. That grabbed me by the heart.
"Benito did a respectful presentation — he stood up to the challenge [of Trump supporters' complaints], which said volumes more than if he had taken the opportunity to do a protest or whatever the hell."
On social media Sunday evening, Trump disparaged the halftime show for both its lack of English and some of its suggestive and scantily clad dancing. But Morales insisted the program was tame by much of today's pop music standards.
"It had its bits of sexiness and that kind of stuff," Morales said, "but that wasn't the emphasis at all."
Latinos like Cardenas and Morales also stressed how important it was that Bad Bunny reminded Americans that “America” means not just the U.S. but the entire western hemisphere.
As the show ended, Bad Bunny shouted "God bless America" — and then read off the name of every country in the Americas, from Argentina to Canada.
