Bad Bunny's Uncanny Timing
Why the Super Bowl halftime show was important.
The timing of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was uncanny. Last year, Executive Order 14224 designated English as the official language of the United States. Yesterday, Bad Bunny performed the first halftime show primarily in Spanish in Super Bowl history.
A bleak year for immigrants
In the deadliest year for immigrants in decades, a year that saw the unchecked militarization and inhumane mechanization of immigration enforcement, the rise of U.S. concentration camps and partner concentration camps in other countries, the whirlwind expansion of extrajudicial detention, and the relentless demonization of immigrants, overwhelmingly from Latin America, it seems fated, especially given that this coming Fourth of July will mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, that a Latino would headline what may be the biggest cultural event in the U.S.
Culture as a political message
Given the grim context, Bad Bunny could have been forgiven for getting “political” during his show, but instead he chose joy and love. Giant screens in the stadium read, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Hell, an actual wedding took place, and Bad Bunny signed the marriage certificate. The halftime show was a shining celebration of culture, alternating between cultural references, salsa dancing and tender moments, like when Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to a little boy who was watching his acceptance. “Esto es para ti (This is for you),” he said.
Puerto Rico’s relationship with the U.S.
It’s especially fitting that Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican, as the relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S. reflects the asymmetrical dynamic between Latin Americans in the U.S. and White non-Latinos in the U.S.: Puerto Ricans are citizens, but they don’t have electoral representation and as such cannot vote in U.S. elections. They do, however, pay federal taxes, and some pay federal income taxes.
Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, but it’s not the United States. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but they don’t enjoy all of the same benefits of citizens in the continental United States. Almost 250 years ago, at the dawn of the United States, eventual U.S. Americans famously resisted taxation without representation. They were second-class subjects of the British empire, just as Puerto Ricans are second-class citizens of the United States.
Tiers of citizenship
This year, the U.S. government repeatedly reminded Latinos that we’re considered less than, even when we’re U.S. citizens. The Trump regime has been trying to dismantle birthright citizenship, the vehicle by which many Latinos, including me, have become citizens. Last month, Senator Bernie Moreno, introduced the Exclusive Citizenship Act, a piece of legislation that would force dual citizens like me to make a choice: Renounce one’s second citizenship within 12 months or forfeit one’s U.S. citizenship.
Last June, a memo from the Department of Justice stated explicitly that it would prioritize denaturalization, citing fraud and application errors as grounds, which contradicts a ruling by the Supreme Court and gives the DoJ ample latitude and discretion to initiate denaturalization. ICE has also made a habit of ambushing immigrants at citizenship hearings this year, contradicting the long-held platitude of immigration hardliners: Respect our laws and go through the process and nothing bad will happen to you. That was always bullshit, but the bullshit came into sharp focus this year.
All of which serves to remind immigrants in the U.S. that rights aren’t inalienable but tiered. Citizenship isn’t sacred. It’s conditional. This applies to all immigrants, but it’s no secret which group of immigrants disquiets White America the most.
Why White America is scared
In 1970, people of Latin American descent in the U.S. numbered 9.1 million or about 5% of the U.S. population. In the last Census survey, that figure was 65.2 million or 19.5 percent of the population. This pace scares a lot of folks and fuels “Great Replacement” paranoia.
This is why conservatives fear Bad Bunny, many not even realizing he’s American. They fear immigrants. They’re scared immigrants are overrunning the country, making the U.S. less “American,” whatever that means. Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language halftime performance corporealizes that fear, hip-thrusting and R-rolling—an alternate-universe preview of what the U.S. might become if “true patriots” fail to intervene.
Immigration enforcement is about culture
There is a record-high 70,000+ migrants in detention in the United States. This growth is driven primarily by immigrants with no criminal convictions. Since September, 9,500+ detainees with no criminal convictions have been locked awa, as opposed to 1,500 with criminal convictions. The wider the net, the fewer “bad hombres” they get.
Immigration enforcement, therefore, has never been about criminality, much as the regime has tried to convince the American public of that easily disproven myth. It’s a fight for the culture of the United States, between those who believe that the U.S. belongs first and foremost to people of European descent and those of us who believe the U.S. belongs to many peoples and is made all the stronger for it.
Immigration enforcement is about greed
Greedy, nihilistic jackals like Stephen Miller, The GEO Group and CoreCivic take advantage of the confusion and distraction of this cultural battle to get away with mass-producing and packaging detention and deportation at a preposterous profit—The Border Industrial Complex. It is one of the cruelest, most cynical manifestations of capitalism today, by which human misery is commoditized at scale.
This regime didn’t end asylum programs because they wanted to secure the southern border. They did it to increase unlawful crossings in order to recruit new “products” into a multi-billion-dollar detention and deportation business. As many experts, like former Border Patrol agent Jenn Budd, have pointed out, reducing lawful pathways to entry into the United States only increases unlawful crossings and makes it harder to track the actual criminal element.
The chief value of immigrants, therefore, is monetary, serving as cheap labor or as bodies in prisons, for which prison companies are compensated. Immigrants are allowed in the U.S., but some more than others and only to a certain point. When a population gets too big and secures too many rights, they become a threat to the majority, but only if one subscribes to a zero-sum philosophy. Therein lies the crux of this cultural battle. Some of us, like Bad Bunny, believe we’re stronger working with each other instead of fighting one another.
We are all Americans
Bad Bunny’s performance tonight was important because it represented the culture of the second-largest population in the United States, a population that belongs in the U.S. Latin American culture is American culture. But the message is larger than that. It’s not just about Latin American culture, which is the prism through which the message is filtered. The broader message is that there is no exclusive ownership of the United States.
Predictably, the president criticized the halftime show. I don’t want to give the hateful man too much airtime except to point out that his words, in the aftermath of such a joyful and inclusive display of culture, no longer had the same bite. His act is getting old and boring. Last night, Bad Bunny showed us a vision of an America that was a lot more fun, a U.S. that includes all of us.
The president kvetched, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” Except millions of us did. And the only thing anyone watching needed to understand came at the end, when Bad Bunny proclaimed, “God bless America!” Then he proceeded to name all the countries that make up the Americas.
Wonderful!
Not only is your analysis sharp, this is beautifully written. Lovely work.