Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Performance: Puerto Rico's History and US Relations

Bad Bunny's Historic Super Bowl Performance

• 💡 Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show garnered a record 135 million live watchers, making it the most-watched in history.
• 🏆 Just a week prior, he made history as the first artist to win Album of the Year at the Grammys for a Spanish-language album.
• 💬 His performance sparked right-wing criticism questioning his status as an "American artist," despite Puerto Ricans being American citizens.

Puerto Rico's Complex US Relationship

• 📜 Puerto Rico's relationship with the US is rooted in late 19th-century economics and US racism.
• 📈 The powerful Sugar Trust influenced the 1890 McKinley Tariff, which ended sugar tariffs and offered bounties to domestic producers.
• 🌎 The Spanish-American War in 1898 led to the US acquiring Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, many of which were sugar-producing territories.

Unincorporated Territories and Citizenship

• ⚖️ The Insular Cases, specifically Downes v. Bidwell (1901), established Puerto Rico as an "unincorporated territory," foreign in a domestic sense.
• 🚫 This allowed the US to legislate over new lands without treating them equally to states or including their non-white populations as full citizens.
• 👤 The 1904 Gonzalez v. Williams Supreme Court case created the category of "non-citizen nationals" for Puerto Ricans, granting some but not all constitutional protections.
• ✅ US citizenship for Puerto Ricans was finally established by the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act.

Puerto Rico's Current Status and Identity

• 🇵🇷 Today, Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth where residents do not pay federal taxes or vote in presidential elections.
• 📊 Puerto Ricans do pay US social security taxes and receive certain federal benefits, with a resident commissioner in Congress who can debate but not vote.

Bad Bunny's Political Statement

• 🎨 Bad Bunny's performance highlighted Puerto Rican history, referencing colonial sugar production and the blackouts after Hurricane Maria.
• 🚩 He carried an independence flag banned from 1948 to 1957, making a clear statement about the island's identity.
• 🗣️ By shouting "God bless America!" and listing many countries, he rejected the notion that black and brown people are not Americans or that their culture undermines American culture.