Shortly after the NFL announced that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny would headline the Super Bowl halftime show, conservative media and Trump administration officials went on the attack.
Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security, promised that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “will be omnipresent at the Super Bowl.” President Donald Trump called the selection “absolutely ridiculous.” Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson lamented that the rapper had “no songs in English.” Bad Bunny, conservative pundit Tomi Lahren complained, is “not an American artist.”
Bad Bunny – born Benito A. Martínez Ocasio – is a superstar, one of the most streamed artists in the world. And because he’s Puerto Rican, he’s also a U.S. citizen.
Certainly, Bad Bunny checks a lot of boxes that irritate conservatives. He supported Kamala Harris for president in 2024. There’s his gender-bending wardrobe. He criticized the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. He refused to tour the continental United States, fearing that some of his fans would be targeted and deported by ICE. And his explicit lyrics – most of which are in Spanish – would make even the most ardent defender of free speech cringe.
And yet, as experts on issues of national identity and American immigration policy, we believe Lahren and Johnson’s insults are at the heart of why the rapper has created such a storm on the right. The spectacle of a Spanish-speaking rapper performing at the most-watched sporting event on American television is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to obscure the country’s diversity.
The Puerto Rican colony
Bad Bunny was born in 1994 in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated U.S. territory that the country acquired after the Spanish-American War of 1898.
It is home to 3.2 million native-born American citizens. If it were a state, it would be the 30th largest in population, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
But Puerto Rico is not a state; it is a colony from a bygone era of American imperial expansion abroad. Puerto Ricans do not have voting representatives in Congress and cannot participate in the election of the President of the United States. They are also divided over the island’s future. Large majorities seek either US statehood or an improved form of current Commonwealth status, while a smaller minority strives for independence.
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But one thing is clear to all Puerto Ricans: They come from a non-sovereign country, with a clearly defined Latin American culture – one of the oldest in the Americas. Puerto Rico may belong to the United States – and many Puerto Ricans enjoy this special relationship – but the island itself doesn’t feel like the United States.
Further complicating the situation are the more than 5.8 million Puerto Ricans who reside in all 50 states. Even though they are legally U.S. citizens, the majority of Americans often do not view Puerto Ricans that way. In fact, a 2017 poll found that only 54% of Americans knew that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens.
The foreigner-citizen paradox
Puerto Ricans live in what we describe as the “alien-citizen paradox”: They are U.S. citizens, but only those who reside on the mainland enjoy full citizenship rights.
A recent congressional report stated that U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans “is not an equal, permanent, irrevocable citizenship protected by the 14th Amendment…and Congress retains the right to determine the disposition of the territory.” Any U.S. citizen who moves to Puerto Rico no longer has all the rights of mainland U.S. citizens.
The selection of Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl halftime show illustrates this paradox. In addition to criticism from public figures, there have been numerous calls among MAGA influencers to expel the rapper.
This is just one way that Puerto Ricans, as well as other Latin American citizens, are reminded of their status as “others.”
ICE’s arrest of people simply posing as immigrants – a tactic that recently received the blessing of the Supreme Court – is an example of their alien status.
And the bulk of ICE raids have taken place in predominantly Latino communities in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. This forced many Latino communities to cancel Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations.
Bad Bunny’s Global Reach
The xenophobic fervor against Bad Bunny has led political leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson to call for a more appropriate character for the Super Bowl, such as country music artist Lee Greenwood. Referring to Bad Bunny, Johnson said “it seems like he’s not someone who speaks to a wider audience.”
But the facts contradict this statement. The Puerto Rican artist is at the top of the world music charts. He has over 80 million monthly listeners on Spotify. And he’s sold nearly five times as many albums as Greenwood.
That global appeal has impressed the NFL, which hopes to host up to eight international games next season. Additionally, Latinos represent the league’s fastest-growing fan base, and Mexico is its largest international market, with 39.5 million fans.
The Bad Bunny Super Bowl saga could become an important political moment. Conservatives, in their efforts to highlight Bad Bunny’s “otherness”—despite the United States being the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world—may have unwittingly informed America about the American citizenship of Puerto Ricans.
Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the Latino community continue to wonder when they will be accepted as social equals.
