Bad Bunny is today’s domestic cultural war focus. For conservatives, he represents a litany of things offending them, including his gender-bending attire, his racy lyrics, his criticism of President Trump’s immigration crackdowns, and most of all, his songs that are almost exclusively in Spanish. To his critics, Bad Bunny is a foreigner and doesn’t represent this country. Conservative pundit, Tomi Lahren, for instance, complained, Bad Bunny is “Not an American artist.” Newsmax host Greg Kelly called for a boycott of the NFL, insisting that Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, [and] hates the English language!” President Trump considered the Bad Bunny choice as “absolutely ridiculous.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson suggested Lee Greenwood was a more suitable choice because Greenwood would appeal to a broader audience.
But these “America-first” criticisms of Bad Bunny are rife with ignorance, ironies and hypocrisy. The most obvious of which is Bad Bunny – named Benito A. Martínez Ocasio — was born in Puerto Rico, and as such is a U.S. citizen. Further, the land where he was born, Puerto Rico, has been a U.S. territory for more than a century. Thus, the characterization of Bad Bunny as being un-American or a foreigner is both inaccurate and profoundly ignorant.
Perhaps something else is afoot? This question is only heightened when one considers prior Super Bowl halftime headliners who actually from actual foreign countries never raised anything close to the criticism Bad Bunny is facing today. There was never such an anti-foreigner/anti-immigrant clamor for Super Bowl performers such as Canadian The Weeknd in 2021, Barbadian Rhianna in 2023, Colombian Shakira in 2020 and Brit Paul McCartney in 2005, among a host of others. There was never an outcry to “represent this country” for any of these actual foreign-born performers.
But in today’s version of conservatism there is an open challenge to Latinos in general, and immigrants in particular. One only needs to witness the daily ICE raids in predominantly Latino communities, which highlight this point. In many respects, Bad Bunny, a proud Puerto Rican who sings his songs in Spanish, though he is fluent in English, as well as his rejection of ICE raids leading him to decide to not to tour in the U.S., is an open challenge to the Trump administration’s effort to “paper over the country’s diversity.”
Bad Bunny is — by all metrics — a megastar, with over 80 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and that is the reason why he was chosen by the NFL. Like other rising music stars of the past, his wardrobe, lyrics, and political opinions are bound to shock conservative folks, while they are embraced by the younger generations. Controversies regarding celebrities attract viewers and the NFL knows that. But what makes Bad Bunny’s controversy so unique is the fact that he is a Puerto Rican that sings in Spanish, so America has a hard time pigeonholing Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny’s ancestors did not arrive in America on the Mayflower; America came to them. When U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, they encountered a densely populated land inhabited by a people that was the product of the melting pot of Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans that Spain’s Caribbean colonies had become. No wonder, then, that Bad Bunny sings in Spanish, the language that has brought him celebrity status even among those that can’t understand his lyrics.
Bad Bunny’s rise to stardom is just another American success story: a talented young soul with a foreign-sounding name that makes it big in show business (e.g., Jacob Gershwine, aka George Gershwin). Bad Bunny is as American as apple pie (or rice and beans) and proof of the contributions that Americans (and immigrants, too) of all stripes make to this great nation. Unfortunately for him, Bad Bunny’s profile doesn’t match MAGA’s nativist vision of America. His use of Spanish lyrics (to great success) is a sobering reflection of the fact that millions of Americans speak (or prefer to speak) other languages than English, and the fact that he is a Puerto Rican is a nagging reminder of America’s ugly imperial past, when we conquered territories and peoples — consequences be damned.
Bad Bunny — like many racialized “Others” in America — falls into what we call the “alien-citizen paradox”: a U.S. citizen by birth, that by virtue of his race, looks, and culture, is perceived as “alien” by mainstream America. There is currently a conservative plan to have an alternative “All-American Halftime” show (hosted by Turning Point USA) featuring acts more palatable to MAGA’s rhetoric of a homogenous America — all of this just because Bad Bunny is not (in their opinion) “American” enough.
Ediberto Roman is a professor of law and director of immigration and citizenship initiatives at Florida International University. Ernesto Sagas is a professor of ethnic studies at Colorado State.
