“WE GOT SUPERBOWL…..” was the ongoing refrain from the Latin community after the NFL’s announcement that Bad Bunny would be the Super Bowl 2026 halftime performer. The Super Bowl is considered one of the most prestigious performance stages in America, and celebrating this achievement, at a time when our community is being relentlessly persecuted, felt like an exuberant cultural high. In the six years since Bad Bunny was special guest of Shakira’s and Jennifer Lopez’s Superbowl half time show in 2020, the artist has racked up over 92 billion Spotify streams, becoming the only non-English artist to do so, starred in campaigns for Gucci alongside Kendall Jenner and hosted a groundbreaking residency in Puerto Rico generating over $200 million for the island’s economy. This month, Bad Bunny will receive the award of Top Latin Artist of the 21st Century at The Billboard Latin Music Awards, adding another prestigious honour to his already impressive resumé. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl slot felt like an important and timely recognition of the Latin community’s contribution to U.S. culture, given our ongoing fight to defend our fundamental right to dignity in America.
Riding the high of this announcement, I logged in to Instagram. Almost instantly, the joy I felt knowing that not only would a slice of my Latin community be represented during one of America’s most watched, most talked about, most dissected minutes of TV, but that it would also be helmed by one of the most unapologetically Latin performers ever to do it, vanished. What was giggling, excited screams and debates about his set list and fashion choices among friends quickly became a mental exercise of balancing racial triggers as the National Guard prepared to move into Chicago. I watched conservative, read, racist corners of America question Bad Bunny’s citizenship, and learnt that many Americans are unable to agree on what is American. Commentary criticising the lack of English lyrics in his discography turned into statements about why America should be an “English First Society”. Taylor Swift, a white woman, was asked by a white TV host if she turned down the offer first, driving home the idea that Bad Bunny, despite his aforementioned banner year, social media domination and revenue-busting residency, must have been the NFL’s second choice. This assumption is one that people of colour know too well: even with history-making, record-breaking achievements under our belt, our qualifications will still be questioned. Whether or not we qualify as “American” will always be debated by those who feel the need to racially gatekeep the arts, social commentary, politics, everyday American life and the “American” identity.
The news of Bad Bunny’s headlining was supposed to be a moment of celebration in the midst of a harrowing news cycle of Latin-specific persecution. Instead, it became a catalyst for online vitriol, conjuring up painful generational memories for many of us. For instance, in 1918, the state of Texas enacted criminal penalties against teachers using languages other than English. Upheld for nearly half a century, this criminalisation also allowed corporal punishment for students speaking Spanish in schools across the state. The Blackwell School, in Marfa, Texas, perhaps one of the few Texas schools where the story of its survivors, now well into their sixties and seventies, has been preserved, recounts symbolic funerals for the Spanish language. In said funerals, students were forced to write “I will not speak Spanish” on slips of paper and bury them underground. Across America in the 20th century, Mexicans were subjected to mob violence, lynchings, segregation and sundown towns. In areas of Texas, Texas Rangers executed Mexicans on sight execution-style. These handful of examples, while mostly recorded about the Mexican community, extended to other Latin ethnicities too. In the face of strong (and some successful) pushes for the erasure of Latin history in America as of late—the fabric of Latin existence—the announcement of Bad Bunny’s achievement felt like a small, hard-fought symbolic and spiritual moral victory.
Since Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl announcement, Trump has threatened to place ICE agents at the Super Bowl in a disgusting attempt to deter Latin fans from attending such a sentimental cultural moment. Bad Bunny, whose most recent album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, debuted at number one on Billboard, explained in a recent interview that he refused to play shows in America out of concern for the safety of his fan base. His agreement to play on this stage, and only this one, underscores the depth of his cultural achievement. Bad Bunny, himself, saying, “it’s for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown. This is for my people, my culture, and our history.” Watching MAGA Christians organise an alternative halftime show, sponsored by Turning Point USA, an organisation whose former frontman once said migrants should be shot and whipped, perfectly reflects the very real danger of this current moment in American history.
It’s a strange experience to see our cultures break through mainstream like never before at a time when so many of us are fearing for the livelihoods and safety of our communities and families. It creates a salient juxtaposition of cultural pride to watch Bad Bunny become such a proud culture bearer of our authentic experience while at the same time enduring the racism and backlash that bearing that authentic experience invites. It’s a reminder that in America, communities of colour are rarely allowed to simply be. Even while winning, we are forcefully reminded that there are sects of the American population who refuse to view us with anything but repulsion, even as we head the largest, most prestigious stage in American culture, as Americans. Bad Bunny embodies a down-home, grass-roots, middle finger to America’s forced assimilation; his unapologetic Latin pride becoming a sanctuary of defiance under threats to our existence. He put Americans on notice: he is uninterested in colonial submission.
Reminding us all, as I let my own South Texas grandma know, ‘we got Superbowl,’ that Latin people have and will always be here.