GOD BLESS AMERICA… LATINA: BAD BUNNY’S GROUNDBREAKING SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW
words by FRANCESCO PIZZUTI
Bad Bunny just made American history with his Super Bowl halftime show. Jam-packed with Puerto Rican and Latin American cultural lore, from images of jíbaros working the land to children sleeping on chairs at parties, the performance screamed: we are still here.
Through a celebration of family, togetherness, inclusion, and joy, Benito showed us we can always lead with openness, presence, and radical inclusion.
image credit ALAMY
Last night, Levi’s Stadium was reborn as a grassland dreamscape, straight out of Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico; lush with plantain trees, sugarcane fields, and memories thick enough to touch. The show started and ended with reality, with lived, embodied experience: real American people, real workers, doing the jobs they do every day. It was intimate, vibrant, and unapologetically human. A reminder that there is nothing more radical than the joy of collectivity, of togetherness, of inclusion.
We moved with Benito, animated by the pulse of his music, through fragments of everyday life: a coco frío stand, a circle of older men mid-dominoes game, a nail-tech baddie fully locked in, a cash-for-gold-and-silver booth trying to strike a deal. The scene is spectacular, yet everything, renders almost sacred.
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The performance stands as a sweeping homage to Latin American culture. With a cast that is over 80 percent Latino, Latino communities are not background texture but the headline. Front and center. Loud. Seen.
By centering reality so insistently, by asking us to immerse ourselves in this window of existence, the performance pushes back, confronting a system that ever so often alienates immigrant communities. The ordinary here is undeniable, visible, and profoundly human. The message is clear: love and community are stronger than hate.
images credit ALAMY
As we follow along on this journey, we dance our way to a wedding reception. All ages, all bodies, all love. A communal exhale. Just when we thought our souls were fully fed, Lady Gaga enters the party, draped in a custom Luar look by Dominican-American designer Raul Lopez.
The social commentary continues during the “El Apagón” segment, where performers dressed as workers or jíbaros climb and interact with utility poles: a visual commentary on Puerto Rico’s fragile electrical infrastructure and ongoing issues with privatization and poor maintenance.
images credit ALAMY
One of the most devastatingly powerful moments happens almost casually. The camera frames a little kid of Latin origins watching Bad Bunny’s Grammy speech on an old television. Benito, then, hands the child his Grammy as he wholesomely pats his head. An act loaded with meaning in the shadow of the recent ICE raids, which some have read as a direct reference to the case of preschooler Liam Ramos, detained earlier this year.
The connection to Homeland Security raids feels unmistakable. Bad Bunny has previously said he avoided touring in the U.S. out of concern for the safety of his Latino fans amid the threat of raids outside his shows. At the Grammys, Benito declared: “we’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans”. Here, that statement materializes.
image credit ALAMY
By transforming the Super Bowl Halftime Show into a shared, lived experience, Bad Bunny delivers something rarely afforded at this scale: the feeling of community. A belief that through care for each other, persistence, and love, we can make it to the touchdown.
