Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl: the ‘unforgettable dance’ of Latinos within the United States | Entertainment within the United States | EUROtoday

Donald Trump assures that he doesn’t know “who” Bad Bunny is. “I have never heard of him,” the American president mentioned a couple of months in the past about essentially the most listened to artist on the planet. The Republican finds the NFL’s choice to pick the Puerto Rican famous person for this Sunday’s Super Bowl present “lousy,” “ridiculous” and “horrible” and, within the midst of his tantrum, he declined to attend the most important sporting occasion within the United States, which he did attend final 12 months.

At a time when little is past the management of essentially the most highly effective man on the planet, obsessive about finishing up the most important deportation in historical past, even when it means American residents dying within the crossfire and the nation’s legal guidelines being pushed to their breaking level, the present between Bad Bunny guarantees to breathe once more, at the least for a second, to the greater than 65 million Latinos within the United States who’ve lived via a 12 months of persecution, terror and anguish.

When final September the NFL (the nationwide soccer league) introduced its unprecedented choice for the present, some of the watched on the planet every year, the Trump Government nearly declared warfare on it. “They won’t be able to sleep at night because they don’t know what they believe in. And they are so weak that we are going to fix it,” declared Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, accountable for executing the president’s anti-immigrant agenda. One of his advisors added that it was “shameful” that the NFL had chosen “someone who seems to hate America so much.”

For the White House, “hating” the nation means being against Trump’s insurance policies. In the case of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 31 years outdated), he has unleashed the wrath of the Republican Administration greater than as soon as for opposing his campaign towards immigration. However, and regardless of criticism from the Government, the NFL has defended its choice. “I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist without backlash or criticism,” league commissioner Roger Goodell mentioned in October. In 2024, for instance, the present It was worn by rapper Kendrick Lamar, who turned it into a robust social criticism of the state of the nation.

“We’re sure it’s going to be a great show,” mentioned Goodell in regards to the Bad Bunny live performance, including that “it’s going to be an exciting and unifying moment.”

It shall be 13 minutes that greater than 300 million folks will see dwell world wide. Little is understood about what Martínez Ocasio has deliberate for the primary halftime present of the Super Bowl that’s anticipated to be utterly in Spanish, a language that, below Trump, has change into an excuse to harass and imprison a whole bunch of hundreds of migrants, no matter whether or not they had been within the nation legally or have spent many years constructing a life and contributing to the nationwide financial system.

The little that he Bad Rabbit — infamous for maintaining his plans below strict secrecy and all the time in a position to shock together with his originality — has revealed that it is going to be a “great party.” “I just want people to have fun. I know I told them they had four months to learn Spanish, but they don’t even need to learn Spanish; it’s better if they learn to dance,” he mentioned in English on Thursday in a press convention during which he didn’t give many particulars. When requested if he could have friends, as he himself was in 2020 through the present headlined by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, he solely mentioned: “Many. The entire Latin community from around the world that supports me and the entire country.”

He present It shall be an extension of his final album, I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOSlaunched in 2025, which earlier this month grew to become the primary in Spanish to be acknowledged with essentially the most prestigious award in music, the Grammy for greatest album of the 12 months. The essence of the mission—the Puerto Rican tradition—was captured in a promotional video that the singer shared in January as teaser of the Super Bowl. “On February 8, the world will dance,” he wrote on Instagram together with the recording, during which his music sounds. UNFORGETTABLE DANCEa salsa that a number of folks of various races and ages dance with him below the shade of a crimson flamboyant tree, a symbolic tree of his native island.

“It’s the most special project I’ve ever done because it brought me here, and I wasn’t looking for anything. I wasn’t looking for the album of the year at the Grammys or the Latin Grammys. I wasn’t looking to perform at halftime at the Super Bowl. I was just looking to connect with my roots, connect with my people more than ever, connect with myself, with my history, with my culture,” he defined about I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOS at Thursday’s convention. And the truth that folks loved it a lot, he mentioned, “confirms that you should always be proud of who you are and where you come from.”

There is little doubt that the present may also be a love letter to Puerto Rico, as Martínez Ocasio’s whole profession has been, however particularly his final musical stage. 10 years in the past, Bad Bunny, or just Benito to his compatriots, was only a child 21 working as a bagger in a grocery store whereas learning on the native college and importing music to SoundCloud. Now he has offered out 31 live shows in Puerto Rico throughout an unprecedented residency, which final summer season generated an financial affect estimated at 713 million {dollars} and attracted half 1,000,000 followers. The ultimate live performance was streamed dwell on Amazon and have become the most-viewed single-artist efficiency on the platform up to now.

He can also be in the midst of a world tour for his newest album, which started final November in Latin America and can finish in July in Europe. It doesn’t embody live shows within the continental United States, so the Super Bowl halftime shall be its solely cease within the nation. Bad Bunny has defined that he made the choice to not give different live shows within the United States as a result of risk that the Trump Government would ship its immigration police, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) to the venues, to catch migrants. “There was the problem that, damn, ICE could be out. And it’s something we talked about and that worried us a lot,” the artist mentioned in an interview in September.

That identical concern will float within the air this Sunday. The NFL has assured that there shall be no raids on the stadium in Santa Clara, California, the place the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will play within the American soccer league ultimate. But his claims have finished little to calm the fears of attendees and people who will collect throughout the nation at events to look at the present by Bad Bunny. Not after Trump Administration officers as excessive because the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the company that supervises ICE, assured a couple of months in the past that immigration brokers could be “everywhere” through the recreation.

“Chinga la migra”

Days earlier than the ultimate, posters towards the immigration police with phrases like “Fuck ICE” or “Chinga la migra”. In them appears the figure of the concho toad, a species native to Puerto Rico that in the last year has become a symbol of Bad Bunny. The image of the amphibian has been included in his music videos and has accompanied him in all his concerts. In the posters in California, the toad has hanging from its neck one of the whistles that neighbors and activists from all over the country use to sound the alarm when they see an ICE agent.

The Puerto Rican’s efficiency on an important stage within the United States and one of many largest on the planet happens within the midst of an unprecedented anti-immigration marketing campaign. The offensive launched by the White House has introduced terror to the streets of the nation, with huge and indiscriminate raids, arrests of individuals just for the colour of their pores and skin or their accent, and brokers who beat and even shoot those that dare to get of their method. The first 12 months of Trump’s second presidency have resulted in 675,000 expulsions and a pair of.2 million self-deportations, whereas greater than 70,000 migrants remained detained on the finish of January.

The affect on the Latino group has been great. An evaluation by the Luskin School of Public Affairs on the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) present in October that Latinos accounted for 9 out of ten detentions made by ICE through the first six months of 2025. A follow-up report revealed final month detailed that Latinos with out prison information detained below Trump are inclined to spend longer durations of detention and are transferred extra often between amenities, whereas they’re extra prone to find yourself incarcerated in different states, removed from their households and attorneys.

In response to the federal offensive, protests have multiplied all through the nation, notably since January, after federal brokers deployed in Minneapolis, the newest epicenter of the president’s campaign, killed two American residents in two separate shootings in lower than a month. So far, there have been no main raids within the Bay Area like these in Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles. Even so, pro-immigrant organizations within the space have skilled a whole bunch of volunteers to protect the Santa Clara stadium this Sunday and patrol majority-Latin neighborhoods in case immigration brokers arrive.

Bad Bunny has made it clear that, for him, the immigration police will not be welcome. “ICE Out,” he cried on Grammy night time, during which he devoted certainly one of his awards “to all the people who have had to leave their country.” “We are not savages, we are not animals, we are not aliens. We are humans. We are Americans,” added the Puerto Rican singer, additionally a US citizen, since his homeland is a territory of the United States.

It is a undeniable fact that the Trumpist universe doesn’t fairly perceive. After Trump’s criticism of Martínez Ocasio’s selection for the Super Bowl, the conservative group based by the now deceased extremely activist Charlie Kirk organized a live performance parallel to Bad Bunny’s, which it referred to as “the all-American halftime show,” ignoring the Puerto Rican’s citizenship. The headliner shall be Kid Rock, some of the seen artists of the motion Make America Great Again. Everything signifies that this would be the present What Trump will see. “The president would prefer to see a performance by Kid Rock instead of Bad Bunny,” the White House spokeswoman mentioned this week.

Meanwhile, in Santa Clara, nearly 6,000 kilometers from Puerto Rico, Benito will as soon as once more declare what he already mentioned at his residence at residence a couple of months in the past: “I don’t want to leave here.” This Sunday, that feeling may also be that of the thousands and thousands of Latinos who’ve made the United States, a rustic created by migrants, their residence.