Bad Bunny claimed in his Super Bowl show that America is the entire continent, not just the United States, with a display of all the flags of the region, one of the most applauded elements of his show in Latin America and the most criticized by the American right.
The singer closed his concert in the most American sport shouting “God bless America!”, with an American football that said “Together we’re America” and a parade with the flags and names of each country on the continent, from Chile to Canada.
This act by the Puerto Rican was so controversial because in the United States “America” is used as a short synonym for the country, Omar Wasow, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Berkeley, explains to the EFE agency.
“For citizens of the United States, there is a narrow perspective, which is that ‘America’ means ‘United States of America.’ And I think most Americans don’t think about Latin America or South America, or even North America,” Wasow says in an interview.
A geopolitical “clash”
Bad Bunny’s concept of America contrasts with that of the Administration of President Donald Trump, who has asked to rename the Gulf of Mexico as ‘Gulf of America’ and has revived the Monroe Doctrine, which states that “America belongs to the Americans,” in reference to Americans.
For this reason, the artist caused “a clash” with “the imperialist thinking” of “many Americans,” Puerto Rican researcher Cruz Bonlarron Martínez, author of the article ‘Bad Bunny’s show at the Super Bowl was political art at its best’ in Jacobin magazine, tells EFE.
“I think it is vindictive, especially given the geopolitical moment we are experiencing, with the illegal operation of the United States in Venezuela, violating Venezuelan sovereignty, with all the blackmail that the Trump Administration and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have done against the governments of Latin America,” he says.
The display of foreign flags at the most watched event on American television caused criticism from ‘influencers’ of the MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) movement, such as Matt Walsh and Laura Loomer, who called for a raid by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) against the participants. “The fact that we share a hemisphere does not make us fellow nationals,” Walsh expressed on his social networks.
In this regard, Professor Wasow explains that “a big part of how American politics works now is symbols and the flag is one of the most revered symbols, particularly on the right, so having other flags visible becomes a symbol competition.”
Bad Bunny’s “American union”
In contrast to the opinion of Trump, who called the event a “confrontation with the greatness of America,” Latin Americans highlighted the “union” promoted by Bad Bunny, such as the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who considered it “very interesting.”
“That he sang in Spanish at the Super Bowl and that the message is one of unity of America, of the American continent because he mentions all the countries, at the end of the song, including the United States and Canada, then, he is talking about the American continent,” the Mexican president celebrated in her morning conference.
Wasow, an expert in racial and ethnic relations, highlights the intention of Bad Bunny’s concert to “intentionally” promote the “pride” of a “Pan-Latin American identity.”
Although the artist did not speak specifically about ICE, as when he received the Grammy for best album of the year, Bonlarron Martínez thinks that the act was political due to symbolism such as the flags, which invites “Americans to think about the rest of the continent and the effects that Trump’s policies are having.”
“There is a very important point of politics and the fact that he used all the flags of the region and that he used the word America thinking of America as great, not like Trump, (but) thinking of the great country, I think it was quite political,” he mentions.
