Bad Bunny

February 2026

I didn’t just watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. I felt it.

And the loudest reaction afterward (“Why was it all in Spanish?”) proved the need for the performance. Because that question usually isn’t about understanding lyrics. It’s about comfort. It’s about the expectation that if Latinos want to exist in “mainstream America,” we should do it in a way that’s easy to digest.

Bad Bunny refused. The clearest example was the way he closed: he ran through a roll call of nations, then deliberately included “United States” and “Canada,” and capped it off with a football that read, “Together, We Are America,” reminding viewers that America is a melting pot of nationalities that came to the U.S. in the promise of a brighter future. We are all the backbones that “Make America Great.”

What made the backlash hit even harder for me is the timing.

For most of U.S. history, there was no official language of the federal government. That wasn’t an accident; the country was multilingual from the start, and early lawmakers navigated immigrant communities without trying to force a single tongue into law.

But recently, the Trump Administration declared English the official language of the United States through an executive order, revoking a prior executive order related to language access for people with limited English proficiency, and issued follow-up implementation guidance by the U.S. Department of Justice.

So when people act offended that Bad Bunny stayed true to his native tongue by performing solely in Spanish, I can’t help but see it as a frustration with the broader message: Latinos are still here. No matter how hard institutions try to narrow the definition of “American,” you cannot erase us from the fabric of the nation’s history.

And as a PROUD Mexican and Puerto Rican woman, I’m speaking from cultural understanding. For a long time, I pronounced my last name, Santillan (sahn-tee-YAHN), in a whitewashed, palatable way (san-TILL-in) because it was easier for others to say. One day, my husband asked me why I was mispronouncing my name. In that moment, I realized just how much of my own history I was erasing to make others feel more comfortable. Then he told me something that really struck a chord: Why don’t I just teach people to say it right instead of shrinking it to fit what’s convenient for them?

That’s what this halftime show felt like. Not a request. A correction. A refusal to be edited down.

And if you want the clearest proof that Bad Bunny understood the moment and its optics, look at what he did next: he wiped his Instagram. Posts-- gone, profile photo-- gone, following-- cleared, leaving only a link for his music in his bio. From a PR lens, that’s a hard reset that keeps the conversation on the message, not the backlog.

I think about my name a lot now. The way I used to sand down the edges so it would go down easier in other people’s mouths. That is what assimilation asks for: make yourself smaller and call it peace. But Bad Bunny did the opposite on the biggest stage we have. He took up space and stood in his truth, and his performance should inspire us all to do the same.

Remember: "The only thing more powerful than hate is love."

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Signing Off,

Kierra

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