When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 30, 2026

When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 30, 2026

Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show performance

united music fans around the world, according to real-time listening data from Apple Music and Shazam.

What does it mean for Latinas and Latinos to “win” the culture war? Not perform it. Not survive it. Not even just contest it. But win it—at a time when immigrants are under renewed political attack, when curriculum battles rage across states like Texas, and when the very meaning of belonging is once again being contested.

The answer came into sharp, unmistakable focus in that unforgettable cultural moment when Bad Bunny took center stage in a spectacle as massive and symbolically loaded as the Super Bowl.

What unfolded was not simply a performance—it was a cultural intervention at scale. An estimated 128.2 million viewers watched live in the United States alone, with the performance generating over 4.1 billion views globally within 24 hours across broadcast, streaming, and social media platforms (Brown, 2026; PR Newswire, 2026). This was not marginal visibility. This was mass presence—a re-centering of language, sound, and identity before one of the largest audiences in the world, without translation, dilution, or apology.

And it was deeply personal.

You could feel it—not as branding, not as choreography, but as conviction. This was not an artist accommodating an audience. This was an artist bringing his full world with him, insisting that the audience meet him there. Spanish was not a flourish; it was the foundation. Puerto Rico was not a reference; it was the frame. The performance did not ask for inclusion. It assumed presence.

That is what winning looks like.

But this moment also reveals something deeper. For generations, Latina/os have been cast through a narrow and racialized script—criminal, foreign, disposable. These narratives were not accidental; they were produced through institutions that controlled what stories could be told and how. Film, television, journalism, and publishing have long functioned as gatekeeping structures that shape public perception and, in turn, public policy. When a community is consistently misrepresented, it becomes easier to marginalize it politically, economically, and socially.

Culture, in this sense, governs. It shapes what feels legitimate, who is perceived as belonging, and which policies are seen as reasonable or necessary. It prepares the ground on which law and policy take hold.

This is why moments like Bad Bunny’s matter so profoundly. They do not simply “represent” Latina/os; they reconfigure the terms of representation itself. They shift the center. They expand what is legible, audible, and possible. They interrupt the long-standing assumption that Latina/o/x/e identity must be translated, softened, or made palatable to be accepted. More than visibility, this is a form of epistemic power—the authority to define reality rather than be defined by it.

But we must be clear: this kind of moment does not emerge out of nowhere. It is the result of years of refusal, experimentation, and risk. It is built on the insistence that one’s language, one’s rhythms, one’s histories are not obstacles to success—but the very source of it.

That insistence is political.

If we understand culture as a site of power, then “winning” the culture war requires more than visibility. It requires control over the production of meaning. It means moving from being objects of representation to being authors of narrative. It means asking not only who is on the screen, but who is behind the camera, who is writing the script, who is financing the project, and who ultimately decides what stories get told.

And this is where the analysis must turn to structure.

Latinas/os cannot rely on institutions that have historically excluded them to suddenly tell their stories with nuance and care. Change requires pressure—organized, sustained, strategic. It requires building alternative platforms while also demanding accountability from existing ones. It requires recognizing that culture industries respond to economic and reputational forces, and leveraging that reality to push for transformation. This is the work of building cultural sovereignty—not just inclusion within existing systems, but the capacity to shape them.

And this is where the analysis must also turn inward.

As a people, this requires more than visibility—it demands a deeper reckoning with who we are and how we show up for one another. Our diversity is not incidental; it is foundational. We are Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, Afro-Indigenous, Caribbean, Central and South American, immigrant and U.S.-born, multilingual, multiracial, and multigenerational. 

We also name ourselves in ways that reflect history, place, and struggle: Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana/o, Tejana/o, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Brazilian, and more. We are also gender diverse, encompassing women, men, nonbinary, queer, and trans communities whose experiences and leadership have long been central to our survival and resistance.

These identities are not interchangeable, nor are they reducible to a single narrative. They carry distinct histories of migration, colonization, dispossession, resilience, and creativity. This is not a complexity to be managed or simplified for public consumption—it is a source of intellectual, cultural, and political strength. And yet, it is too often flattened, sanitized, or erased in ways that limit how we are seen—and how we come to see ourselves.

We are American.

We are not uninteresting. We have never been.

At the same time, we must confront a harder truth: there is no path to transforming cultural power without transforming ourselves. Colorism, anti-Blackness, and the persistent marginalization of Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, and Afro-Indigenous voices are not peripheral issues—they are central to how power operates within our own communities. 

Consider, for example, how lighter-skinned Latina/os continue to dominate media representation, while Afro-Latina/o and Indigenous voices remain underrepresented or erased. Left unaddressed, these dynamics replicate the very logics of exclusion we seek to dismantle. A politics of representation that elevates only the most palatable, light-skinned, or culturally assimilated among us is not transformation—it is tokenization, fostering an illusion of inclusion.

If we are serious about reshaping the narrative, then we must be equally serious about building a cultural and political project that is explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, decolonial, and accountable to those most historically erased—particularly within our own ranks.

Winning, then, is not simply about being seen. It is about who among us gets seen, and how.

Bad Bunny’s rise—and moments like that Super Bowl performance—also remind us of something else: the power of imagination. When communities are consistently erased or distorted, their ability to imagine themselves differently is constrained. Cultural production—music, art, storytelling—is not ornamental. It is foundational. It shapes what people believe is possible, who belongs, and what futures can be envisioned.

That is why these moments resonate so deeply. They do not just entertain; they expand the horizon of the imaginable.

And yet, even as we celebrate them, we must resist the temptation to treat them as endpoints. They are not. They are openings—evidence of what becomes possible when the rules are broken, when the center shifts, when the story is reclaimed.

This brings us directly to Texas.

In Texas, where battles over education, curriculum, immigration, and public life continue to intensify, the stakes of this cultural struggle are especially clear. The fight over curriculum—what is taught, whose histories are included, whose knowledge is valued—is inseparable from the broader struggle over narrative power. Whether in the revision of social studies standards, attacks on ethnic studies, or policies that reshape access to higher education, we see again and again how narrative frames policy, and policy structures possibility.

This is why the question of “winning” matters.

Latinas/os will not win the culture war by asking to be included in someone else’s story. We will not win by translating ourselves into frameworks that were never designed for us. And we will not win by mistaking visibility for power.

We win by reshaping the story itself—by insisting that our languages, our histories, our cultures, and our communities are not peripheral, but central. We win by building and controlling the platforms through which meaning is produced. We win by confronting internal inequities even as we challenge external ones. And we win by refusing to separate culture from the broader structures of power that govern our lives.

What Bad Bunny showed us on that stage was not just performance.

Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images

It was posture.

A posture of refusal. Of affirmation. Of unapologetic presence.

And perhaps most importantly, a posture that said:

We are not asking to be part of the story.

We are here to rewrite it.

And we can rewrite it—centered in our own stories and in solidarity with broader struggles for justice that extend beyond us.

In doing so, we help open space for a future that is more just, more truthful, and more fully shared.

Because the story that comes next should belong to us all.

References

Brown, M. (2026, February 10). Super Bowl LX viewership second highest all-time; Bad Bunny has 128.2M viewers. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2026/02/10/super-bowl-lx-viewership-second-highest-all-time-bad-bunny-has-1282m-viewers/

PR Newswire. (2026, February 10). Bad Bunny sets global viewership record for most-watched Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show performance of all time, reaching 4.157 billion views. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bad-bunny-sets-global-viewership-record-for-most-watched-apple-music-super-bowl-halftime-show-performance-of-all-time-reaching-4-157-billion-views-302701639.html 

Bad Bunny Knows the Truth. Do We? by Julian Vasquez-Heilig | December 2, 2025

Friends:

I encourage everyone to read this excellent and clarifying piece by Dr. Julian Vasquez-Heilig. It is essential reading in this moment. He reminds us that when scholars write about colonialism—including the ongoing colonial condition of Puerto Rico—they are not speaking metaphorically. Colonialism is not rhetorical flourish. It is a material history of conquest, land dispossession, racial hierarchy, economic extraction, political subordination, and epistemic control. It structures governance, shapes citizenship, and defines whose knowledge is legitimized and whose is subordinated.

When Mexican American and Latina/o Studies scholars analyze colonialism in Texas, the Southwest, or Puerto Rico, they are not engaging in abstraction. They are naming concrete histories of annexation, treaty violations, segregation, linguistic suppression, and policy regimes that continue to shape lived experience. To dismiss or sideline that scholarship is not an academic disagreement—it is a refusal to confront the structural foundations of the present. 

Colonialism is not a metaphor. It is a living architecture of power, and scholarship that names it performs a public service that universities should defend—not suppress. Unless, of course, the university itself is operating within the very colonial logic Dr. Vasquez-Heilig describes: disciplining knowledge, privileging Eurocentric canons, and policing which histories are allowed institutional authority. At that point, the silencing—as we are evidencing right now with respect to our Ethnic Studies Departments at UT Austin—is no longer ironic. It is confirmation.

-Angela Valenzuela

Bad Bunny Knows the Truth. Do We?

by Julian Vasquez-Heilig | December 2, 2025

Most people in the continental United States do not understand why coloniality remains an urgent issue in Puerto Rico. They recognize the island through images of beaches and Bad Bunny, but they rarely understand its political reality. What is colonially? Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated territory of the United States, a status created by early twentieth century Supreme Court decisions. These decisions placed Puerto Rico in a category that allowed federal control without granting full rights to the people who live there.

People born in Puerto Rico are United States citizens, yet they cannot vote for the president unless they leave the island. They also have no voting representation in Congress, although Congress has unilateral power over Puerto Rico’s laws, economy, and governance. Federal agencies and congressional bodies can impose decisions that reshape every public institution on the island. This includes education, where policy decisions frequently arrive without local electoral accountability.

This political structure reveals why coloniality is not a metaphor in Puerto Rico. It defines the island’s daily reality. The absence of democratic representation means that Puerto Rican communities do not have full control over their island. Decisions are often dictated rather than deliberated, which purposefully places enormous strain on its residents. These realities formed the foundation of Patricia Virella’s 2025 Mistifer Lecture and shaped the urgency of her message.

Opening the Conversation

The 2025 Mistifer Lecture, delivered in San Juan by Dr. Patricia Virella of Montclair State University, was one of the most historically grounded and future oriented presentations I have heard in many years. The lecture insisted that education cannot be understood apart from the political structures that control it. Virella opened by reminding the audience that schools are not isolated from systems of power. They reflect the ideologies and histories that surround them.

She asked a set of questions that framed the emotional and intellectual trajectory of her talk. She asked the audience what they would have done if they lived during historical periods of explicit colonial brutality. She asked whether they would have resisted or remained silent. Virella drew the audience in by refusing to allow distance between past and present. She invited everyone to consider courage not as an abstract concept but as something that reveals itself through daily decisions. The questions created a moral framework that guided the rest of the lecture. They reminded the audience that historical analysis is incomplete without present day context.

Julian Vasquez Heilig and Patricia Virella after her lecture
Puerto Rico as Case and Mirror

Virella emphasized that Puerto Rico is both a case study and a mirror. She explained that Puerto Rico’s educational history is inseparable from the broader history of colonial administration in the United States. The island’s schools were used to impose cultural, linguistic, and political assimilation beginning in the early twentieth century. These practices were not accidental or misguided. They were intentional efforts to restructure identity and align communities with external American authority.

She challenged the audience to see Puerto Rico not as an exception but as a site where the true nature of American governance becomes visible. The island reveals how the United States has historically exercised power over populations without granting full democratic rights. This reality creates a mirror that reflects patterns still present in the mainland. It forces educators to confront the possibility that colonial logic appears everywhere in the democratic project.

Her framing made the room eerily quiet because it revealed the stakes of education. She explained that schools do not merely reproduce knowledge. They reproduce systems of power unless leaders make intentional choices to disrupt that cycle. Puerto Rico became a lens for understanding how power shapes schooling in ways that are both explicit and subtle.
Education as Freedom Work

Virella opened her slides with Monique Morris’s declaration that “Education is freedom work.” She explained that this statement carries significant weight in Puerto Rico because public schooling has long been used to shape political identity. She reminded the audience that when schooling is used to impose identity, it becomes an instrument of control rather than liberation. That tension has defined Puerto Rican education for more than one hundred years.

She displayed a 1902 Puerto Rico Herald headline that described the U.S. Commissioner of Education as the “absolute king” of the island’s schools. The article listed practices designed to break cultural continuity, including military style marching and forced recitation of patriotic songs. The policy also encouraged teachers to degrade the Spanish language in order to elevate English. These practices were not hidden or subtle. They were publicly declared objectives of the colonial administration.

The room grew tense as Virella explained that these policies were part of a larger strategy to reshape Puerto Rican identity through schooling. The audience confronted evidence that coloniality within education has always been deliberate in the United States. Virella’s point became unmistakably clear. Education may be freedom work, but only when communities have authority over their own stories.

Coloniality as a Living Structure

Virella repeated that coloniality is not an artifact. It is a living structure that continues to shape schools today. She described coloniality as a system of governance that creates dependence on external authorities while undermining local capacity. She showed how this structure appears in curriculum mandates, school closures, teacher evaluation systems, and policy reforms imposed from outside of communities. These patterns reveal how control operates through institutions rather than only through overt political statements.

She explained that contemporary reforms in Puerto Rico must be understood within this historical context. Policies framed as modernization often reproduce long standing beliefs about Puerto Rican incapacity. These policies assume that communities cannot govern themselves and therefore require external intervention. Virella made clear that such assumptions are rooted in colonial logic that treats Puerto Ricans as subjects rather than citizens.