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 

This article centers Latina/o/x scholars in the field of Critical Race Theory. It's clearly not a Black/white issue since so many of the concerns experienced by African Americans are the same ones experienced by Latinas and Latinos. Great closing comment by San Jose State University professor, Dr. María Ledesma:

“We obviously are not post-racial, which means we are racial,” she said. “And if we are still a racial society, then we still need critical race theory.”

Indeed. If the right doesn't want race to be an issue, then they must address systemic racism and support equity issues. Anything short of this is disingenuous, reflecting a white posture of seeking to reign superior over others primarily by not empowering them with the knowledge and civic tools that they need to enact the changes to society that will help not just to alleviate suffering, but improve their social and economic betterment and overall well-being in ways that like a rising tide, promises to lift all boats.

-Angela Valenzuela

'Manufactured boogeyman': Latino critical race theory pioneers, advocates push back

“If you’re immersed in something, it feels normal. But courts and academia do have embedded racism,” said a leading legal scholar, Richard Delgado.

By Raul A. Reyes

Oct. 29, 2021, 12:55 PM CDT / Updated Oct. 29, 2021, 3:18 PM CDT

Critical race theory, the academic field being denounced by conservative lawmakers and concerned parents, is often presented as a Black/white paradigm, but there has always been a robust Latino component, with Latino writers and scholars contributing pioneering work in the field for decades. 

“Critical race theory came out of the Latino community, almost from the beginning,” said Stephanie Fetta, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Yet its critics want to present it as something very extreme, or as only a Black/white issue.”

That approach leaves out the experiences of Latinos in the Southwest, for example. “This disempowers the many Latinos who have suffered from oppression, such as police brutality,” Fetta said.

The theory has been around for years, but "for most of that period it didn’t rise to the level of national attention,” said Richard Delgado, a legal scholar who is one of the theory's original proponents and a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.

Of Mexican American heritage, Delgado co-wrote, along with his wife, the scholar Jean Stefancic, the seminal book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," in 2001, Nearly 20 years later, the book, now in its third edition, is a bestseller.

Critical race theory is an advanced field meant for law and graduate schools that explores how racism is embedded in American laws and institutions. It’s an area of scholarship that analyzes how racial inequities were created and why they persist. It has recently stoked anger on conservative cable news shows and generated national headlines. Delgado said it’s not always easy for some people to accept the theory.

“If you’re immersed in something, it feels normal. But courts and academia do have embedded racism," said Delgado, and the systems have not functioned the same for Latinos and Blacks compared to whites.

Examples of how racism is embedded in the law can be seen in the U.S. Social Security Act of 1935 and the American G.I. Bill, both of which originally provided fewer benefits for people of color than whites. Critical race theory can be applied to analyze the resulting racial disparities, and to make policy recommendations on how to address them.

Delgado is dismayed by what he called the “weaponizing” of the field by politicians and commentators.

Despite the fact that the term is being thrown around in school board battles and political debate, it’s generally not taught at the K-12 level; a June survey by the Association of American Educators found that 96 percent of teachers said they were not required to teach critical race theory. It's usually not taught at the college undergraduate level, either.

“There is now this idea that the theory is being taught in elementary schools, which is ridiculous. Many of the commentators on the theory are people far outside of the field," said Gerald Torres, professor at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School and another Mexican American pioneer of critical race theory.

“For Latinos, it is a way to understand how we have been put into certain categories in the U.S.," said Torres, who has been active in the field since the late 1980s. "It is a method of understanding how the racial, ethnic, and color differences among us have been managed.”  

Critical race theory began in law schools, but it’s used in other academic areas, such as public health, sociology and education. The framework can be used to study everything from the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 virus on Latino communities to the history of bans on ethnic studies courses.

“The media hasn’t really dealt with the impact of Latinos on American culture, except through the lens of immigration," Torres said.

Torres cited protests over the killing of George Floyd and The New York Times’ 1619 Project as catalysts for the renewed interest in the theory, along with distortions of the theory by some conservatives. 

Delgado believes the topic has become controversial because of several factors: the nation’s changing demographics, disappointment among Donald Trump’s followers over his 2020 defeat, and more parental involvement in their children’s curriculums as they’ve studied at home during the pandemic.

If critical race theory seems difficult to understand, experts say, that’s because it is complicated and nuanced. It has also been mischaracterized; critical race theory has become a catch-all phrase in conservative media used to denigrate diversity efforts or what critics see as liberal school curriculums.

To María Ledesma, associate professor at San Jose State University, critical race theory is about truth-telling, a way of looking at history in a comprehensive way.

Ledesma is not surprised by the theory’s current controversy. “It is a manufactured boogeyman on behalf of conservative politicians and pundits to distract attention from the global racial reckoning movement. By making critical race theory the boogeyman, we hear less about Black Lives Matter, less about police brutality, and less about the real actions needed to change our society.” 

The biggest misconception about the theory is that it somehow teaches students of color to hate white people, Ledesma said. “Not true at all; critical race theory does not villainize one group over another.”

In June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill that he called a “strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas.” In September, an NBC News analysis found that many of the schools facing critical race theory battles were in districts that were diversifying rapidly, including areas with substantial Latino growth.

Ledesma believes that critical race theory is especially important to Hispanics, because it provides a way of elevating counter-narratives.

Most Latinos are open to a fuller examination of American history. An August report from the Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of Latinos said that increased attention to the history of racism in America was good for society. About the same percentage of Latinos also said a lot more needs to be done to achieve racial equality. 

Some of the criticism within Latino communities regarding colorism — the preference for lighter skin tones over darker ones — can be seen as misdirected, according to Fetta. “When we (Latinos) point fingers at each other, that is the wrong place — we would not be doing this if we were accepted with our names, accents and skin tones by the systems and institutions around us. Colorism will only be overcome when the dominant culture is done with this type of marking.”

For Delgado, the recent firestorm has been both good and bad. While he said that he's now the eighth most-cited law professor in history, he's also felt vulnerable to attacks and is cautious in public.

Ledesma believes that critical race theory will remain a vigorous and relevant field.

“The attacks on the theory are, ironically, a reminder of how much work there is to be done. Recall that under Obama, people were saying that we were a post-racial society," Ledesma said.

“We obviously are not post-racial, which means we are racial,” she said. “And if we are still a racial society, then we still need critical race theory.”

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