We Are Still Here

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—Bad Bunny, nuestro Benito—is headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show in February. For so many of us in the Puerto Rican diaspora, the feeling was just... puro orgullo. Pure, overwhelming pride.

This wasn't just about a pop star getting a big gig. This was about our slang, our accent, our rhythm—our loud, proud, Borinquen spirit—taking over the biggest stage in America. A stage watched by over 100 million people.

To understand why this feels so deep, you have to understand a single line from his song "LA MuDANZA":

"Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera, Por eso es que ahora yo la llevo donde quiera." (They killed people here for taking out the flag, that's why I now carry it wherever I want.)^[1]

That one line connects a 21st-century superstar to a brutal history we can never forget. It's the key to this whole moment. For the NFL and Apple Music, this is just good business. Their press releases talk about his "global energy" and capturing a "Latinx audience." But for us, and for Benito, it's something else. As he said, "This is for my people, my culture, and our history."

It’s a political statement. And in the gap between their marketing plan and our history, you find the real story: the story of a flag that was once a crime, and a culture they could never silence or destroy.

Bad Bunny wasn't exaggerating in that lyric. He was talking about a real law: Law 53 of 1948, which we call the Ley de la Mordaza, the Gag Law.^[2]

For nine terrifying years, this law made it a crime to be a patriot on our own island. It was illegal to own or display a Puerto Rican flag, even in your own home. It was illegal to sing a patriotic song, speak about independence, or meet with anyone who believed in it. The punishment? Up to ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine.^[3] This law turned our grandparents’ living rooms into potential crime scenes, forcing them to hide the same flag that’s now waved at concerts all over the world.

This wasn't random. It was the endpoint of a decades-long project to "Americanize" us that started when the U.S. invaded in 1898. They imposed a colonial government and gave us a second-class citizenship that didn't come with full rights. The Supreme Court even ruled that Puerto Rico "belongs to" but isn't a part of the United States.^[4] Corporate interests exploited the island and its people for its sugar, tobacco, and coffee. The Gag Law was their tool to try and stamp out our language, our history, and our identity for good.

And the worst part was that the Gag Law was passed by our own legislature, led by politicians such as Luis Munoz Marin, who thought that suppressing the independence movement was the price they had to pay for a little more autonomy from the U.S. It was a tragic betrayal, a wound that shows just how deep the cuts of colonialism can go. It was yet another reminder that capitulation and collaboration never fare well.

In my office at Harvard Law School, I keep a portrait of Pedro Albizu Campos. He’s not just a historical figure to me; he's a daily reminder of what it costs to fight back and the painful history of this institution. Don Pedro is the man they tried to erase. Born into poverty, this man of Afro-Latino ancestry was a genius. He got a scholarship to Harvard, studied law, and mastered six languages. He was supposed to be valedictorian of his Harvard Law class, but racist professors held back his final exams so he couldn't get the honor.

Don Pedro could have taken any prestigious job in the U.S. Instead, he went home to Puerto Rico and dedicated his life to practicing poverty law and leading the movement for independence. For that, the U.S. government decided he had to be destroyed. He spent 26 years in prison, where he said he was subjected to human radiation experiments—a claim that sounds less crazy when you learn the U.S. government later admitted to doing exactly that to prisoners without their consent.^[5] They broke his body, but never his spirit.

They weren't afraid of him because he was different. They were afraid of him because he had mastered their own system—their laws, their language—and used it to expose their hypocrisy and push for equality and freedom for Boricua. The brutality he faced shows you just how threatened they were by him.

And here’s the beautiful irony to all of this. From this tiny island that America tried to control, exploit, and erase, the most dominant sound on the planet has emerged.

Reggaeton was born as resistance. It was "underground" music, cooked up in the carports and public housing projects of Puerto Rico where the police often confiscated mix tapes. In the early days, that music was looked down upon as ghetto music del barrio but it told the truth of what was happening on the island, a record of its continued colonial exploitation. Now, from Daddy Yankee’s "Gasolina" to Bad Bunny’s total world domination, our sound has won. It's the ultimate proof that they failed.

We've achieved a kind of cultural freedom. Artists such as Marc Anthony used to have to change themselves and sing in English to "cross over." But with reggaeton, the world came to us, on our terms. When someone asked Bad Bunny about fans who don't understand his Spanish lyrics, he famously said, "I don't care." That's not arrogance. That’s the confidence of a culture that no longer needs to ask for permission. The language they tried to force out of our schools is now the language of the most-streamed artist on Earth.^[6]

Predictably, the announcement sent the MAGA outrage machine into a meltdown. Their complaints are pathetic, but they're also revealing.

They're mad he sings in Spanish. They're mad he’s an "anti-ICE activist" who hates Trump. They're mad he’s "demonic" because he challenges their rigid ideas of masculinity and the gender binary. They're mad he isn't "patriotic" enough—by their narrow, exclusionary definition.

But this isn't a show of strength; it's the pathetic whining of an empire in decline. They're realizing the Super Bowl Halftime Show isn't being booked solely for them anymore. Their cultural power is fading and now they only maintain it by tearing others down. Their anger is just the sound of gatekeepers realizing the locks have been changed.

The funny thing is that their outrage proves Bad Bunny’s point. Every complaint is just an echo of the colonialist mindset. Attacking him for not speaking English? That’s colonialism. Demanding he be more "patriotic"? That's demanding loyalty from the colonized. They are performing the very history of oppression that created the culture he now represents.

So when Bad Bunny takes that stage, it will be more than just a performance. It will be a collision of history and the future. The flag that the Gag Law banned, the flag that Pedro Albizu Campos was jailed for defending, will be celebrated in front of the entire world.

The journey from a flag hidden in a drawer to a flag at the 50-yard line is our story. The culture that was supposed to be erased is now the planet's soundtrack. The American empire tried to define us, and it failed. We didn't just survive. We thrived and won the culture.

This is more than a concert. It’s a declaration.

Todavía seguimos aquí. We are still here.