Latin music has always been a constant in my life.
I’ve ebbed in and out of rock, hip-hop, blues and even stretches of classical music, phases that matched whatever season I was in. But Latin music is constant. A steady drum in the background. A pulse I didn’t have to explain. It was the sound of family in the kitchen, of long holidays, of laughter that didn’t need subtitles. It was comfort and belonging.
I never thought of it necessarily as resistance, though my people’s history tells me it often has been. Across decades and borders, our music has carried the weight of displacement, survival, migration and pride, even when others pretended it to be just dance music. But this year, more than any other year in my memory, those steady drums feel louder. More present. More urgent.
When Bad Bunny won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards for Debí Tirar Más Fotos, he made history for the first Spanish-language album to take the top prize. I watched and I cried, not just for him, but for what that moment meant. I cried for my people, for my home, for my family and because the music that raised me was being welcomed into the center of American culture without needing translation or permission.
That sense of recognition only deepened when Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl LX halftime stage.
Halftime shows are often dismissed as entertainment, something decorative between downs. In reality, it functions as a mirror reflecting who we are, who we celebrate and whose stories we consider central to the American narrative. It’s a living-room referendum on who gets to represent us.
What unfolded on that stage was not an attempt to soften itself for mass appeal or explain its presence. It was a barrio brought to Levi’s Stadium. Sugar cane fields. A casita. Power lines. Domino tables. Mariachi strings, plena drums, salsa rhythms, reggaeton basslines. A real wedding. Flags from across the Americas. Puerto Rico rendered in full color and full dignity. The performance was entirely in Spanish. No apologies. No translations. And yet, the stadium danced.
For many of us watching, whether we immigrated here or were born here with Latin American roots, the overwhelming feeling was pride. A pride that was visceral, emotional and unexpectedly heavy. Bad Bunny’s show was a pure injection of cultural memory; joy and sadness braided together by rhythm and history.
He tapped into something deeply rooted: our upbringing, our food, our music, our faith traditions and our contradictions. Latin America is complex, shaped by colonialism, war, faith, migration, economic collapse and revival, foreign intervention and resilience. It is not a monolith. It is indigenous, African, European and everything in between. The show managed to hold all of that at once not by flattening it but by letting it breathe.
In doing so, Bad Bunny revealed that beneath all that difference, we are far more unified than we are divided.
I’ve always been fiercely proud of being Colombian and Latin American. But watching that performance widened that pride. It reminded me how much we truly share across borders. Despite our differences in dialect, music and custom, there is a common rhythm, a shared way of feeling, of gathering, of surviving. Bad Bunny made space for that collective experience, holding both our diversity and our deep kinship at the same time.
Yes, the performance was rich with symbolism. Power poles referencing blackouts and neglected infrastructure in Puerto Rico, songs tracing displacement and gentrification, a football reading “Together, we are America” and a closing roll call of countries across the American continents. Those layers matter. They carry history, politics, and intention. Others have already begun to unpack them beautifully, as they should.
But at the end of the day, what stayed with me was simple: love was offered as a response to division. Belonging as an answer to fear. Rhythm as a shared language.
That message did not land in a vacuum. The context mattered. The halftime show unfolded amid renewed ICE immigration raids, public protests against them, and a broader political climate shaped by deep division. Questions of belonging of who is protected, who is watched, and who is made to feel conditional in The United States were being lived in real time. In that environment, Bad Bunny’s message echoed a choice he had made just days earlier at the Grammys. Rather than meeting hostility with aggression or division with attack, he chose inclusion and invitation. In a cultural moment that so often rewards outrage, that choice mattered.
In parallel, another response was unfolding. While Bad Bunny took the main stage, Turning Point USA organized a separate “All-American Halftime Show,” framed as an alternative celebration of “faith, family, and freedom”.
It is not my place to judge that event or the people who found meaning in it. I hope, sincerely, that it came from a place of inclusion rather than exclusion. Still, the framing itself did not feel accidental to me. Labeling one performance “All-American” quietly suggests that other expressions of American identity require translation, justification or explanation.
However, there is an uncomfortable truth I’m still wrestling with. It did not feel as though the creation of an alternative halftime show was only about protecting American values. To me, it felt as though it risked narrowing them.
I recognize that there are Americans—including Latin Americans—who may have preferred one show over the other, and that choice is entirely their own. Taste, tradition and personal belief will always shape how people connect to culture. Still, the framing lingered with me, because it seemed to draw a line between what is celebrated as American and what must explain itself.
There is nothing un-American about Spanish. Nothing anti-family about diaspora. Nothing anti-freedom about an artist who speaks openly about migration, displacement, dignity and belonging.
Acknowledging all of that my discomfort ultimately settles on this. To me, calling one performance “All-American” quietly asks a dangerous question: Who isn’t?
Now, I want to be clear about something. My love for my Latinx heritage is not an affront to my love for the United States. If anything, this moment and Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show has made me feel more grounded in my Americanness than ever.
This country is my home. Its values shaped me. Its promises, imperfect but aspirational, taught me to believe in dignity, participation and the idea that culture evolves because people do. Loving my language, my culture, my food and my people does not diminish my Americanness. It deepens it. My Latinx heritage does not compete with what I love about this country. It complements it. It sharpens it. It makes me a better American, not in spite of my roots but because of them.
The renewed sense of pride and belonging I felt watching the halftime show carried an unexpected consequence. It didn’t stop at identity or celebration. It reawakened a deep sense of purpose. Feeling seen and recognized reminded me why I’m pursuing this education in the first place and of the responsibility that comes with it.
Being trained and educated in this country, and at an institution like the University of Arizona, is a privilege I don’t take lightly. The access, credibility and opportunity that come with this path are not incidental. To represent my community, serve as a role model and mentor, extend what I’ve been given outward and to show up in my field of study with integrity is a privilege. I know that if I’m able to excel in this institution and beyond, it is not only my success but that of my family, my culture and the people who made it possible for me to be in these spaces at all.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this. For many of us from underrepresented backgrounds, moments of cultural recognition not only affirm identity but also restore purpose. They remind us why the work matters, and why the effort is bigger than ourselves. In that sense, education itself becomes a form of resistance. Resistance against erasure, against lowered expectations and against the idea that we do not belong. That reminder was reinvigorating. It grounded and reasserted the importance of my research, not just as a personal pursuit but as a commitment to something larger.
Bad Bunny didn’t just put on a halftime show. He offered recognition, affirmed belonging and reminded millions of people across the Americas—including the United States—that their stories, languages and rhythms do not need permission to exist on the biggest stage. The voice he brought forward is not foreign to this country. It is part of its ongoing composition and a reflection of the world it inhabits.
The halftime show was not a clash of cultures but a broader chorus coming together. And if that made some people uncomfortable, perhaps the real question isn’t whether Bad Bunny belonged on that stage but whether our definition of American is ready to be as expansive, confident and honest as the country we claim to love.
