controversy

When the NFL, Roc Nation, and Apple Music announced that Bad Bunny would be the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performer, the noise started almost immediately. On one side, there were cheers and excitement: His fans recognized the historic nature of the performance, which will go down in the books as the first Super Bowl halftime entirely in Spanish. Plus, the announcement came toward the tail end of yet another massive year for Bad Bunny — after a triumphant 31-date residency in Puerto Rico, an Amazon stream of the concert that broke records, and the blockbuster success of his chart-busting album Debí Tirar Más Fotos.

On the other side, there was just as much commotion, but these conversations were almost hysterical — and far uglier. Conservatives blasted the NFL’s choice, taking issue with pretty much every facet of Latin music’s most visible star. His music? Unlistenable. His politics? Unacceptable. His lyrics in Spanish? Un-American.

Bad Bunny has been such a beloved figure across the global music landscape precisely because he’s been authentically himself, embracing fashion and aesthetic choices that subvert gender norms and refusing to make palatable, commercial pop in English. He’s been unafraid to speak his mind in his songs, often speaking out about difficulties in Puerto Rico, like gentrification, economic difficulties, and the long-term impacts of colonization. And while he isn’t a polemical artist who staged long tirades against the administration, he has stood up about issues he cares about, such as the rights of immigrants amid the government’s cruel deportation policies. In an interview with i-D magazine, he shared part of the reason he opted against touring in the U.S. was because he didn’t want ICE to terrorize his largely Latino fanbase outside his concerts.

This makes him a target for conservatives. Newsmax host Greg Kelly called for a boycott of the NFL, insisting that Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, hates the English language! He’s just a terrible person.” Even the highest levels of government have gotten involved. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, threatened that immigration agents would be “all over” the event. Trump later went on Newsmax to bash the artist, saying, “I never heard of him. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said. “I don’t know why they’re doing it, it’s crazy, and then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Turning Point USA, the conservative youth-focused group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, decided it would organize a “counterprogram” during Bad Bunny’s performance, calling it “The All-American Halftime Show” to celebrate “faith, family, and freedom.” A website contact form gives followers a chance to request music and artists, including worship music, country, and “anything in English.” MAGA supporters drafted inane petitions to replace his performance and even called for his deportation — despite the fact that Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S. and he’s an American citizen.

As maddening and outsized as the reaction feels, it’s part of an unfortunate, small-minded tradition of sidelining and othering Latin artists in the United States, even though these musicians are often American and represent huge swaths of the population. These moments are callous and drenched in xenophobia, yet they go back decades. In 1968, for example, the Puerto Rican artist José Feliciano performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1968 World Series — only he did it in a stripped-back, Latin-influenced style on his acoustic guitar. The performance became a lightning rod; many people took it as if it was some kind of counterculture protest and were confused by Feliciano’s long hair and sunglasses (which he wore because he was born blind.) They raged to radio stations and sent him hate mail, with some even calling for his deportation — even though Feliciano, like Bad Bunny, was born in Puerto Rico and is a U.S. citizen. History, and ignorance, repeats itself, and in this case, it had dire consequences on Feliciano’s career for a few years.

“I was a little depressed, to tell you the truth,” Feliciano said later. “And then they stopped playing me. Like I had the plague, or something.” Years later, in 2018, he reflected on the incident and shared that his rendition was actually his way of honoring his country from a deeply felt place. “When I did the anthem, I did it with the understanding in my heart and mind that I did it because I’m a patriot,” Feliciano said. “I was trying to be a grateful patriot. I was expressing my feelings for America when I did the anthem my way instead of just singing it with an orchestra.” (Perhaps not coincidentally, Bad Bunny paid homage to Feliciano as a pioneer and trailblazer, bringing him onstage during his 2023 headlining set.)

Other examples of bringing Latin artists onto mainstream stages have come with an unnecessary amount of controversy, even decades later. Take the 1999 Grammys: Back then, Ricky Martin was a star on the rise, having successfully plotted a career from child boy band Menudo to breakout solo act. He had already become a household name in Latin music, and his album Vuelve was nominated for a Grammy for Best Latin Pop. His label head Tommy Mottola began pushing to have Martin perform one of the tracks — the famed “Cup of Life” FIFA anthem that Martin had written for the 1998 World Cup — as an opening number for the Grammys telecast. Despite Martin’s stage presence and star power, producers for the awards show disapproved of the idea, convinced a Latin act singing primarily in Spanish wouldn’t work for the show.

Mottola later recalled how intense the pushback was. “There was tremendous resistance from the Grammys,” Mottola told Billboard. “They did not want an ‘unknown’ to perform, yet we had already sold 10 million copies of Vuelve worldwide. To me, that was absolutely UNACCEPTABLE.  We had enormous leverage at that time with almost every major superstar on our label. We heavily voiced our ‘opinion and influence’ and said: ‘Ricky must have a performance on the Grammys!’ No was not an option.”

It took Mottola fighting for that moment to make it happen — and a standing ovation and thousands of records sold later eventually proved that the Grammys short-sighted biases didn’t hold any water. It seems even more ridiculous today, now that Latin music continues to generate more than $1 billion in revenue. Bad Bunny later played that same slot at the Grammy awards — and while he didn’t appear to face opposition from the show’s higher-ups, he did go viral when captions popped up on the CBS telecast, describing his lyrics as “singing in non-English.”

The all-too-frequent xenophobic knee-jerk reaction to Latin acts is often triggered by language alone. Just this June, the singer Nezza, who is of Colombian and Dominican descent, was asked to do the national anthem at a Dodgers game. She had prepared to do “El Pendón Estrellado,” a Spanish version written in 1945 by Clotilde Arias after the Division of Cultural Cooperation of the Department of State asked for translated versions of the “Star Spangled Banner.” (These were solicited as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” toward Latin America.) According to some reports, Dodgers officials told her at the last minute she couldn’t perform in Spanish — but she did so anyway, angering conservatives and sparking outrage and insults online.

Nezza explained her decision at the time in a statement to Rolling Stone, saying “representation matters.” She added, “For anyone clutching their pearls, it’s important to know: in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself commissioned an official Spanish version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to honor and include Latin Americans. That version — ‘El Pendón Estrellado’ — tells the exact same story, word for word in meaning, and is set to the exact same melody. The heart of the anthem does not change with the language. So why was I told I couldn’t sing it? Make it make sense.”

Longtime prejudices have meant that Latin artists have been regarded with suspicion, doubt, and even outrage throughout music history, but these attitudes have twisted into something far more intense and sinister as a result of the current administration. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance comes at a time when the government has antagonized Latino communities, spread anti-Latino rhetoric, and treated immigrants with abject cruelty, callously celebrating images of forceful, often violent arrests and brutal detainments. Even speaking Spanish is othered by conservatives and painted as anti-American. As soon as Trump came into office, he passed an executive order to make English the official language of the U.S. while the White House removed Spanish translations from its official websites. On social media, viral videos have shown right-wingers confronting people speaking Spanish and associating the language with those who don’t “belong” here, ignoring the fact that 18 percent of the population is bilingual.

But despite the rhetoric rooted in such an ugly history, Bad Bunny will still take the stage in February, and he’ll perform his songs in the language he wrote them in. That moment will represent millions of people in this country, including many of the Latinos who make up 20 percent of the population. What he chooses to say or do will ultimately be up to him, just the inherent act of him stepping under that spotlight will be a political statement — one that will speak to his roots, his lineage, and the history of Latin artists who have helped bring him here. No matter what, it will be a moment of self-expression — and one that’s deeply American, too.