Bad Bunny and the political message of a Zara suit

BarcelonaIn his latest Super Bowl performance, there's no room for doubt: Bad Bunny has made history. More than just performing, he took a stand. Not only through the music and the show's format, but also because he transformed one of the most normative and systematically depoliticized stages in American culture into a space charged with symbolism and unequivocal political positioning. This gesture is especially significant in a context marked by indiscriminate deportations, institutional violence, and the brutality of ICE, with a Latino community systematically criminalized and profoundly harmed.

The very format of the performance functioned as a declaration of intent through a false lipdubWhile not a true single-shot sequence, it proposed a journey of spatiotemporal continuity through idiosyncratic elements of Puerto Rican culture. In this constant movement, Bad Bunny broke the usual structure of the halftime showA circular camera designed to glorify the star, positioned at the center and surrounded by a dance troupe that accentuates his hegemony. Here, however, the artist questioned his own centrality by reducing the distance between himself and the rest. Thus, the dance troupe and everyone else on stage ceased to be mere decoration and became a community. A way of showcasing culture that doesn't rely on folkloric displays or classical choreographic order, but rather on the proud affirmation of being a cultural subject.

In Bad Bunny's work, clothing is never an accessory either. He made this clear by recreating, with his custom-made Zara suit and the clothing of the other participants, the figure of the jívaro. The jívaro is the historical and cultural figure of the Puerto Rican peasant, associated with the rural world. Despite the colonial disdain that for centuries considered it backward and uncultured, over time it has become a symbol of identity, resistance, dignity, and cultural rootedness in the face of colonization, poverty, and political subjugation. Earthy colors, linked both to the scarcity of resources and to the relationship with the land, and the straw hat as an emblematic piece: a woven straw hat designed to protect from the sun during agricultural work, which Bad Bunny has proudly worn even at the Met Gala, elevating it to the status of a national symbol, a collective memory.

Caribbean identity

Bad Bunny's aesthetic is always permeated by Caribbean identity elements. This is the case with the guayabara, a linen or cotton shirt with four pockets and vertical pleats, which he commissions from Puerto Rican designers. The light-colored tailored suit, so recurrent in his imagery, is also a product of blending with European patterns. However, in the hands of Caribbean tailors, this garment breaks the rigidity and discipline of the Western model through more porous fabrics, more relaxed structures, and vertical decorations derived from the guayabara, which, in addition to ornamentation, facilitate ventilation and adaptation to the tropical climate. By consciously reclaiming Puerto Rican identity—the Puerto Rican way of asserting itself culturally beyond the colonial framework—Bad Bunny reverses centuries of aesthetic colonialism that have sought to impose the hegemonic culture by erasing Puerto Rico's own.

NEW YOL"La Rioja," one of the songs played at the Super Bowl, isn't the most famous in his repertoire, but it is one of the most eloquent in understanding how Bad Bunny reflects on migration, the Puerto Rican diaspora, accent, and the city as experienced from the social periphery. NEW YOLWhat could be a source of ridicule—the change from "L" to "R"—becomes a song title. Because in Bad Bunny's case, the accent—like clothing—isn't corrected or hidden; it's displayed with pride.