As Bad Bunny Heads to the Super Bowl, Here’s a Reminder That Puerto Ricans Are US Citizens

Bad Bunny Graces the Cover of TIME Magazine's First Spanish-Language Edition
Kevin9625Ja, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Bad Bunny will headline the Super Bowl halftime show on February 8 in Santa Clara, a booking that places one of Puerto Rico’s most influential artists on the largest stage in U.S. entertainment while reopening a familiar question for many Puerto Ricans living on the mainland, which is how visible you can become before your belonging is quietly measured.

In recent days, federal immigration agents confirmed they will be present outside Levi’s Stadium as part of routine security operations connected to the event, a detail that entered the conversation around the performance even though the Super Bowl is known for drawing corporate executives, celebrities, and fans who often pay thousands of dollars for a single seat.

The announcement has prompted a broader reflection on what it means for a Puerto Rican artist to headline this type of institution while carrying an identity shaped by laws most viewers rarely consider.

Bad Bunny On One of the Largest Stages in the U.S.

Bad Bunny built his career without translating himself for the industry, choosing to keep his language and cultural references intact as his audience grew.

Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, he released his first music online while working in a grocery store, then moved through Latin trap, reggaeton, and pop without reshaping his accent or softening his point of view. His albums remain in Spanish. His interviews often move between humor and blunt honesty. His visuals draw from island life and the complicated experience of growing up under a US flag that rarely feels reciprocal.

The Super Bowl halftime show has long functioned as a cultural checkpoint where artists are expected to feel universally comfortable. However, Bad Bunny does not adjust himself to fit that expectation. Instead, his popularity developed on his own terms, and his presence asks audiences to meet him there.

What the Jones Act made official

Puerto Rico came under United States control in 1898 after the end of Spanish rule, though people born on the island remained legally separate from the rest of the country for years.

In 1917, Congress passed the Jones Act, granting United States citizenship to Puerto Ricans. That law allowed people born on the island to move freely to the mainland, work without visas, serve in the military, and hold U.S. passports. It also placed Puerto Rico under federal authority without granting full political power.

Puerto Ricans vote in party primaries and pay federal payroll taxes. Yet, they cannot vote for president unless they live in a state, and they have no voting representation in Congress.

As you can see, their citizenship arrived with boundaries written into it.

That history explains why moments like this carry emotional weight. In recent days, some online reactions to federal agents being present around Bad Bunny’s performance have included jokes and even suggestions that he should be detained or sent “back” to his country. The comments miss a basic reality. There is no country to send him back to. Puerto Rico is his home, and he is a citizen by law.

Super Bowl Sunday will place a Puerto Rican artist at the center of the country’s largest broadcast as federal agents prepare to operate nearby, a contrast shaped by the same history that granted citizenship without full belonging.

The Much-Anticipated Performance

Bad Bunny will walk onto that stage as a Puerto Rican man whose citizenship was defined by Congress long before he was born, whose language remains Spanish, whose island remains governed by rules it did not design, and whose audience includes millions of Americans who still confuse territory with foreignness.

He will perform songs shaped by reggaeton and memory. He will do it without translation.

Some viewers will tune in for fireworks and choreography. Others will notice something quieter, which is the sight of an artist from a small island carrying his accent and his identity onto a stage that has rarely made space for both without conditions.

There will be no segment explaining the Jones Act and no caption clarifying Puerto Rico’s status, yet the story will be there all the same, written into the voice, the music, and the presence of an artist who never stopped carrying his island with him.

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