SAN JUAN — The French have a saying that goes a long way to explain the furious reaction to Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny headlining the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show and saying viewers have four months to learn Spanish: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, which translates to “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Since the United States invaded the archipelago in 1898 until today, Puerto Rico, a land shaped by colonialism, has been portrayed as a skirt-swirling West Side Story caricature, a “floating island of garbage” in the middle of a huge ocean, trapped in a status quo limbo. The U.S. xenophobia towards the archipelago and its people has always been there, but what’s shocking is how public (and acceptable) it’s become. 

It took an older Puerto Rican woman I recently met, the spitting image of Toñita, the iconic Puerto Rican owner of Manhattan's Caribbean Social Club, to cut through the bullshit (is he American, is he not American) and be honest about why people are undone over Bad Bunny stepping onto America’s grandest cultural stage. It’s a tale as old as time.  

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “I grew up in New York City after the end of World War II. I'm 84, and I am so happy to be living in Puerto Rico, and not back there, especially now. At my age, I give thanks to God. I remember when we couldn’t find housing. No one wanted us. Landlords wouldn’t rent to Puerto Ricans. We had to live in tenements, packed into slums, because we were not considered American enough.”

Although I never got her name, I felt her story was like the past reaching out to say that — after all these years — we have arrived at the same place. This is nothing new. 

Yet, Bad Bunny telling Americans to learn our language in four months, and not standing up for “God Bless America” (the horror), has ratcheted up the hatred to a new low and highlighted the darkest aspects of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.

Furthermore, it has shown how ignorant Americans are about our history, be they President Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters, enraged to learn that Puerto Ricans are indeed U.S. citizens, or mainland “allies” who see us as U.S. citizens only if we act “American.”

“Remember when Marc Anthony [born in New York City, of Puerto Rican descent] was dragged through the coals when he sang ‘God Bless America’ and was told to go back to Mexico,” Myrta Vida, a New York City-based Puerto Rican independent filmmaker, said. “I’ve said it once, and I will say it one thousand more times: why aren’t Americans more ashamed of their ignorance of history and civics? Being proud of being American is not enough.”

Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony — although it's politely called an unincorporated territory. In 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions (the Insular Cases, a convenient constitutional justification for colonialism) that effectively froze Puerto Rico’s political status in time. Based on Downes v. Bidwell, the decisions limited how much of the U.S. Constitution the territories deserved, based on the racist conclusion that they were “alien races” and “savage tribes.”

This means that Puerto Rico belongs to —but is not part of— the United States. As I said, a colonial experiment, one that has failed to erase us as a nation with a rich culture, a vast history, and a first language that is Spanish, not English. 

The archipelago was granted U.S. citizenship with the March 1917 Jones–Shafroth Act, allowing Boricuas to be drafted to fight in U.S. wars following Congress’ passing of the Selective Service Act two months later.

After World War II, between the 1940s and 1960s, the “Great Puerto Rican Migration” saw scores of people board military cargo planes and endure a six-hour white-knuckle flight to New York City while sitting on lawn chairs. They were motivated by a promise from the U.S. and the Puerto Rican government that Manhattan streets were flowing with milk and honey, but what awaited them was nothing of the sort. They were forced to live in tenements in El Barrio and Loisaida and used as cheap labor (agricultural workers and seamstresses mainly). Labelled as the “Puerto Rican problem” and “a locust plague,” they were never considered American.

Little has changed since then. We are still seen as a colonial military outpost with beautiful beaches, just read Puerto Rican Democratic Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez's recent Newsweek opinion piece.

We are still an island deeply divided over its political status, in a decades-long fight for self-determination, most recently with the 2022 Puerto Rico Status Act. It calls for a federally binding referendum in which Puerto Ricans would choose between one of three options: statehood, independence, or free association with the United States. The act was passed in the House in 2022, but never made it to the Senate floor for a vote. Go figure. 

But, even for one as cynical as myself about our hate/love relationship with the U.S., this time the MAGA movement outdid itself. In Trump's America, they no longer hide how they think, speak, and feel. Do you need more proof than the recently leaked Young Republicans group chat?

However, it’s the liberals, the “allies” in the U.S., with an assimilationist tale of “but he's an American citizen,” that have angered me the most. It's the “Boricuas would be Americans only if they changed” that is more insidious than the MAGA hatred. 

I expected them to have a deeper understanding of us. 

“It's really pushing [a] neo-colonial framing,” Isabella Risa, a young Puerto Rican activist living in the U.S., said. “The framing of him being part of the U.S. as some cover as to why we shouldn't receive this hate is not only American exceptionalism at play, as though others would be deserving of this treatment, but it also neglects the entire point of the newest album. That we are a colony, and aren't part of the U.S. but occupied by it.”

We are American citizens. That’s a crude fact we can’t escape, but does that make us part of the U.S.? Legally, it does not, although many Puerto Ricans who advocate for statehood — and many who do not — would argue that it does.

Our U.S. citizenship is not constitutional. It’s statutory, meaning it can be revoked or altered by an act of Congress. Culturally, linguistically, and historically, we are part of the American continent — but not from the United States. 

In the middle of this “are we-aren’t we” dilemma, a trend towards sovereignty is growing. Puerto Ricans are fed up, tired of the reign of an imposed fiscal control board, a fragile electrical system and daily blackouts, exhausted with a high cost of living, a collapsing health care and educational system, increased violence on the streets, rampant government corruption, and Act 22 tax evaders gentrifying the island. 

The 2024 Puerto Rican elections are a reflection of this trend. The pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) and Trump-supporting Republican Jenniffer González-Colón won the governor’s race with 39 percent of the vote. The independence candidate, Juan Dalmau, made history by coming in second at 33 percent, the first time in 70 years that a third-party candidate finished second in Puerto Rican elections. Just last week, Dalmau was visiting Washington, D.C., his second trip since July. The vitriol towards Puerto Ricans coming out of the U.S. will only increase this support.  

As I helped the Toñita look-alike navigate her walker across the street, I couldn’t help but think of Puerto Rican poet and playwright Pedro Pietri's iconic poem “Puerto Rican Obituary.”

What an American, Trump-loving comedian called “that floating island of garbage” is getting ready to shout back. Benito is our voice. I am sure neither the MAGA coalition nor our supposed mainland allies will like it. But I am certain many Boricuas will. 

A former News Director for Univision Puerto Rico and conflict correspondent, Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is a Columnist for The Latino Newsletter.

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“In a statement, police confirmed the crash near the intersection of East Commercial and North Alameda streets involved an LAPD vehicle,” KTLA reported. “The LAPD also confirmed that no officers were injured and said that Central Traffic Division is handling the incident.”

Carlos Berríos Polanco and Julio Ricardo Varela edited this edition of The Latino Newsletter.

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