Bad Bunny and Simon Bolívar, or a Cautionary Tale for Modern Times

SAN JUAN — As flags from every nation in the Western Hemisphere spilled their vibrant colors onto the field at the climax of Bad Bunny’s 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, the image of Simón Bolívar flashed through my mind. 

In that surreal moment, “El Libertador,” dressed in his blue-and-red military uniform with his sword at his side, crossed time and space to walk alongside the triumphant 21st-century Puerto Rican superstar. But he wasn’t there to endorse Bad Bunny’s “together we are America” message. Instead, in my mind, Bolívar appeared as a cautionary tale.

“América is ungovernable for us. He who serves a revolution is plowing the sea,” I imagined him whispering in Bad Bunny’s ears. Those were the words he spoke as he lay dying, broken by the collapse of Gran Colombia, which aimed to unite Spain’s newly liberated colonies under one nation, due to internal political struggles. 

Nearly 200 years later, the question that tortured Bolívar remains. 

Is Latin America ready for a union? 

Or is Bad Bunny’s dream of Pan-Americanism a chimera, something we wish for, but is just an illusion? 

To be clear, I am in no way comparing Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny’s real name) to Simón Bolívar. That would be a bridge too far. However, I am saying that Bad Bunny’s message is the latest iteration in a long lineage whose significance resonates now more than ever. 

Bolívar’s dream was to bring the newly independent nations of Latin America together to safeguard their sovereignty from European powers like Spain, which had subjugated the lands he fought to free with all his might. Rooted in the 1826 Congress of Panama, his vision of “la Patria Grande" centered on collective security, diplomacy, and strength through unity.

“The Latin American ideal of one cosmic race, of one sole race, of one people, is a chimera,” Yamily Habib, Venezuelan editor-in-chief of Mitú, told me when I asked her about it. “And it’s a chimera, an unattainable dream, for the very same reason that a massively vertical continent has had so many problems in agreeing on so many things. It’s because there are too many of us.”

It is not that one does not aspire to see Latinos united. History has just shown us how difficult it would be — especially now with Donald Trump explicitly resuscitating U.S. imperial ambitions. In fact, while Bolivar initially admired the U.S. struggle for independence, he grew wary of its expansionist ambitions after the Monroe Doctrine established U.S. hegemony in the region. 

Later, Secretary of State James G. Blaine corrupted Bolívar’s dream into a “modern” Pan-Americanism that centered on U.S. interests in Latin America. Today, the long shadow of U.S. intervention is visible across the country: descendants of those who once hid from U.S.-trained paramilitary troops in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala now hide from masked federal immigration officers in the United States.

“The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty,” Bolívar warned in 1829.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s February 14 speech at the Munich Security Conference doubled down on the attitudes that justified Bolívar’s warning.

The son of Cuban exiles proclaimed the “West’s age of dominance” and urged Europe to help it recolonize the Global South. In the name of this dominance, Trump has re-militarized Puerto Rico, invaded Venezuela, captured its president, and amplified its systematic strangling of Cuba through resource scarcity. 

Against this backdrop, the hope is that in Bad Bunny’s message and expanded role as a symbol of broader issues affecting Latinos in the United States, we might finally find a common cause to bring us all together. That would make Bolívar proud.

Yet, I fear that’s wishful thinking, judging by the backlash against Bad Bunny’s halftime show from many Latinos on social media, especially Argentinians (though his shows there are packed), who loudly proclaimed that Benito doesn’t represent them. The latter should give us pause.

“What Bad Bunny did was beautiful, but we need to focus on what’s happening at home,” Habib said. “We need to look inwards. Are Latinos really prepared to be united?”

In the end, one has to conclude that after all these decades, after all that Latin America has gone through, the greatest obstacle to our unity is not in the Stars and Stripes — but in ourselves. 

Sadly, we are still plowing the sea.

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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Carlos Berríos Polanco edited and published this edition of The Latino Newsletter.

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