From a Puerto Rican Girl’s Heart: To Those Who Missed the Message in the Super Bowl Halftime Show

My hometown “plaza” or town square.

I’ve been loving my algorithm since yesterday, and I’ve been sitting with why.

A lot of people in the United States are trying to frame this moment as Republicans versus Democrats. But for us Puerto Ricans, that framing completely misses the point.

This wasn’t about party lines. It was about visibility. About recognition. About being witnessed in our full humanity—and in our full reality as U.S. citizens.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear about where I’m writing from. I’m a woman born and raised in Puerto Rico. And I’m not writing this as a superfan or through the lens of celebrity culture. I’m not a Bad Bunny fan, and I don’t regularly listen to his music. This isn’t about riding a viral moment or crushing on a performance.

What mattered was what the world was briefly invited to see.

In just a few minutes, so many elements of Puerto Rican culture were woven together—joy and grief, pride and protest, history and love. It was a reminder that protest doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it sings. Sometimes it dances. Sometimes it remembers.

If you watched the videos of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos reacting in real time, you saw the tears. Those weren’t tears for an artist. They were tears of recognition. Of seeing our stories, our symbols, our rhythms reflected back to us on a global stage—one that too often forgets that Puerto Ricans are Americans. We are not foreigners.

And that forgetting is not accidental.

In the days leading up to the performance, I heard far too many voices questioning whether Puerto Ricans are even U.S. citizens. That alone tells me how many people need a basic civics refresher. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth—not conditionally, not provisionally, not “almost.”

And yet our citizenship has always come with an asterisk.

Throughout our history with the United States, our citizenship has never been questioned when it was time to serve, sacrifice, or be used. When it was time to fight wars, no one asked. When it was time to test medications—experiments that sterilized Puerto Rican women—no one hesitated. When it was time to seize land for large corporations, our citizenship was suddenly very convenient.

We are citizens when we are useful, and invisible when we ask to be seen.

That’s why reducing this moment to partisan noise or pedantic debate misses the point entirely. In doing so, people miss not just the art, but the story: a people who move to the continental U.S., rebuild, serve, vote, contribute— and are still asked to explain why we belong.

What was offered was an invitation. To understand that Puerto Rican identity is complex, joyful, political without being partisan, proud without needing permission.

If you missed that, that’s your loss. Because we are pretty amazing people.