Bad Bunny and the Rise of the Rest

ADRIAN GANIC

“I doooooon’ttttt caaaaaaaare.”

Such was the response of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—or Bad Bunny, as he is more commonly known—when asked how he felt about people not fully grasping the lyrics of his new album because they are in Puerto Rican Spanish. The question was posed by Jon Caramanica, a journalist and pop music critic at The New York Times. Although it probably did not mean to, Caramanica’s query highlights two contradictory dynamics: the persistence of a colonial mindset within the West and the fact that the Global South is growing more influential by the day. 

It is striking that Caramanica’s question frames Spanish as a barrier, not a natural mode of expression. The language has more native speakers than English, and Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico and creates music mainly for a Spanish-speaking audience, as he mentions in that same NYT interview.  The five cities where he has the most Spotify listeners are all Spanish-speaking: Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, Buenos Aires and Madrid. At the same time, Caramanica’s question is unsurprising because Puerto Rico is, for all intents and purposes, a colony of the United States. Consequently, what is produced on the island, material or cultural, is viewed as belonging to America. Spanish lyrics, then, become an impediment to Americans’ consumption of a musical commodity they feel entitled to. 

Themes of colonialism and exploitation feature heavily in Bad Bunny’s album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. “They killed people here for waving the flag. That’s why I bring it anywhere I want now,” he sings on LA MuDANZA. The verse refers to a 1948 Puerto Rico law aiming to suppress the independence movement—criminalising, among other things, the ownership and display of the Puerto Rican flag. The law was declared unconstitutional in 1957. Puerto Rico is not a US state but forced to follow American laws, such as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. This legislation requires Puerto Rico to import resources on US ships, significantly increasing the cost of goods. Puerto Rico also defaulted on its debts in 2015 after years of mismanagement and neglect from the mainland. The subsequent restructuring saw harsh austerity measures implemented. In 2021, 43% of Puerto Ricans lived below the federal poverty level, three times the US average. 

Bad Bunny’s most explicit political statements come in the chorus for LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii, where he attacks the ongoing gentrification and expropriation of Puerto Rico: “They want to take the river and the beach away from me. “They want my neighbourhood and my grandma gone.” Later, he sings: “I don’t want them to do to you [Puerto Rico] what they did to Hawaii.”

What happened to Hawaii? The United States formally annexed the islands in 1898; the same year, the US conquered Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and the Mariana Islands from Spain. The American takeover changed Hawaii. The mainland press exported racist stereotypes, caricaturing native Hawaiians as savages and prostitutes, and the Hawaiian language was banned from being taught in the education system until 1978. The local economy also transformed once the territory gained US statehood in the mid-20th century. Tourism caused a construction boom, growing Hawaii’s economy but steeply increasing the cost of housing for local inhabitants. The tourism industry has also led to ecological degradation across the state. In 2024, Hawaii’s cost of living was higher than California’s, to the detriment of native inhabitants, whose numbers have dwindled. 

The dispossession and disregard for local populations in Puerto Rico and Hawaii is emblematic of global imperialism. There are instances where the appropriation has been more violent— the genocide of Native Americans in the US and Canada or the seizure of native lands by white colonisers in South Africa, for example. More recently, Donald Trump’s comments on turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” come to mind. Bad Bunny is speaking out against such injustices and is, rightfully, getting praised for it. What is missing from the analysis is that his language forms part of the resistance. 

Paradoxically, that Bad Bunny is even interviewed by the NYT and asked a question about the viability of Spanish for an album with international appeal acknowledges the increasing influence of the Global South. This is true in areas beyond culture, too, with countries outside the West significantly increasing their share of global GDP in the last few decades. 

The sociologist Stuart Hall coined the phrase the West and the Rest in 1992, describing the emergence of the “West” as a result of conquest and exploitation of the “Rest”. The current transfer of power and wealth is not to be seen as the substitution of Western—American—hegemony with Chinese, Indian or any other form of unipolarity. Instead, argue Sandro Mezzandra and Brett Neilson, the emerging world order should be understood as multipolar, in which nation-states, multinational corporations, payment systems and international institutions constitute the different factions. In such an environment, the West can no longer act as judge, jury and executioner. This is not to say, however, that one needs to accept the repressive tendencies of China and Iran or subscribe to ideologies of intrinsic civilisational differences between, say, Russia and Europe. 

I believe the desire for liberty—emancipation from any form of capitalist oppression—to be universal. That historically colonised regions are augmenting their strength is good. It is pushing more people out of poverty, allowing them to partake in a world unimaginable 100 years ago. 

In the long-term, humanity’s trajectory looks promising. Yet, the forces of imperialism and reaction may well prove adaptable. Whether power structures truly shift following the rise of the “Rest” or morph to accommodate new actors remains to be seen. What is certain is that a more equitable global landscape is our best bet to solve challenges such as climate change and to devise systems of sustainable global governance. 

Artists like Bad Bunny are crucial in this struggle because they bring attention to and rally people against oppressive processes through their art. In the case of  DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos, its message of resisting colonial dispossession evidently resonates worldwide.