The climate symbolism in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance » Yale Climate Connections

If you don’t speak Spanish or aren’t intimately familiar with the history of Puerto Rico, you may have missed some of the references to climate change in the history-making Super Bowl performance by superstar Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny.

Fortunately, our own bilingual Features Editor Pearl Marvell, who grew up in the Caribbean and is a long-time Bad Bunny connoisseur, is here to break down the show for you.

While there are so many nods to Puerto Rican culture – too many to fit into a short explainer – I want to point out two that are related to climate change, food, and energy sovereignty.

In the very first moments of the show, we saw a field of sugar cane. Sugar cane was one of the main crops grown in the Caribbean when it was colonized by the English, Dutch, French, and Spanish. It made a lot of money for these European nations; a lot of the wealth extracted from the Caribbean came from sugar. In Puerto Rico, sugar cane was not the main crop until it was invaded and colonized by the United States in 1898, and the island hit peak production of sugar cane in 1952. 

Sugar cane was grown on the main island of Puerto Rico by large American companies that paid their Puerto Rican workers poorly. The crop depletes soil quickly, and the companies practiced monoculture, which also used up a lot of the arable land. This all set Puerto Rico up to import over 85% of its food, which it still does today. After major storms like Hurricane Maria, there are often disruptions to product imports, including food. And global warming increases the likelihood of strong hurricanes, heightening the risk. 

On a positive note, there is more focus on sustainable food practices and small-scale farming in the archipelago these days. This shift ensures that the islands of Puerto Rico are not entirely reliant on imports, which reduces the use of fossil fuels and makes the island more resilient in the face of extreme weather. 

Let’s turn to the second climate-related statement. Bad Bunny sang “El Apagón,” a song about being in a power outage — something that can be a weekly occurrence for many Puerto Rican residents who rely on the frail electricity grid. During this song, dancers climbed up telephone poles, which sparked electricity. 

This is all important symbolism because the Puerto Rican grid has continued to suffer prolonged power outages. That was the case even after it was privatized and taken over by the Canadian-American company LUMA after Hurricane Maria. This hurricane in particular caused a total collapse of the electrical grid for up to a year in some parts of the island. Not only did it make daily life nearly impossible for many, but it also caused the deaths of thousands of residents who needed power for medical needs like diabetes and dialysis.

Hurricane Fiona in 2022, another Category 4 hurricane, also caused a blackout on the island. 

But it’s not all bad news: The people of Puerto Rico have recognized the need to make themselves and their communities more resilient in the face of extreme weather. Community-led programs for solar microgrids have come online, ensuring that residents have access to power even after an extreme storm. More people are taking up farming or buying from local farmers, knowing that agricultural independence, or something near to it, will need to be created to withstand a warmer climate. 

Unfortunately, the Trump administration canceled $450 million in funding for grid resilience programs in Puerto Rico — funds that had been allocated by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. Much of that funding would have gone into residential solar and battery storage for vulnerable residents around the archipelago.