The explicit and veiled bigoted comments that permeated television, radio airwaves, and social media, before and after the halftime performance of Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio — better known as Bad Bunny — demonstrated the angst, fear and ignorance of those who reject the concept and actuality of a multi-ethnic, multicultural country.
Nothing more than sports and music illuminate the bond of the Afro-Latino diaspora. Bad Bunny’s show on the field of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, this past Sunday at the midpoint of the Seattle Seahawks 29-13 win in Super Bowl LX (60) was replete with social, political and cultural references, celebrating the 31 year old’s homeland of Puerto Rico, as well as the inextricably connected bonds between Africans and Latin Americans, whose ancestry is deeply rooted.
Sports tells us so, as Baseball Hall of Famers, the late Roberto Clemente and David Ortiz, hailing from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic respectively, among many more, reflect the undeniable African blood that runs through countless Latinos who have been instrumental in shaping the history of American sports.
Clemente, one of the greatest right fielders of all time playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955 to 1972, openly expressed pride in his African and Spanish heritage. His skin dark and smooth, Clemente experienced racism for the first time in his life when he arrived in the United States in 1954 from his birthplace of Carolina, Puerto Rico to play in the minor leagues.
Four hundred years earlier, in the 1500s, African slaves arrived from West Africa in Carolina, on the island’s northeastern coast, to provide labor for Spanish colonial rulers. Under the brutal rule of conquistadors such as Christopher Columbus in Hispaniola, millions of Tainos and other Indigenous people in the region were nearly eradicated after being enslaved.
Clemente became a shining symbol and representation of Afro-Latinos as a humanitarian and advocate of racial equality. He deeply admired and often quoted Martin Luther King Jr.
Bad Bunny, who has sat courtside this season at several Knicks games with Bronx-born rapper Fat Joe, has brought attention to the social and economic plight of Puerto Rico. Accordingly, as he did on Sunday with pulsating Afro-Latino beats, instructive lyrics and captivating imagery, he delivered a message of diasporic unity to some 128.2 million viewers — the fourth-most watched halftime show in Super Bowl history. And he used sports as the platform to do it.