Bad Bunny is recognized globally for establishing reggaeton as a mainstream music genre and exporting Puerto Rican culture to the world.
But the millennials who grew up in Puerto Rico the same time as Bad Bunny, who is 30 — as well as the Puerto Rican Gen Zers who have come of age idolizing him as an artist — connect with his music in a way none of the billions of other people who listen to his music internationally will ever understand.
With a critical election approaching Puerto Rico on Tuesday, Bad Bunny made a seismic announcement Sunday, telling a crowd he would be voting for a third-party candidate who has upended the island's two-party system for the first time in over 70 years.
“I have not endorsed anyone. Puerto Rico has given an organic endorsement,” Bad Bunny told the thousands at the rally. “It’s you who have inspired me, once again. It’s you, the people of Puerto Rico, who have told me that on Nov. 5th, we must vote for Juan Dalmau and the ‘Alianza’” (Alliance).
Dalmau, whom Bad Bunny endorsed, is the candidate of a new third-party coalition that merged the minority Puerto Rican Independence Party with the Citizens’ Victory Movement — a party founded in 2019 that promised to prioritize good governance over the long-running battle between Puerto Rico's two main political parties.
Over the past seven decades, Puerto Rico has been governed by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, currently in office led by Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, or by the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the island’s current territorial status.
And in every election for more than 70 years, the front-runners have been candidates from those two parties.
If Dalmau wins, Puerto Rico would make history by electing a governor from a party that has never been in office before.
Bad Bunny's message connects with young voters in Puerto Rico who have never lived in a Puerto Rico that’s not riddled with crisis, said Jorge Schmidt Nieto, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez.
While Bad Bunny often shows off his prideful love for his homeland through his music — in a way that leaves many wishing they were also Puerto Rican — he has used his music to echo the frustrations Puerto Ricans feel over the injustices they face living on the island. That is particularly evident in songs like “El Apagón” (The Blackout) to “Una Velita” (“A Little Candle”), among others.
He “is now taking it a step further from the discontent that he may have been displaying with his music,” said Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a political scientist at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.
Bad Bunny is “linking that discontent with the political parties” that have been in power for the last 70 years, Vargas-Ramos said.
Bad Bunny talks about his upbringing — and makes it political
In his 20-minute speech Sunday, Bad Bunny opened up about his upbringing in Puerto Rico — and linked it to Puerto Rico's recent political turmoil.
Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio to a mother who was a teacher and a father who was a trucker, he recalled growing up in Puerto Rico during the administration of Gov. Pedro Rosselló of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, “one of the most corrupt that the country has had,” Bad Bunny said.
More than 40 officials in his administration were accused or convicted of corruption. Bad Bunny, who grew up in a pro-statehood household, recalled attending a victory party with his family at age 14 to celebrate the newly elected mayor of his town, Vega Baja, who years later got entangled in a corruption scandal.
He remembered the first time he participated in an election, at 18, saying he voted for “a traitor” who worsened Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and passed the law that left 30,000 people without jobs, “including my own.” Bad Bunny was referring to Gov. Luis Fortuño, also of the pro-statehood party.
Schmidt Nieto said that whether it’s because of chronic power outages, the rising cost of living or the crumbling health and education systems, “in Puerto Rico there is a feeling that we live in a permanent state of emergency. That includes corruption.”
He added that Bad Bunny and members of the Alliance have been very effective in their messaging, linking the crises to the traditional parties, particularly to the incumbent pro-statehood party, a perception that for many is "correct."
Islanders have been dealing with economic turmoil stemming from a financial crisis and a debt restructuring that resulted in austerity measures and layoffs of public workers, as well as cuts to health care and education budgets. Puerto Rico was then hit by devastating natural disasters, including Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a series of earthquakes in 2020, in addition to the pandemic.
Bad Bunny's speech Sunday was followed by a performance of “Una Velita,” a song serving as an indictment of the state of things in Puerto Rico before and after Hurricane Maria.
A Bad Bunny impact?
How much influence Bad Bunny can have in the election remains to be seen, said Charles Venator-Santiago, director of the Puerto Rican Studies Initiative at the University of Connecticut.
There's no doubt that "he moves people,” Venator-Santiago said.
From spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on dozens of political billboards and TV ads to publishing a page-long letter in Puerto Rico’s biggest island-wide newspaper, Bad Bunny has used his star power and resources to influence theis year’s election.
In 2019, he was part of a group of celebrities who helped get Puerto Ricans to take to the streets to participate in Puerto Rico’s largest protest in recent history to oust Rosselló, then the governor, in a political scandal involving him and a dozen members of his Cabinet.
Venator-Santiago said it's possible that Bad Bunny, alongside other Puerto Rican celebrities like Residente, Kany García and PJ Sin Suela, could influence 5% to 10% of the youth vote to favor Dalmau. If that's the case, "that could have an impact" in the election's outcome.
