Thank You Jay. Masha danki, Emanuel. Gracias Benito.

When we talk about America, I am talking about the continent. Anybody and everybody born in the continent of America is an American, and we have to deal with the fact that we’re all here, nobody’s going to leave, and we might as well make the best of it.

— Rubén Blades

Dear Boricua, dear Soualigan,

As a Puerto Rican privileged to live in St. Martin, I feel compelled to testify, not only about what I witnessed during the 2026 U.S. Super Bowl halftime show featuring Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio), but more importantly about the ripple effect it created across the Caribbean part of the Dutch Kingdom.

Whether or not one appreciates his music, there is broad consensus, even across social media and among cultural commentators, that Bad Bunny has captured the imagination of youth worldwide. His short biography is by now well known: from supermarket bagger to graduate of Audio-visual Communication at the University of Puerto Rico, to global icon in commercial music and fashion. Yet what distinguishes him is not simply material success, it is consciousness.

His work engages social and political realities: Puerto Rico’s colonial condition, the trauma of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, chronic power outages and energy crises, diaspora entrepreneurship, and solidarities with both Latin American and African American communities. His album Debí Tomar Más Fotos, released a year before the 2026 Super Bowl, is musically layered and historically textured. It traverses Puerto Rican collective memory, from jíbaro mountain sounds to African rhythms, from classical salsa to dembow, capturing the pulse of everyday struggle and migration.

The making of Benito is not merely a trap-pop phenomenon. It is the story of someone who refused to let obstacles obstruct his dreams while remaining rooted in community, his motherland Borikén and the wider Caribbean diaspora. Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists will study this moment for years to come. It coincides with a global rise in fascism, political violence, and the displacement of colonized peoples, particularly visible in United States territories.

For colonized peoples, existence itself is resistance and our very presence anywhere is political. So yes, there will be critique. From radical anti-colonial traditions, some will question the presence of figures like Lady Gaga on that stage or condemn the Super Bowl’s entanglement with cultural imperialism and capitalism. Such analysis is not only expected, it is necessary. And let us be clear: the Super Bowl halftime show is not “the global stage.” It is a spectacle embedded in an annual U.S. sports event, whose global visibility is largely driven by its musical performances. Benito and his fellow artists made sure that the deteriorating electrical posts littered the scene around the living impromptu sugar cane fields. I also remember the shared suffering of power outages of “Dutch-side Sint Maarten” during the summer of 2024, and know that during the same time it was difficult for the children of Curaçao to attend school because of the sweltering heat and lack of air conditioning.

Yet that stage, however commercial, became a space where Caribbean and Latin American artists were invited into a plural celebration of identity. And then something meaningful occurred.

I witnessed what others may not have seen: the beginning of a renewed Caribbean connection beyond borders.

My colleague Raymond Laureano calls it paradiplomacy, international relations practiced by peoples of non-sovereign territories. Without political representation on the world stage, we deploy culture, creativity, and art as our diplomacy. We reach the spaces where people listen, feel, and recognize themselves reflected.

At the close of the 14-minute performance, when Benito declared, “God Bless America,” he meant the entire continent, from Canadá to Argentina, including the Caribbean archipelago in between. For some in the United States, this may have been an educational moment. For us in the Caribbean, it was a call: remember who we are, and remember our connections. It was certainly a beautiful moment to see the flags of Curaçao, Aruba, tiny giant Saba and Statia wave with elegance and piquete.

Soualigan arts advocate Nicole de Weever first alerted me to the fact that Jay Mills, a Jamaican-born dancer raised in Sint Maarten, had participated in the show, proudly carrying the Sint Maarten flag. Soon congratulations flowed from the Minister of Tourism and Economic Affairs, the Prime Minister, and countless arts lovers across the island. In that moment, we were connected.

Perhaps the most moving moment came days later, on February 13, via Live 99FM Bonaire. I watched as the Tourism Corporation Bonaire and a crowd of enthusiastic residents welcomed Boricua dancer Emanuel López Alonso and his mother to the island of Bonaire.

Reporters gathered at the arrival hall, narrating the scene in the lyrical cadence of Papiamentu. The crowd erupted as Emanuel emerged. He shared that he had never before visited Bonaire. He knew he would carry Bonaire’s flag during the halftime performance, but he had not known he would carry it prominently at the front of the line of all other American flags. And he danced to Simadan.

“Masha danki, Emanuel.”

As a Puerto Rican living in St. Martin, I felt immense pride seeing the Sint Maarten flag carried by Jay Mills. And I can’t wait to meet Jay. But witnessing a Puerto Rican dancer welcomed in Bonaire as if to say, “Brother, welcome home, this is your Caribbean too,” was profoundly powerful. Especially since it had only been two weeks after the people of Bonaire won a court case against the Netherlands, demanding that more is done to protect island residents from climate challenges.

Here were peoples from territories colonized by the Netherlands, France, and the United States, territories with limited voice on the global political stage, speaking volumes through cultural solidarity. We said what was needed to be said simply by recognizing one another.

“The only thing stronger than hate is love,” Benito proclaimed.

What makes Bad Bunny remarkable is not merely that he is Puerto Rican or Caribbean. It is that his expression of Puerto Ricanness and Caribbean identity embodies Ubuntu.

Living and working in St. Martin, alongside colleagues from Guyana, Curaçao, and Haiti, I see this reality daily. The show’s finale was not abstract symbolism, it mirrored the lived experience of Caribbean interconnectedness and became a portal for renewed bonds in our region.

I hope we begin to see one another as more than tourist destinations or shopping trips. I hope Soualigans feel drawn to participate more in bombazos and plenazos in Santurce, than they do to shop at Plaza Las Américas, when they visit Puerto Rico. I hope my Boricua brothers and sisters understand why I drive to Marigot in the weekend to dance Gwoka with Guadeloupean siblings, and why I mourn when former members of the band Tanny and the Boys pass away.

I hope Soualigan artists increasingly engage with the social histories of neighbouring islands, with San Pedro de Macorís, Aruba, and beyond. Bonaireans once wore the same straw “pava” hats while cutting cane in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The influences of Venezuela, Caquetío, and Arawak peoples arc across our region. Out of many, we are indeed one.

Having come to know all six islands of the Caribbean part of the Dutch Kingdom, I can say each is distinct. Yet their peoples are bound by a shared colonial experience and reality. We should neither erase that history nor allow it to confine us. Instead, we must look beyond the artificial borders imposed upon us and affirm the beauty, strength, and creativity that live within -even when we are in the diaspora. The same should be true for the rest of the islands and territories that surround us, including the US Virgin Islands. Let us welcome home all our artists and take pride in the flags they wave. Because in the end, as Benito teaches us, I am because we are.

‍