Bad Bunny made Super Bowl history last month, performing the first all-Spanish halftime show. Now he’s also making headlines as the subject of college courses and a new book about Puerto Rican resistance, whose authors recently spoke in Cambridge.
“P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance,” co-authored by Petra Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Díaz, highlights the evolution of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the musician’s full name, from a trap artist to a global voice, emphasizing his consistent activism on issues like Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rican independence. A crowd packed Harvard Bookstore March 3 for a talk with Díaz, an associate professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and Rivera-Rideau, an associate professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. Their conversation was guided by Puerto Rican Grammy award-winning musician and MIT associate professor of music Miguel Zenón.
After separately teaching classes about Bad Bunny and Puerto Rico, Diaz and Rivera-RIdeau collaborated on the Bad Bunny Syllabus, a website that looks at the musician’s cultural significance as a way to examine historical moments and crises in Puerto Rico. The two professors translated the musician’s lyrics and linked to research papers, podcasts, and news stories, and then decided to co-write a book. The book reflects the syllabus, but is also infused with interviews with some of Bad Bunny’s most important collaborators.
Rivera-Rideau began to realize the educational promise of Bad Bunny while she taught a course on Latin music. For one assignment, three-quarters of her class chose to write about Bad Bunny and the music video for his song “Caro” (“Expensive”). In that video, Bad Bunny, nails painted, sported an androgynous look, a portrayal of gender fluidity that was then revolutionary for the reggaeton genre.
“You guys are really into this guy,” Rivera-Rideau recalled thinking. “What if I did a class and I could use this guy, who my students love, with my Puerto Rico class that I love, to sort of swindle them to get into the class?”
She recounted her conversation with Bad Bunny at Harvard right after the 2019 protests in Puerto Rico ousted the territory’s governor. The musician talked about choosing to leave his tour to participate in the protests. His most recent album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), has prompted conversation about the way Bad Bunny brings attention to issues in Puerto Rico. But the book argues that this advocacy is something he has consistently done since he entered the music industry in 2016.
“Who he is as an artist, the way that he represents Puerto Rico, the way that that is so central to everything that he does has been there from the beginning, and DtMF is actually the massive, mature proof of everything he had been working for,” Díaz said.
Bad Bunny used his platform to support Puerto Rico as soon as he gained mainstream success. During his first appearance on television United States TV — “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in 2018 — he opened his performance by talking about how Puerto Ricans still didn’t have electricity a year after the hurricane, and accused President Trump of being in denial about the 3,000 deaths. He performed “Estamos Bien,” or “We’re Good,” overlaying images of suffering and community resilience after the deadly storm.
Zenón asked how Bad Bunny became a uniquely political and global superstar.
“He’s of a different generation. He’s typical of someone of his generation who grew up in Puerto Rico in the 90s and 2000s and experienced extreme austerity experiences, Hurricane Maria, and protests,” Rivera-Rideau replied.
This article was updated to note that the event took place March 3, 2026.
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