“Esta es mi tierra/Esta soy yo”: Teaching US colonialism and Puerto Rican resistance through Bad Bunny

We woke up, on October 20, 2023, to a flutter of emails from students and colleagues: “Did you see Jimmy Fallon?” “OMG Bad Bunny wants to take our class!” While we were sleeping, international superstar Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio) had discussed our classes on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Between talking about Bad Bunny’s new album Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana and his hosting gig on SNL, Fallon asked, “There’s actually college courses teaching about you…. ‘Bad Bunny: Race, Gender, and Empire in Reggaetón at Wellesley College. Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico at Loyola Marymount University. Did you ever think that you were going to be taught [in] a course at a school?”

Bad Bunny chuckled. “Nooooooooo. That’s a very crazy thing. Todavía no lo creo…Some day people came to me like, ‘Yeah, I’m taking this class about you.’ And I’m like, ‘What? Really?’ I don't know, it feels weird. I would love to take one of those classes because I think I would get an A.”

Our classes had been mentioned in other outlets too, from NPR to Vanity Fair, but this was the first time that we had heard Bad Bunny himself discuss them. This unique media exposure amplified questions that we had received since we each began our courses: What, exactly, do you teach in this class? Why is Bad Bunny, a reggaetonero who sings a genre often accused of promoting violence and misogyny, worthy of university study?

At only thirty years old, Benito Martínez Ocasio of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, has become one of the biggest Puerto Rican cultural icons of all time. The reggaetón artist began uploading his songs onto SoundCloud in 2016. By 2023, Bad Bunny had become the most streamed artist globally three years in a row. His critically acclaimed 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti was the first Spanish-language album to ever be nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. In addition to these accomplishments, Bad Bunny is known for his outspoken politics around gender, sexuality, and, especially, issues facing Puerto Rico.

Bad Bunny’s success combined with the myriad issues his career touches on make him an extremely effective anchor for a college course. Petra first offered her Bad Bunny course at Wellesley College in the spring of 2022, after her students in other courses, especially “Latinx Music and Identity in the US,” overwhelmingly completed their final projects on Bad Bunny’s work. On the west coast, Vanessa was similarly motivated to launch her own Bad Bunny course during the 2022–2023 school year after successful experiences using Bad Bunny’s music in her “Introduction to Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies” course. In response to colleagues’ questions about how to incorporate our curriculum into their own courses, in January 2023 we launched the Bad Bunny Syllabus project¹—an open access online pedagogical tool that offers resources to contextualize Bad Bunny’s work. In this article, we aim to show how this pop culture-centered curriculum motivates students, while providing unique ways to hone students’ critical thinking skills, introducing them to key ideas and texts they may not otherwise encounter, and enabling them to create innovative research projects.

We often describe Bad Bunny as the hook that brings students into the classroom. Because Bad Bunny is such a huge star that, most students walk into our classes already familiar with his work (whether or not they actually like it). This familiarity gives them more confidence to engage with course material, enabling us to meaningfully explore complex theories and histories more quickly than we otherwise might. Therefore, we can delve deeply into complicated topics, such as the historical roots of the Puerto Rican debt crisis, early on in the course. The combination of diverse topics relevant to contemporary life and students’ authoritative knowledge on Bad Bunny makes this curriculum ideal for a discussion-based course.

Students guide the flow of the class. For example, in Petra’s fifteen-person seminar, students work in pairs to introduce key concepts and readings to their classmates. They select one of Bad Bunny’s music videos or performances that anchors the class discussion on these concepts. In so doing, students not only demonstrate their mastery of the material, but they also practice critical analytical skills in concrete ways by showing how more abstract theoretical concepts map onto something that they are familiar with in their everyday lives. Our student-led, discussion-focused pedagogical approach enables students to take ownership of their learning, and even bring into discussion what they know outside the classroom. Vanessa’s student Bianca Valentín (2024) recalled an experience in a different class in which someone claimed that unlike Taiwan, Puerto Ricans never fought for independence. Bianca saw another classmate from the Bad Bunny seminar respond that this was, in fact, not true and that Puerto Ricans had a long history of resistance. She said, “It made me so happy and so excited to see students from this class who aren’t Puerto Rican but are taking this out into the community, correcting people, taking this stance. It’s so nice that this allyship is out there, whether or not you’re Puerto Rican, your vote plays a role in how things will play out for Puerto Rico.” Bianca’s story shows how this curriculum not only leaves a mark on students, but also encourages them to be more engaged in conversations around Puerto Rico even after their time in our courses ends.

In spring 2024, Vanessa and her students organized a symposium that showcased the students’ research from previous sections of her course “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” (Fig. 1). here; In front of an audience of more than one hundred people, Vanessa’s students collectively reflected on the significance of their experience in the course. Students addressed topics ranging from the ongoing effects of US colonialism that led to the Puerto Rican debt crisis to the ways Bad Bunny challenges normative standards of the “barriocentric macho” in reggaetón (Nieves Moreno 2009). During their presentation, Vanessa’s student Monet explained why it is so critical to learn about these histories: “We can’t look at our day to day lives without engaging with colonialism, whether it be looking at the US and Puerto Rico, or the US and Guam, or even just new imperialism… We can’t understand history without understanding how [colonialism] works, how it changes, and how it seeks to change us.”

Fig. 1

Student Maja Klein presenting on her research paper “The Sound of Protest,” which compares rapper Saint Levant with Bad Bunny, as part of the panel “The Crises of Colonialism in Puerto Rico and Beyond” at LMU’s “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” Student Research Symposium on Feb. 21, 2024

Monet’s comments reflect how critically examining Bad Bunny’s work offers students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to understand Puerto Rico’s colonial realities the opportunity to immerse themselves in studying this history. One particularly salient example of how we use Bad Bunny’s work in the class is through Bad Bunny’s song “El Apagón,” along with its accompanying music video and documentary. The title of the song translates literally to “The Blackout,” referencing the frequent blackouts that have plagued Puerto Rico due to the island’s failing electrical grid and infrastructure. The song simultaneously celebrates Puerto Rican people and culture and presents a searing critique of the colonial realities of life on the island. To assist students as we analyze the song, we provide an extensively annotated version of the lyrics that explains the nuances of the song’s linguistic, cultural, and historical references.² The music video for “El Apagón,” directed by Kacho López Mari, includes iconic imagery of Puerto Rican resistance, placing historical figures like Pedro Albizu Campos alongside more contemporary movements like the 2019 summer protests (known as “El Verano Boricua”). A twenty-minute documentary titled Aquí Vive Gente, or “People Live Here,” follows the music video. This documentary, by independent journalist Bianca Graulau, sheds light on Puerto Ricans fighting gentrification propelled by rich, mostly white Americans taking advantage of tax breaks offered by Puerto Rico’s Act 60.

“El Apagón” gives us an entrypoint to introduce students to the colonial roots of the contemporary crises in Puerto Rico in addition to the archipelago’s long history of resistance. In our classes, we pair this song’s lyrics, music video, and documentary with such readings as Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón’s Aftershocks of Disaster (2019), Federico Cintrón-Moscoso and Vanessa Díaz’s photo essay “The Power of Popular Protest: El Verano Boricua, 2019” (2020), and Diane Lourdes Dick’s “U.S. Tax Imperialism in Puerto Rico” (2015–2016).³ Through these materials, we also consider more historical moments that highlight US imperialism, such as the comments by the 1930s US pathologist and oncologist Cornelius Rhoades, who famously stated that Puerto Rico “would be ideal except for the Puerto Ricans. They are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere... What the island needs is... a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable” (qtd in Hostetler-Díaz 2020). As lyrics from “El Apagón” (e.g. “No me quiero ir de aquí/ Que se vayan ellos/…Esta es mi tierra/Esta soy yo”⁴) as well as the content of Aquí Vive Gente reveal, the colonial sentiment that an uninhabited Puerto Rico would best serve US interests remains a key issue at the center of Puerto Rican resistance. Since passages like the one above from Rhoades, as well as the broader realities they lay bare, can be difficult for students to process, we offer our classes guiding questions such as: What kinds of practices do Puerto Ricans engage in to push back on the encroachment of their land(s)? How would you describe the current state of colonialism in Puerto Rico? Who exercises colonial practices in Puerto Rico and toward Puerto Ricans in both formal and informal ways? These questions help offer clear direction as students develop their own discussion questions to share with the class (or, in the case of larger classes like Vanessa’s, to share in small discussion groups).

We have found that students’ ability to see these connections between the work of a contemporary artist and these broader histories piques their interest and enables them to make more critical connections between class and the world around them. Bad Bunny’s repertoire addresses a host of historical, political, and social topics pertinent to Puerto Rican and Latino life in the United States. We use Bad Bunny’s conflicting representations of women (e.g. the hypermasculine posturing of a song like “Bichiyal” compared to the introspective portrait of a woman in “Callaíta”) to anchor a debate about feminism in reggaetón and to discuss Latina feminist theories. In a different class, we compare Ricky Martin’s 1999 Grammy performance of the “Cup of Life” with Bad Bunny’s 2023 Grammy performance of “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” to understand the racial and linguistic politics of crossover and the ethnoracialization of Latinos in US media (Fig. 2). Because Bad Bunny’s work addresses so many different social and political issues facing Puerto Ricans and Latinos more broadly, faculty could use aspects of his music and performance in any number of classes, whether in an introductory Latino Studies survey course, a class on Latinx queer theory, or a Bad Bunny seminar.

Fig. 2

Students in Vanessa’s classroom discussing their comparison chart of Ricky Martin’s 1999 Grammy performance and Bad Bunny’s 2023 grammy performance

This curriculum has a strong impact on student engagement and learning. In both of our courses, students complete research and creative projects related to the themes covered in class. At Loyola Marymount University, the freedom to produce creative projects, like podcasts, musical compositions, and films, gives students the possibility to develop meaningful and easily shareable materials. Students at Wellesley College write twenty-page research papers; much of what they produce is original given the timeliness of the material we cover in class. Student projects address a variety of important topics, from the representations of Black women in Puerto Rican media to environmental justice movements in Puerto Rico to the relationship between independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos and Irish nationalist leaders. Our classes have catalyzed more intensive research projects for many students, including several undergraduate independent research or thesis projects in fields ranging from American studies to biological sciences. For example, Wellesley student Deyra Aguilar explained how learning about queerness and fashion in the Bad Bunny class influenced her own research about fashion and Black masculinity in U.S. hip-hop (Bova 2024).

Beyond student research, this curriculum opens a diverse array of opportunities for creative, experiential, and engaged learning. We have had the opportunity to incorporate museum visits and guest speakers from both academia and the music industry (Fig. 3). In the spring 2024 semester, we each took our students to see Bad Bunny perform live. Students completed a reflection assignment to demonstrate how the experiential opportunity was informed by their experience in the class. Vanessa’s student Ashley Buschorn (2024) wrote the following in her reflection:

To experience Bad Bunny’s performance, I felt I could finally connect what we read and learned in the classroom to a real-world situation. To truly understand Bad Bunny, you must understand Puerto Rico’s history with colonialism, resistance, and the genre of reggaeton. You must understand the impact of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican debt crisis, and the historical criminalization of reggaeton. You must understand the military occupation of Vieques, the gag law that made the Puerto Rican flag illegal, and the current island takeover by wealthy, majority white Americans who are looking for tax breaks, not to stir the local economy. Only then do you truly know the gravity of the moment when he sings, “nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana.” You must enjoy today because in Puerto Rico, “nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.”⁵

Fig. 3

Students from Vanessa’s class at the Grammy museum in Los Angeles in spring 2024

Buschorn’s observations demonstrate how this sort of assignment helps to foster a new generation of critically engaged consumers of popular culture.

In addition to the impact of our own courses, we have helped to foster the inclusion of this kind of curriculum through our Bad Bunny Syllabus project. Our decision to develop the Bad Bunny Syllabus emerged naturally through conversations we had in 2022 when Vanessa contacted Petra for advice about developing her own course. We strategically organized the website with different units that correspond to the lessons we teach in our own classes, like “Roots of Reggaetón” and “Puerto Rico’s Debt and Infrastructure Crises.” We wanted to make the lessons easily transferable for use in a variety of educational settings. With the help of undergraduate research assistants, we collected both academic and popular sources including written, audio, and visual materials, so that people with various learning needs could access our content. The Bad Bunny Syllabus has since become a useful framework for other faculty seeking to incorporate Bad Bunny’s work into their pedagogy. We have heard from colleagues who teach courses ranging from an upper-level undergraduate seminar on Puerto Rican politics to an introductory Chicana/x and Latina/x studies course who have used the syllabus to find material for their courses, or to teach students how to conduct research and find sources. We have even heard from executives in the music industry who have used the syllabus to help advocate for more attention to Latin music, and from journalists who find it useful in their research. As other universities add Bad Bunny courses to their offerings, we are hopeful that the Bad Bunny Syllabus will continue to be a useful pedagogical tool.

Overall, our experiences teaching these courses and creating the Bad Bunny Syllabus have been some of the most fulfilling pedagogical experiences of our careers. Organizing a course around Bad Bunny helps us to draw students in and to address a host of complex theories and ideas pertinent to Latine/x studies more generally. We have found that this approach also motivates students to, as one described, “rediscover [their] love of learning”), as reflected in their ambitious research and impressive learning outcomes. Part of the power of bringing current pop culture topics into the classroom is that it stimulates student engagement and provides students with the tools to think more critically about the world around them. Providing students with historical and political context and political meaning for a song they might otherwise just dance to, or ignore, allows them to expand their conceptualization of what resisting injustice can look like, but also to appreciate the potential depth of significance of a hit song. Wellesley student Ceci Rao stated, “I just think that, in general, classes about artists help students realize that these more serious topics have a place in popular culture” (qtd. in Bova 2024). Our students have repeatedly described the classes as life-changing, eye-opening, and some of the most memorable learning experiences they have had in college, precisely because of the diverse array of issues so pertinent to their everyday lives that ground our classes. Loyola Marymount student Carolina Acosta (2024), who grew up in Puerto Rico, explained at the research forum, “It’s so empowering and I feel so represented in this class. I thought it was going to be a class about Bad Bunny and his album, but it is so much more than that. It was a segue into bigger issues [in Puerto Rico], things that I didn’t even know about.” To that end, using Bad Bunny empowers students to not only understand the history and place themselves in it, regardless of their background, but also to figure out how to be proactive about making change.