After living outside of Puerto Rico for more than a decade, stepping onto the grounds of the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot for Bad Bunny’s residency on Friday was like walking into a fiesta patronal. I hadn’t seen this many people wearing pavas, guayaberas, and jíbara dresses with a flor de maga in their hair since I was a kid celebrating La Semana de la Puertorriqueñidad at school. Sweating under my own Roberto Clemente jersey as my husband and I lined up to enter El Choli, as Boricuas fondly call the arena, I heard more Spanish than English despite the flood of international attendees coming to the first show of the residency open to nonresidents. Once inside, I spotted a massive flamboyán tree in the corner of the main stage that reminded me of getting off the PR-2 highway in my parents’ hometown of Peñuelas. The pink casita in the middle of the arena that hosts VIP guests resembled most of my family and friends’ homes, too. And when Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, came onstage to the sound of bomba drums and surrounded by dancers in traditional costumes, the crowd went wild screaming.
From start to finish, the residency— titled No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí, or I Don’t Want to Leave Here — was a thorough celebration of Puerto Rican identity. Bad Bunny sang an astounding 30-something songs from his nearly decade-long catalogue, blending bereft ballads, tributes to our homeland, and perreo with lyrics too filthy to print. The concert had the same vibe as a party de marquesina from my youth. The musical arrangements paid homage to the traditions of the archipelago; a video that played ahead of the show’s last act educated concertgoers on the history of Puerto Rican salsa, which was born out of collaboration between Boricuas on the island and in New York. That and other videos projected on the big screen during the show did not have subtitles translating the Spanish dialogue, and Benito didn’t speak a word of English, either. The non–Puerto Ricans in the building were guests lovingly invited to his party but would not be the center of his universe.
Between songs, the screen onstage lit up with scenes featuring two characters who have featured prominently in promotions for Bad Bunny’s latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos: El Señor, played by Jacobo Morales — the iconic 90-year-old actor and director whose 1989 dramedy, Lo Que le Pasó a Santiago, is Puerto Rico’s only film to be nominated for an Oscar — and Concho, a CGI toad from a nearly extinct species native to the island. One scene showed the duo huddled at a cabin in a snowy forest, complaining about the cold and waxing poetic about missing the beach, the quesitos, the family casita back home where cousins ran around and partied. That same casita today may house a different family, Concho lamented, or may even have been turned into an Airbnb. Watching the clip felt like a stab to the heart; I’ve lived on the East Coast for 11 years and also have yet to figure out how to cope with the long, dark days. “El frío es espiritual,” I moan to my other friends in the diaspora.
Simmering underneath the celebratory atmosphere of the show was this painful but necessary acknowledgement that staying home is an increasingly unattainable option for many Boricuas. Benito and I grew up 20 minutes apart — him in the northern town of Vega Baja, me in neighboring Vega Alta — in a millennial generation whose somewhat stable early years on the island were followed by a series of cascading political, fiscal, social, and climate crises that completely reshaped life in the American colony. In the week leading up to the show, I kept crashing into reminders of the systemic issues those who live on the island deal with on a daily basis. While spending the weekend at a beach house in Cabo Rojo with my family, I thought of the American tourist who pled guilty to arson after setting fire to several businesses in the area earlier this year. Her provocation? Being denied service because she was intoxicated — a reminder of how tourists have long treated the archipelago as their own lawless playground. Just a few miles away from where we were staying, in Boquerón, a two-acre, $2 billion planned community called Proyecto Esencia, which will combine luxury residencies, hotels, a private school, and member-only clubs, has come to represent the environmental costs of gentrification and corporate efforts to privatize public beaches. When I visited with my aunt, she complained about the exodus of physicians and how the lack of health care is impacting everyone she knows. While introducing me to their 9-month-old daughter, a childhood friend and his wife, who are both teachers, spoke about their concerns around austerity measures that have decimated the education system at all levels, including at our alma mater, the University of Puerto Rico, the island’s sole public university. My best friend and her partner sighed deeply when I asked them how house-hunting was going; despite earning good salaries as a scientist and a dentist, they and many other young Puerto Ricans see homeownership as a pipe dream now that outside investors and Americans flush with cash have driven up real-estate prices.
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The disconnect that exists between Puerto Ricans’ daily realities and visitors’ experience of the archipelago stared me directly in the face once Bad Bunny, wearing a white guayabera and a pava like a time-traveling jibaro, launched into a mournful rendering of “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii.” As Benito begged that the brutal gentrification, displacement, and overtourism that has plagued the former kingdom of Hawaii wouldn’t happen in our home, I looked around the section my husband and I were in and realized we were the only ones standing.
The particular brand of Boricua grief that those of us in the diaspora carry — “Aquí, nadie quiso irse, y quien se fue, sueña con volver,” as Bad Bunny sings — is a constant, if quiet, presence, like white noise. But after singing, jumping, and haber perreao’ all night, the first notes of “DtMF” dialed that noise up to 11. In the song, Bad Bunny makes a quiet plea: “que los míos nunca se muden.” Yet here I was, having moved away from Puerto Rico at age 21 — a choice that was heavily influenced by the limited career opportunities available to young people, the brutal austerity measures impacting everyday life, and the long shadow that 127 years of U.S. colonialism still casts over the island in both violent and subtle ways.
Standing up in the very last row of the stands of El Choli, I couldn’t stop crying, even as Benito began wrapping up the show. But in between introducing his entire band and launching into the last verses of “La Mudanza,” my heartbreak turned into defiance. “De aquí nadie me saca, de aquí yo no me muevo,” the entire arena sang. “Dile que esta es mi casa, donde nació mi abuelo. Yo soy de P fuckin’ R.” As we filed out of the arena among Puerto Ricans chanting “Yo soy Boricua, ¡pa’ que tú lo sepas!,” I held on to something El Señor told Concho: “We’re Puerto Rican no matter where we are, and even from afar we defend what’s ours.”
