Written by Marco Castillo
Co-Executive Director, Global Exchange
After more than 120 million people worldwide watched a proud Puerto Rican take over the stage at the Super Bowl halftime show, Latin American journalists, commentators, and millions of social media users described it as an act of cultural defiance. An all-Spanish performance, rooted in Caribbean rhythms and unapologetically Latin, was widely read as a response to the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino rhetoric that has dominated U.S. political discourse in recent years.
The backlash was immediate. Conservative commentators and U.S. officials reacted with predictable outrage. Even Donald Trump joined the chorus, attacking the performance as “divisive” and questioning why English was not centered. For migrants, for people across Latin America, and for Latinxs in the United States, the night felt like something rare: joy, visibility, and symbolic revenge.
But what we felt that night must not end when the lights go out.
For the NFL and the massive industries behind the Super Bowl, counterculture is profitable. Rebellion, when carefully curated, becomes part of the show. For thirteen minutes, the system allows the marginalized to dance on its stage—to be angry, loud, and even “criminal”—as long as nothing structural changes. We’ve seen this before: during the Black Lives Matter uprisings and in moments of social explosion later absorbed, neutralized, and sold back to us as proof that “freedom of expression is alive.”
The reality is that the United States depends on Latin America—on its labor, its resources, its migrants, its culture—to function. And that same United States is actively sustaining a humanitarian crisis affecting more than 10 million people in Cuba.
Cuba’s future belongs to Cubans. It will not be shaped by siege, coercion, or economic punishment. Respect for sovereignty and self-determination is not a radical demand; it is a basic principle of international law.
The U.S. embargo, widely condemned by the United Nations year after year, has severely restricted access to food, medicine, fuel, medical equipment, and basic infrastructure. In recent years, additional sanctions have further limited access to remittances, banking systems, and humanitarian trade, deepening shortages that impact ordinary families, hospitals, and schools.
Scarcity may be engineered. Culture refuses to starve. So yes, let’s dance. Turn up Bad Bunny.
As Alice Walker reminds us, “Hard times require furious dancing.” Joy is survival. Culture is resistance. It lives in our music, our language, our bodies taking up space.
But let’s not confuse curated visibility with sovereignty.
A halftime show can feel radical and still be meticulously controlled—bold enough to trend, safe enough for corporate sponsorship.
We cannot applaud representation while hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans are detained, incarcerated, or deported by U.S. authorities every year. And we cannot applaud a halftime spectacle while the United States intensifies an economic siege on Cuba—deliberately tightening restrictions that deprive hospitals of medicine, schools of resources, and families of basic necessities.
Latin Americans in the United States now face a choice. This moment can fade into nostalgia—or it can become a turning point. We can transform that historic halftime performance into a movement: one that demands respect for Latin American people and culture not just on stages and screens, but in policy and practice. A movement that insists no nation has the right to decide the fate of another by force. A movement grounded in the simple truth that societies only thrive when they honor everyone’s contribution.
So let’s organize.
Let’s march.
Let’s make phone calls, pressure representatives, and build coalitions across borders.
Let’s end the racist, deadly, anti-Latin American embargo against Cuba.
As Bad Bunny himself has said:
“Yo no le debo nada a nadie. Yo canto lo que soy.”
If that is true, then it’s time for us to live up to it—not just by celebrating who we are, but by fighting for how we live, and for the dignity of our people everywhere.