“Tengo Puerto Rico en Mi Corazon”: After Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Performance, Here are 10 Resources at Duke Libraries to Learn more about Puerto Rican History & Culture
Post by Roger Peña, Librarian for Latin American, Iberian, Caribbean and Latinx Studies
Last Sunday, Over 127 million viewers tuned into the Super Bowl Halftime Show to see a performance by Puerto Rican-American artist, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as “Bad Bunny.” Hot off winning six Grammy Awards a week earlier, including Album of the Year and co-starting in the sequel, Happy Gilmore 2, Bad Bunny performed in front of one of the largest television audiences in Super Bowl history.
Bad Bunny performs in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Getty Images
The performance, almost entirely in Spanish (a first for the prestigious Super Bowl Halftime show) was carefully curated and ripe with cultural references to Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx and Puerto Rican history, music and art. Bad Bunny, born and raised in Puerto Rico, transformed the football field into a proud ode to his native land and Latin American culture.
These included references to Puerto Rican social clubs in New York City, the sugar cane fields of the island and the jibaro farmer, rum, cocoa stands and desserts, salsa dancing, plant life, the energy crisis and aftermath of Hurricane Maria as well as 16th century Spanish built Fort Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan and much more!
Duke University Libraries is home to thousands of books, recordings and other material related to the island of Puerto Rico, its people and culture. Below is a list of 10 library resources to help you learn more about “La Isla del Encanto” and Puerto Rican diaspora, culture and history.
“This collection offers the first comprehensive analysis of Bad Bunny’s impact on music, culture, and politics. With contributions from diverse scholars, it presents a balanced view of his influence on intersectional resistance.
Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo tells the story of how a cluster of self-educated workers burst into Puerto Rico’s world of literature and navigated the colonial control from Spain to the United States.
A comprehensive view of Puerto Rican history including its relationship to the United States as a governed territory and the rise of the Puerto Rican Diaspora outside of the island.
Translation of various essays, Music in Puerto Rico details the Caribbean island’s musical roots from the arrival of Christopher Columbus’ to popular music of the twentieth century. It explores a multitude of topics, including native instruments, the introduction of music in schools, folk traditions, the legendary salsa, urban pop, and commercial music across Puerto Rican regions.
From censorship campaigns on the island that sought to devalue reggaetón, to its subsequent mass marketing to U.S. Latino listeners, Rivera-Rideau traces reggaetón’s origins and its transformation from the music of San Juan’s slums into a global pop phenomenon. Reggaetón, she demonstrates, provides a language to speak about the black presence in Puerto Rico and a way to build links between the island and the African diaspora.
Made in NuYoRico traces the cross-cultural history of salsa within New York’s diasporic Puerto Rican communities while drawing on ethnographic interviews and a diverse archive of primary source.
Garcia explores how rap and reggaeton grew as artistic, musical, and literary genres and emerged as alternative critiques on societal issues such as poverty and marginalization.
Folk and protest songs of Puerto Rico. Originally issued by Paredon Records in 1971 and released by Smithsonian Folkways three decades later. Part of Music Library.
The performance, almost entirely in Spanish (a first for the prestigious Super Bowl Halftime show) was carefully curated and ripe with cultural references to Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx and Puerto Rican history, music and art. Bad Bunny, born and raised in Puerto Rico, transformed the football field into a proud ode to his native land and Latin American culture. 2025
2021 Duke University Press
2017
2015 Duke University Press
2024 Duke University Press
2004
Search over 20,000 issues of El Mundo, one of Puerto Rico’s longest running newspapers, from 1919-1990.