During the Super Bowl, the Puerto Rican “King of Latin Trap”Bad Bunnyperformed at halftime. Jake Paul called Bad Bunny, akaBenito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a “fake American.” Paul is a boxer, influencer, actor, andracist Islamophobe. Ocasio had the temerity to sing in Spanish. Paul and MAGA were outraged, as were thousands of incensed others who posted to social media after the headline performance.
“Let’s rally together and show big corporations they can’t just do whatever they want without consequences,”Paul tweeted. “Turn off this halftime. A fake American citizen performing who publicly hates America.”
Ocasio is an American citizen. Puerto Ricans have held US citizenship since the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act, but we can’t expect the followers of MAGA to know much about history, the law, and the brutal track record of colonialism.
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MAGA may not like it, but Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. More than 59 million people in America speak Spanish. More people speak Spanish than French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, and other languages combined. Spanish has been spoken since the 15thcentury with the arrival of colonizers from Spain in what would later become America. The word “America” is the feminine form of the first word of Americus Vesputius, the Latinized name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
The president weighed in from the Oval Office.Trump saidhe would not watch the Super Bowl.
“I’m anti-them [Bad Bunny and the group Green Day]. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” Trump declared.
Ocasio and Green Day criticized Trump’s immigration policy and its thuggish ICE mercenaries. Last year Green Day released “Nuevayol,” a song that featured an imitated Trump apologizing for his anti-immigrant stance. Green Day performed at the opening ceremony of Super Bowl LX.
The elephant in the room is the history of US colonialism in Latin America. Following a decisive victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War, the United States “acquired” Puerto Rico through armed disputation under the Treaty of Paris. The Foraker Act (1900) and the above mentioned Jones-Shafroth Act (1917) imposed US rule over the island. The latter was exploited to draft Puerto Ricans to fight in World War I (20,000 “Boricuas” were conscripted).
Source: Global Research
