America de Mi Corazon

“I know it’s tough to know not to hate these days…The hate gets more powerful with more hate…The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please, we need to be different if we fight, we have to do it with love.” Bad Bunny at the 2026 Grammy Awards

If you never heard of Bad Bunny before Super Bowl 2026, now you know. The most-streamed global artist prior to the game, Bad Bunny has become a true global phenomenon since, with his hit “DtMF” rising to Number One on the Billboard 100 and his streaming numbers rising significantly. Immediately prior to the game Bunny won four Grammys, including Album of the Year with “DtMF (Debi tirar mas fotos” or in English, “I should have taken more photos”). The title song explores themes of nostalgia, love, and the importance of capturing moments with loved ones before they change. It also addresses existential issues faced by the people of Puerto Rico, his “Patria”, and issues a rallying cry of resistance for Puerto Ricans everywhere. To close his Super Bowl set Bunny addressed the question of “American” identity.

The continent is called America because it is named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The name was first used by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller who, inspired by Vespucci’s accounts of his journeys, decided in 1507 to name the continent after him. It was originally called “América” in the feminine form, as it was then common to name lands after women. For the last century, however, the name “America” has been monopolized by the United States, at least in the world outside of Ibero-America (the former Portugese and Spanish colonies in the Americas). Synonymous use of the two names became ubiquitous only in the twentieth century when the United States transformed itself into an imperial power.

The first British colonies in North America were established in the early seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century colonists were calling themselves “American” subjects of the British Crown. Their revolutionary war against British rule (1775-1783) and their formal declaration of independence (1776) consolidated that sense of “American-ness”, but the rebel citizens of the new, independent republic did not take monopoly ownership of the word “American” and referred to their country by its official name – the United States of America. With revolutionary solidarity, the people of the United States enthusiastically welcomed the independence of Spain’s American colonies after their own war of independence, even naming some towns “Bolivar” after Simón Bolívar, liberator of Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Gran Colombia. Today, there are towns called Bolivar in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. It was the United States’ leap into imperialism that changed the equation.

By the late nineteenth century, having settled the issue of slavery by civil war (1861-1865) and after seizing the lands of native peoples in the so called “Indian wars” (1700s-1890) thereby spreading “from sea to shining sea”, the US turned its expansionist ambitions outward and successfully fought the Spanish-American War in 1898, annexing the Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico while making Cuba a protectorate, and also seizing the non-Spanish lands of Hawai‘i and American Samoa for good measure. This marked its entrance into the imperial club, previously the preserve of the great European powers. The twentieth century, particularly after World War 2 (1939-1945), saw the global expansion of US influence through military, economic, and cultural means. This period brought many US interventions in South and Central América. The Bretton Woods Conference, officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held in 1944 in the United States, established the post-World War 2 international monetary system, including the International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). This system was (and still is) dominated by the United States. It consolidated its paramount role in global politics and culture and cemented US monopoly on the name “American”. Still, Ibero-Americans clung to the broad, continental conception of América. Now, enter Bad Bunny to reset history and the understanding of what “América” means. To close his Super Bowl half-time set he assembled all the national flags of the continent and with the words “God bless América” he led them off the field in a Carnival style jump up as he called each country by name (with “Antillas” used for all the Lesser Antilles, including Trinidad and Tobago).

I was a member of FIFA’s Technical Study Group – the global panel of technicians who analyze and report on FIFA tournaments – at the 2011 U20 World Cup hosted by Colombia, home of drug lord Pablo Escobar but also of the genius Gabriel García Marquez and his “magical realism” literary style, both of whom loved football – the former financing Atletico Nacional of Medellín while the latter adored Atletico Junior of Baranquilla. Life is abundant in contradictions and complexities. On my journey from the airport into Medellín I asked my Colombian attaché, a young, enthusiastic football fan, which club he supported. His face erupted into a broad smile as he responded “América de mi corazón” or in English, “América of my heart”) and effusively expressed his undying love for his hometown team América de Cali, fifteen times champion of Colombia and four times runner-up of CONMEBOL’s Copa Libertadores. His metaphorical substitution of his heart for his city in the name of his club said everything about the relationship South Americans have to football, one infused with a quasi-religious fervour that we Trinis know little of.

The football of our continent gives us many interesting club names – Always Ready and The Strongest (Bolivia), Palestino and Santiago Morning (Chile), Newell’s Old Boys (Argentina), Liverpool (Uruguay) and Corinthians (Brasil) being just a few examples. But one name is shared by many clubs from Mexico in the north to Brasil in the south – “América”. The list includes notable clubs in Mexico (Club América, from which local club Joe Public loaned a player in 1998), Colombia (América de Cali), Ecuador (América de Quito), Paraguay (Sol de América), Peru (América FC), Uruguay (Sud América), Nicaragua (América FC), El Salvador (Club América), Venezuela (América de Caracas), and many in different states across Brasil (América Mineiro, América-Rio de Janeiro, América Natal, and América Curitiba among them). This phenomenon of an internationally shared club nomenclature is found nowhere else in global football, and it bares the roots, deeply embedded in the collective psyche of the Ibero-American peoples, of América as a continental not national concept – a shared identity forged by centuries of Iberian colonialism and modern neo-colonialism.

“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we were Americans.” Bad Bunny at the 2026 Grammys

The NFL is controlled by very sharp business people. For this reason the average NFL franchise is worth USD 7 billion, with the top team, the Dallas Cowboys, being valued at USD13 billion. And the league is aggressively expanding its global appeal and reach. It chose Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl half-time performer due to his immense global popularity and to connect to his diverse fan base. His halftime show averaged one hundred and twenty-eight million viewers, making it the fourth-most-watched halftime show in history. The decision to use him was an excellent marketing decision but at a visceral and more fundamental level Bad Bunny’s performance transcended business and marketing. It was inherently political and profoundly subversive of the deluded notion of “America” (the United States) as a “white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation” (it has never been that and never will be), as well as the newly minted version of the antiquated geopolitical concept of the American continent as the United States’ “backyard” within which it has the unilateral, self-appointed right to do as it pleases. Bunny reclaimed the name “América” for all the peoples of the continent, from Canada in the north to Tierra del Fuego at the end of the world in the south, even as he claimed the United States as the legitimate home of all, including the black and brown immigrants of the Americas, who live and contribute to that country in peace and harmony. He sang for all who hold to the broad continental conception of América and who, despite our intra-American problems, believe “all ah we is one”. As Bunny said at the end “Seguimos aqui” or in English, “We here and we not moving”. Yet, the anti-people ideas and policies that he challenged are supported by some across the American continent, including some Trinis, high and low. For that reason we will need more songs and more resistance for “América de mi corazón.”

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the preceding article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of any organisation in which he is a stakeholder.