Puerto Ricans hope for change as Bad Bunny drops new album

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP):

In a small bookstore in the Caribbean’s largest mall, dozens of people gathered on a recent evening for the launch of a slim dictionary. Its title is The ABC of DtMF, which is the newest album from Puerto Rico’s latest prodigious son, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny.

The singer has elevated the global profile of the island, a US territory, to new heights, promoting its traditional music, denouncing its gentrification and challenging its political status.

It was an unexpected opportunity for an island that for years has cried out about its territorial status, dwindling affordable housing, high cost of living, chronic power outages, medical exodus, and fragile economy. Puerto Ricans are optimistic that Bad Bunny’s new album and his series of 30 concerts that began Friday means they’ll finally be heard.

Ten minutes before the first concert on Friday, a giant billboard on stage lit up with the words, “Puerto Rico is a colony since Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the island during his second trip to the New World in 1493”.

The crowd that filled the 18,000-capacity coliseum whooped.

“This album has sparked a conversation around the world about our situation as a colony,” said Andrea Figueroa, a 24-year-old professional athlete.

Those born on the island of 3.2 million inhabitants are US citizens but cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections.

Figueroa said the album resonated with her because her father was one of thousands forced to leave the island in search of work as the economy crumbled. It’s a sentiment Bad Bunny sings about in What happened to Hawaii, with the lyric, “ He didn’t want to go to Orlando, but the corrupt ones kicked him out.”

The song taps into concern that the Puerto Rican identity is eroding amid an influx of people from the US mainland, many of them attracted by a 2012 law that allows Americans to move to the island and pay no taxes on capital gains if they meet certain conditions. Hundreds of Americans also snapped up properties in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, forcing more than 100,000 people to leave.

“ They want to take the river away from me and also the beach; they want my neighbourhood and the grandma to leave,” Bad Bunny sang on Friday.

The mostly young crowd booed loudly, flinching at their reality on an island where the housing price index increased by almost 60 per cent from 2018 to 2024 and where short-term rentals have surged from some 1,000 in 2014 to more than 25,000 in 2023.

Surprise guest

However, they cheered upon seeing Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James emerge from the house as a surprise guest.

The song hit Carmen Lourdes López Rivera especially hard. She works with the association of La Perla, an impoverished community once known as Puerto Rico’s biggest heroin distribution point. Investors have long sought to buy up the area, which is perched on a hill with deep turquoise waters lapping below a massive 16th-century fort popular with tourists.

“They have always said they want to kick us out of here,” she said. “We’re going to fight for what belongs to us.”

The effect of Bad Bunny’s album and concerts is already being felt. More than 35,000 hotel nights have been booked, with the concerts expected to attract more than 600,000 visitors, generate more than $186 million, and create more than 3,600 jobs.

Beyond that, Bad Bunny’s use of folkloric music like bomba and plena has revived interest in those musical traditions. Dozens of newcomers have requested classes and are seeking out teachers, and universities, including Princeton and Yale, have launched courses on Bad Bunny. There is even renewed interest in the Puerto Rican crested toad, the island’s sole indigenous toad species that is under threat and was featured in a video as part of Bad Bunny’s newest album.