In the Caribbean lies an island once known as Borikén. A rich port, it became the target of European invaders whose relentless greed and violence brought about genocide, disease, and destruction. For centuries, the island has remained a colony, first of Spain, then of the United States, which now controls it under the name Puerto Rico. Its people, a blend of Taino, European, and African descent, have been denied true freedom, over their minds, bodies, and land, for hundreds of years.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, is the island’s most popular musical artist today. In January 2025, he released DtMF—an unapologetically Puerto Rican album dedicated to the island—written in Puerto Rican Spanish, with native instruments interwoven with contemporary sounds, frequent nods to salsa and merengue, and lyrical references to reggaeton artists. The album contains multiple messages: it is a beautiful love letter to the island, both as it was and as it is; a poignant reflection on what makes the island and its people unique; a raw expression of grief and loss, mourning what has been taken and destroyed; and a powerful protest against the devastating costs of colonization.
Colonizers encroach not only upon the land, but also the psyches of its inhabitants, violently dismantling values and traditions, erasing history, suppressing self-determination, and subjugating bodies. While protest often takes the form of marches or political action, artistic expression remains a deeply potent vehicle for resistance. Bad Bunny’s song “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawai’i” (“What Happened to Hawai’i”), from his album DtMF, exemplifies music as protest. In it, he draws a powerful parallel between the colonization of Puerto Rico and that of Hawai’i, a formerly sovereign nation annexed by the United States whose people have been subsequently oppressed and marginalized. His message is both incisive and urgent. The song’s lyrics serve as a warning against the consequences of displacement, gentrification, and the gradual erosion of cultural identity. Its musical accompaniment deepens and amplifies the emotional impact, enriching the force of the protest embedded within the words.
Ocasio co-wrote a short film to accompany the album, setting the stage for the themes of freedom and loss that run throughout DtMF. The film begins with a man thumbing through old photos from a box and showing them to his friend, a sapo concho, a toad species native to Puerto Rico. He shows “Concho” a wedding picture of himself and his late wife, and says to his friend, “debí tirar más fotos” (“I wish I had taken more photos”). After a quiet moment of reflection, he heads to a local bakery for a snack. As he walks through the neighborhood, he hears music from homes and passing cars, sees a family barbecuing, and smiles at tourists strolling by. At the café, a woman greets him with a brief buenos días before switching to English, her accent distinctly American. He continues to speak primarily in Spanish, but she responds only in English. Struggling to navigate the café’s modern, unfamiliar menu, he tries to order traditional Puerto Rican pastries, each attempt met with confusion and a bewildering variety of new versions of traditional items. They eventually reach an understanding, but the café’s “cashless” policy halts the transaction as he only has pesos [cash]. On this modernized and gentrified island, everything is beginning to slip away. He no longer feels at home. This moment of disorientation, where Spanish no longer functions as a medium of belonging, cash has no value, and his traditional foods have been made overly complicated, renders the homeland uncanny, transforming the familiar into a site of estrangement. A nearby customer notices his predicament and quietly covers the bill, gently refusing repayment. As the man leaves, the stranger softly says, “seguimos aquí” (“we are still here”).
The theme of displacement and loss throughout the film is embedded in the lyrics of Lo Que Le Pasó. The song’s chorus repeats:
“Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa
Quieren al barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya” (Ocasio, 2025)
Translated: “They want to take away the river and the beach too, they want my neighborhood and for my grandmother to leave.” The United States has plundered the island’s natural resources, left its people with limited economic opportunities, and denied them true political representation. In recent years, gentrification has only intensified. U.S. legislation has offered sweeping tax incentives to Americans, encouraging migration to the island. Although Puerto Rican law mandates that all beaches remain public, new developments increasingly, and illegally, block native access. In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the island, killing thousands, leveling neighborhoods, and collapsing the power grid. In its aftermath, wealthy U.S. investors seized the opportunity, fueled by greed and backed by tax breaks, to acquire land with little regard for local communities.
Bad Bunny continues:
Aquí nadie quiso irse, quien se fue sueña con volver
Si algún día me tocara, que mucho me va a doler (Ocasio, 2025)
He says: “No one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of returning. If one day it’s my turn, it’s going to hurt so much.” The impacts of colonization—economic, cultural, psychological—have led some Puerto Ricans to flee to the mainland U.S. in search of stability. Self-determination and identity are oppressed as people are coerced and forced to flee their home.
Bad Bunny sings:
Ella se ve bonita, aunque a veces le vaya mal
En los ojo’ una sonrisa, aguantándose llorar
La espuma de su’ orilla’ parecieran de champán
Son alcohol pa’ las herida’, pa’ la tristeza bailar
Son alcohol pa’ las herida’, porque hay mucho que sanar (Ocasio, 2025)
Here he sings: “She [the island] looks beautiful, even when things sometimes go wrong. In her eyes, a smile holds back her tears. The foam of her shores looks like champagne. It’s alcohol for her wounds, dancing away the sadness. It’s alcohol for her wounds because there’s so much to heal.” Puerto Ricans’ love for their home is a complex, whole-object relatedness. They know it is imperfect, nonetheless it is home and its people deserve the opportunity, without obstruction and with reparations, to heal it. The island, anthropomorphized, is alive and its inhabitants are psychically and materially attached to it. The term Boricua, used by many Puerto Ricans to identify themselves, can be understood as meaning, “I am the island.” The colonization of the island is mirrored by the feelings of psychic and corporeal possession and exploitation.
Bad Bunny sings:
No, no suelte’ la bandera ni olvide’ el lelolai
Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawáii (Ocasio, 2025)
He implores us: “No, don’t let go of our flag, nor forget the lelolai [a traditional Puerto Rican dance]. Because I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawai’i.” Here, Bad Bunny invokes two potent cultural symbols: the flag, perhaps the most powerful emblem of Puerto Rican pride, and the lelolai. In 1948, as a means of suppressing the island’s independence movement, the Puerto Rican legislature passed Law 53, known as the Gag Law. It criminalized the display of the Puerto Rican flag, the singing of patriotic songs, advocacy for independence, and participation in related assemblies (Denis, 2016). Bad Bunny’s lyrics are a poignant reminder of the ongoing struggle to hold onto these symbols and the identity, resistance, and history they carry.
The song is both a poignant warning and a tragic elegy whose deeper meanings resonate on an intimate level, striking a chord with Puerto Ricans. The cuatro, Puerto Rico’s national instrument, features prominently throughout, alongside the güiro, a gourd-based percussion instrument rhythmically scraped with a stick or tines. The güiro’s relentless pulse provides a steady beat, a rhythmic echo of Puerto Rican tradition and its enduring cultural presence. In the style of traditional jíbaro music, the song includes abrupt pauses, often just before the chorus. These breaks may mirror the island’s frequent power outages since Hurricane Maria, or perhaps symbolize the censorship and silencing of Puerto Rican voices within U.S. political structures and mainstream media. They might also serve as moments of stillness, opportunities to inhale the island’s essence and champagne shores before they slip away. Each pause is followed by a sound deeply rooted in Puerto Rican identity: the crow of a rooster, the call of the coquí frog who melodically sings its name, and finally, a cuatro trill and solo, layered with a haunting chorus of harmonic voices crescendoing into a commanding ending that fades with a final arpeggio. These sonic interruptions function as cultural flashbacks, evoking trauma not as a processed memory, but as a persistent echo of what cannot be fully spoken or resolved (Caruth, 1996).
The choice of the sapo concho in the album’s accompanying film is deeply symbolic. Rarer than the coquí, the sapo concho is dwindling in number, mirroring the losses Puerto Rico faces as its cultural fabric unravels. This toad serves as a figure of loss that resists symbolic containment, representing what is no longer accessible but continues to shape the island’s psychic life. Colonizers have plundered the land’s resources, impoverished its people, and blamed them for the very conditions they created. If something can be destroyed completely, it can be owned and remade in the image of the destroyer. The land, culture, or identity which survives, becomes distorted, commodified, and exploited for capitalist gain. Colonization is not merely an occupation of land but also of the mind. Bodies and minds are devalued, silenced, and possessed; history is rewritten, denied, and erased. The colonized are made to appear less than human, which serves to absolve the colonizer’s guilt and justify their actions. What remains, both in land and in psyche, is never truly free.
Otra jíbara luchando, una que no se dejó
No quería irse tampoco y en la isla se quedó
Y no se sabe hasta cuando- (Ocasio, 2025)
Bad Bunny sings, “Another jíbara [a Puerto Rican term for a rural farmer or worker], fighting, one who wouldn’t give up. She didn’t want to leave either, and she stayed on the island, and no one knows for how long.” As his music and message remind us, the struggle for Puerto Rico’s identity, land, and future is far from over. It is a fight against erasure, colonization, and the forces that seek to redefine what it means to be truly free. The island, like its people, endures, resilient and unyielding, always fighting to remain, heal, and reclaim what has been taken.
Decolonization, as Fanon (1965) asserts, is necessarily violent, and art remains a vital tool in the fight for liberation. Puerto Ricans are celebrating Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawai’i for its message, and are reacting with a deep emotional impact, but Bad Bunny has captured global attention with this album, resonating far beyond Spanish-speaking audiences. While the music itself is infectious, listeners worldwide connect with its themes of colonization and loss. From Hawai’i to Palestine, South Sudan to Guam, and countless other nations, the message of protest and freedom is powerfully felt.
References:
Caruth C (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Denis NA (2016). War against all Puerto Ricans: Revolution and terror in America’s colony. New York, NY: Bold Type
Books.
Fanon F (1965). The wretched of the Earth. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Ocasio BAM (2025). “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii [Song]” On DtMF. Rimas Entertainment.