Nelson Maldonado-Torres
P U B L I S H E D : J U N E 7 , 2 0 2 5
P u e r t o R i c o W O R L D
Original: “Un verano en PR: Bad Bunny y el encantamiento decolonial combativo de la música afro-caribeña.” En 80 grados.
7 de junio, 2025. URL: https://www.80grados.net/un-verano-en-pr-bad-bunny-y-el-encantamiento-decolonial-combativo-de-la-musica-afro-caribena/
80 grados intro:
Bad Bunny does not return to the Choli [the events center where the “Residencia” took place in Puerto
Rico] this summer: he places himself on it like an altar is placed in the middle of colonial chaos. “No me
quiero ir de aquí” [I don’t want to leave here] is not a tour: it is an ontological affirmation, a danced trench
in face of displacement. In DeBI TiRAR MáS FOToS, the rabbit turns into a sorcerer of the urban
Caribbean–vindicating music against forgetfulness, uprootedness and the cynicism of the official history.
Salsa, bomba, and perreo become rite, memory in movement. Nueva York becomes Nuevayol, the
diaspora surrenders itself to the spell of a summer without end. What appeared as reggaeton is, in truth,
a counter-spell. Because in the boricua archipelago dancing can still be insurgency. And this, “¡coño!
(damn it), unsettles.
Original in Spanish: Bad Bunny no regresa al Choli este verano: se instala, como se instala
un altar en medio del desmadre colonial. No me quiero ir de aquí no es una gira: es una
afirmación ontológica, una trinchera bailada frente al desplazamiento. En DeBI TiRAR
MáS FOToS, el conejo muta en hechicero del Caribe urbano—reivindicando la música
como arma contra el olvido, el desarraigo y el cinismo de la historia oficial. Salsa, bomba y
perreo devienen rito, memoria en movimiento. Nueva York se vuelve Nuevayol, la
diáspora se rinde al embrujo de un verano sin fin. Lo que parecía reguetón es, en
realidad, un contra-hechizo. Porque en el archipiélago borincano, bailar todavía puede ser
insurgencia. Y eso, ¡coño!, incomoda.
Published in Spanish on June 7, 2025
The text below is an automated translation with few corrections meant to be only temporary.
Consult the Spanish original for accuracy. Translation provided by Apple’s Safari.
Summer is coming and with it Bad Bunny’s residence in Puerto Rico. As soon as it was announced, the hotel industry and tourism celebrated, and perhaps even a large part of the bad rabbit detractors had to admit that there was something to praise in the plans. In “BOKeTE” the singer tells us that “in PR all the time is summer,” but this does not mean that the months of June to August will stop being special, especially for the youth who are “on vacation” and for the many tourists who visit the Caribbean archipelago.
Summer is also significant for a large portion of the extended Puerto Rican community since it is synonymous with heat and relaxation in those northern states, which reduces the sense of distance with Puerto Rico. DeBI’s first song TiraR Más FOToS reminds us of it when it celebrates what the Gran Combo of Puerto Rico popularized with its song “Un verano en Nueva York.”
“If you want to have fun with charm and with exquisite
You just have to live a summer in New York”
“A summer in New York” was written by Afro-Cuban Justi Barreto and sung by “Niño de Tras Talleres” and Afro-Puerto Rican Andy Montañez. The genre of the song is salsa, which originates as a confluence of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean rhythms by “young people from the Latin Caribbean world migrant in New York,” to use the words of sociologist Ángel G. Quintero Rivera. 1] For an album like DeBI TiraR Más FOToS, which is a love letter to Puerto Rico, these data are extremely important, especially since salsa is present in several songs of the album.
It should not be strange that rhythms and body movements that played a crucial role in the affirmation of the lives of people kidnapped in Africa and subjected to racial slavery in the Caribbean, traveled with their descendants and exercised a similar
function in the northern spaces where they were going to build a home and community as part of migratory waves pushed by the structural injustice of colonialism and coloniality in the region. And it is that music and dancing are not merely forms of entertainment.
Although music and dance, in general, have transformative effects on the experience of space and time, Afrodiasporic music and dance have stood out for interrupting the colonial spatial-temporal order and creating a space-time that facilitates and encourages the meeting of people who feel and know they are free.[ 2] I once heard Marta Moreno Vega say with reference to Aphrodiasporic music that the people who play it are priestess and priests.[ 3] I immediately related it to the power of music to transform space and time, creating through sound and dance conditions of possibility for the affirmation of subjectivity, corporeality, and human intersubjectivity.[ 4] It is a reenchantment of the world in catastrophic contexts where dehumanization, coloniality, and perpetual war have been naturalized.[ 5] In that sense, decolonial artistic and
musical production, including dance, represent fundamental counter-catastrophic insurgencies.[ 6]
In a way, the exhortation with which “A Summer in New York” of the Gran Combo begins and “NUEVAYol” by Bad Bunny suggest this approach to Afrodiasporic music. The etymology of the verb “fun,” from the Latin “divertere,” makes it clear that having fun is not merely entertainment. Understood in relation to the meaning of “divertere,” to have fun means to change course or take a turn [“verter” means to turn] in front of something painful or painful. In that sense, for a person who plays music in the context of the catastrophe of modernity / coloniality, “having fun with charm” could be interpreted not only as enjoyment, but also as a rejection of pain and colonial trauma through a turn that entails an enchantment of the world. In other places I have referred to this movement as a decolonial turn.[ 7]
Interpreted in this way, the “primor” can refer to art or the ability to re-enchant the world through an act of sacred or quasi-sacred character (music and dance, following Moreno Vega’s pattern) instead of succumbing to trauma and suffering. In that sense, having fun with charm and with refinement has to do with “having a good time,” but for communities that live in dehumanizing, catastrophic, and under condemnation conditions, “having a good time” has metaphysical and ontological implications. These dimensions include the resignification of the past, the affirmation of life and community in the present, and the opening of horizons of possibility to futures that are not delimited or controlled by racial slavery, the colonial order, homophobia, or displacement.
In this sense, Afro-Caribbean music and dance constitute what could be characterized as the creation of “vortices” of decolonial possibilities where the principles of counter- plantation are affirmed: “tout moun, se moun” (in Haitian Creole it means each person is person, or everyone is someone).[ 8] This approach highlights the metaphysical dimensions of music and Afrodiasporic dance and suggests a philosophical reading of not only of “NUEVAYol,” but also of topics such as “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” where learning to dance and love with someone special are linked and appear as the condition of possibility of a life – beyond that dictated by the principle of coloniality – that deserves to be remembered and that resists being forgotten.[ 9] “INnolVIDABLE DANCE” can be understood as a counter-catastrophic device spell where learning to dance serves as a metaphor for learning to live in a different way than is dictated by coloniality.
The decolonization of time and space
The decolonization of time and space From the beginning of “DeBI TiRAR Más FOToS,” the song “NUEVAYol” summarizes the effort of the album: to present Puerto Rico as a project under construction that involves the creative link between the living past (represented in the song by the golden era of salsa) and present (in the rhythms of reggaeton and dembow and by the reference to today’s New York), as well as between the Borinque archipelago in the Caribbean and its extension in its diasporas and other Caribbeans.[ 10] The music here serves as a type of ritual ceremony qua decolonial alchemy that calls for people who listen or dance to participate in the decolonization of time and space. The transmutation is clear: from the colonial construction called the Commonwealth of the Commonwealth, we move on to the decolonial-imaginary of “P FKN R.”
“DeBI TiraR Más FOToS” can be understood as an exploration of fundamental elements in the emergence and constitution of “P FKN R.” “P FKN R” is a re-enchanted and decolonized space that is not focused on the mountains or the coast, but on the free and voluntary movement between mountain and coast, urban and rural area, street and beach, Caribbean waters and buildings in New York, among other spaces that are well highlighted in the songs of the album.
The road to go begins in the album with a recognition of salsa and nuyoricanism (in “NUEVAYoL”). To hell with artistic, geographical, and linguistic essentialism! Knowing how to have fun in the pan-Caribbean space of Nuevayol opens the way that will help understand the emergence of a combative decolonial subjectivity that will dare to say in the last song of the album:
“No one gets me out of here
I don’t move from here
Tell him that this is my house
Where my grandfather was born
No one gets me out of here
I don’t move from here
Tell him that this is my house
Where my grandfather was born
I’m from P fuckin’ R (ah, how?, He says)
I’m from P FKN R (oh, let’s see, come on, let him come here)
(Hey, hey, hey, hey)
I’m from P FKN R (oops, now, now, now)
I’m from P FKN R (Long live!)”
These firm and explicit statements that oppose the displacement in Puerto Rico cannot be separated from the fact that New York has served as a refuge for Puerto Ricans who have fought against the colonialism of the Spanish Kingdom before 1898, and as a place of concentration among Puerto Ricans who have opposed the “Yankee” domain after 98. Therefore, although there is a close historical relationship between Cuba and Puerto Rico, there is also one between Nuevayol and P FKN R. Nuevayol and P FKN R appear in “DeBI TiraR Más FOToS” as anthems that celebrate and motivate decolonial mutations: from New York it goes to Nuevayol and from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico it goes to P FNK R. The (decolonial) artist emerges as a sorcerer to reinforce and enhance decolonial dimensions of the cultural reality that the communities themselves have already forged in their struggle.
In “DeBI TiraR Más FOToS” music and dance facilitate the decolonial movement and contribute to the propagation and generation of a subjectivity that rejects the principles and habits of the colony, including forced displacement. That is also why music becomes a vehicle of utmost importance to remind us of the catastrophic dimension of colonialism and displacement (“WHAT HAPPENED to HAWAii”), and to examine the behavior of those who visit Puerto Rico while ignoring the traumas and wounds of colonialism (“TURiSTA”).
In DeBI TiraR Más FOToS, Afro-Caribbean music and dance (“the perreo, the salsa, the bomb, and the plena” as they are named in a verse of “THE MuDANZA”) appear as vital devices that link bodies as well as generations through time and space. It is in this sense that music and dance seem to have the character of spell or enchantment that transforms space and time lived, and therefore links to temporality, spatiality, and subjectivity.
Let’s not forget that “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” characterizes life as a “party that never ends” and that “the party” where music and Afro-Caribbean dance reigns names the space-time of enchantment where unsuspected possibilities of being, knowing, and power are opened against the catastrophe of colonial dehumanization, racism, and perpetual war.
Nor should we forget that in “LA MUDANZA” (and I emphasize both the “M” of movement and mutation [from the Latin verb “mutare”], as the “DANCE” qua generating movement that links time and space) it was that Tito, son of Benito, “met Lysi” and that from there was born “the baby,” Benito (Bad Bunny) who describes himself in the subject as “the best of the new” because he was raised “in the old way.”
“LA MuDANZA” is a tribute and expression of intimate and personal gratitude that celebrates free movement as the basis for the constitution of a home and a mother (P FKN R). What greater tribute to his parents that “the baby” grows up and composes a theme that not only asks for an applause for them, but that elevates free movement and community (even beyond having a partner and forming a family) as basic coordinates of the Puerto Rican nation? “LA MuDANZA” is at the same time a letter, poem, will, song, and hymn that celebrates the dignified human life and the fight against colonialism and displacement.
The Puerto Rican nation is represented in “LA MUDANZA” by the “clear blue flag,” the one that, as Jorell Meléndez-Badillo reminds us in the “visualizer” of “NUEVAYoL,” was created by Puerto Ricans exiled in New York, which accentuates the character of rooting and belonging to a place but also decentralized of the conception of Puerto Rican nationality in DeBI TiraR Más FOToS.[ 11]
From the July 4th party to a permanent combative summer in P FKN R[12]
“Hey, hey, hey, July 4, July 4 I’m with my cousin, drunk, rulay Mine in the Bronx know the one there is With the note in high for Washington Heights”
Both “A Summer in New York” and “NEW” highlight the power of the space-temporal- intersubjective and decolonial spell/enchantment in the idea that even July 4 is taken by Puerto Ricans in New York as an opportunity to continue celebrating – music and dance, as they have been characterized here, central elements of the party.
That the Independence Day of the United States becomes one of the many moments that give rise to the party – understood as affirmation and execution of free movement from the Bronx (place of greatest concentration of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York) to Washington Heights (long considered as the home away from home for the Dominican community) – in the summer of New Yol constitutes a subversive act in the face of the patriotism of white supremacy in the United States.[ 13] It is a patriotism that characterizes above all the American right, represented today by the government of the current president, but also a large part of the liberals and democrats.
The celebration of July 4 is already acquiring a strategic importance for the right of the United States as in 2026 the 250th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence will be celebrated. Already in January of this year Trump signed an Executive Order to celebrate the semi-five hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. For their part, both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humananities adjusted their priorities and made it clear that resources that would have served to support projects to support vulnerable communities will now be used to fund projects that celebrate the semi- fiftennial.
There is no doubt that the rest of 2025 and much of 2026 will serve as a platform for the Trump administration to try to solidify his highly racist vision of US history and continue his war against the legacy of the struggle for civil rights and decolonization, of the LGBTQ movements (especially black and “colored”), and the Black Lives Matter in the United States.
In that context, it is relevant that both “A summer in New York” and “NEW York” invite us to Puerto Ricanize July 4 by presenting it as another moment in the activities in which Puerto Ricans do what they “want,” also evoking Martínez Ocasio. For subjects who live under a colonial yoke, doing what they want is an act of rebellion and combativeness. In the context of colonialism and coloniality, doing what one wants can well mean the beginning of a decolonial attitude that can become a project.
“DeBI TiRAR Más FOToS: represents perhaps a development or maturity of the decolonial attitude that is clearly found in the work of Martínez Ocasio. The image of the boy claiming his freedom in videos of “YHLQMDLG,” is not left behind, but the character of the concho toad and the presence of an eminent poet, thinker and artist over 90 years old (Jacobo Morales) in his latest musical production – see “DeBI TiraR MásS FOToS (Short Film)” is integrated.
The album reflects a process of maturity. Doing what I feel like gives way to a reflection on duty, or more precisely, on what I “should” have done from the point of view of a future “I” that is represented by our elderly women and women in Puerto Rico – next to the “short film” mentioned see the video of “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.” The perspective of them, elles, and they make clear the importance of making community in PR and avoiding displacement.
Bad Bunny’s work celebrates being born, growing, and aging in PR without ceasing to recognize and affirm the value of making community in the diaspora or the right to move: not only to visit Nuevayol when we feel like it but also to bring others to show PR, as is proudly stated in the second song of the album “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR.”
Hence it is worth affirming a wish with the power of an imperative: doing “what I want” takes a more precise expression in the “I don’t want to leave here,” phrase that gives its name to Martínez Ocasio’s residence this summer in the Choliseo of Puerto Rico. The residency begins on July 11, that is, just one week after the celebration of US Independence Day. It is as if Martínez Ocasio were telling us that although we can Puerto Ricanize on July 4, as well pointed out in “NUEVAYoL,” this must be done within the context of a summer – and in PR the whole year is summer – where the sense of belonging and collectivity is affirmed in a context of enjoyment, dance, sadness, longing, and above all struggle.
To think of a summer in PR is to affirm the possibility of an endless season of spells/charms where times and spaces are creatively linked in ways to generate unforgettable dances in a context of struggle against displacement and colonialism.
We must not forget the role of Bad Bunny in another summer, that “combative” summer of 2019 when in his meeting with iLe and Residente, Martínez Ocasio accused the then governor of “homophobic, liar, [and] criminal” and proposed that “The cradle of the offspring, with the Puerto Rican no one gets involved.”[ 14]
The expression “I don’t want to leave here” not only continues the legacy and mark of that combative summer, but also adds new dimensions. Consider what does it mean to “not want to leave here” in the context of raids, imprisonments, and mass deportations of migrants by the government currently in power in the United States? Also consider what “I don’t want to leave here” means in the context of the genocide of the Palestinian people and Trump’s statements regarding the eviction of the Gaza Strip to create the “Middle East River.”
“I don’t want to leave here” becomes in this context a cry of ethical revolt and an affirmation of fundamental political principles—especially the “decoloniality principle,” which includes the affirmation of the sense of belonging to a place, hospitality, and the right to movement—from the experience of colonization, displacement, exile, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Let’s not dismiss what this means in the face of the praise by the current president of the United States of what Malcolm X once described as the “American nightmare” (American) and the colonial and racial principles on which it is based.
NOTES:
[1] See Angel G. Quintero Rivera, Sauce, flavor and control! Sociology of “tropical” music, (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1998): 17.
[2] As Quintero Rivera states “The analysis of music is also central to understanding the social for its importance with respect to one of the two great coordinates where life takes place: time. The other coordinate is space; and in dance, the link between the two is musically represented” (Salsa! 35). Quintero Rivera highlights the role of rhythm in African and Afro-Caribbean music, as opposed to melody, which is privileged in the European tradition (202). That rhythm is perhaps the basis of the spell/enchantment of time and space that occurs in Afro-Caribbean “tropical” music. Dance is a way of creatively embodying this rhythm, and that is why it is a fundamental part of that enchantment. This is related to something that I have written in another context and that is part of the series of reflections to which this essay belongs and to which I will be referring in the notes. In this case the reflections are in the chapter entitled “On Metaphysical Catastrophe, Post-continental Thought, and the Decolonial Turn”: “Music is also intimately connected with time, while its performative dimension connects it centrally with space. Decolonial dance, or the movement of the body through space in a manner that claims spatiality and embodiment differently, is also part of a decolonial aesthetic understood as a specific mode of aesthesis that advances decolonization” (chapter 7 of Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, ed. Tatiana Flores and Michelle A. Stephens (Los Angeles: Museum of Latin American Art, 2017): 256). See also the eighth thesis of “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality,” Fondation Frantz Fanon (2016), partially translated into Spanish as “Schema of ten theses on coloniality and decoloniality,” which explores the theme of decolonial aesthetics.
[3] Marta Moreno Vega is a prominent intellectual, cultural leader, and Afro-Puerto Rican Yoruba priestess born and raised in East Harlem in New York City. She was the second director of the Neighborhood Museum and founded the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in Harlem, New York. I heard Moreno Vega make this comment in June 2023, in the context of a mini-institute that is part of a project in which we both participate along with other figures such as the doctor and executive director of the Piñones se Integra Corporation, Maricruz Rivera Clemente, the dancer and choreographer Patricia Nicholson Parker, the jazz musician William Parker, and the specialist in sound studies and/or literature Carter Mathes. The project, financially supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, is titled “Understanding Spirit: Black Religious Practice and the Search for Racial Justice.” In her spiritual memoir The Altar of My Soul: The Living Traditions of Santería (New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 2000), Moreno Vega writes about the power of music to transform the feeling of time and space. Consider the following: “The power of Cortijo’s bombas placed me into another zone when the beat of his drums penetrated my body. This was island music that celebrated the beauty of being black Puerto Ricans, while the music of Machito, Graciela, and Mario Bauza swirled through the building with the song “Tanga,” which united African American jazz with Afro-Cuban pulsating rhythms” (74). She continues: “On Saturdays, when I visited Abuela’s apartment, she would put away her mop and we would sing and dance to the songs of her albums, specially moved by the upbeat songs to the orishas. Often Abuela was so lost in the music that she forgot I was there. Her steps and hand movements changed with each song, creating visual movements of the sea, thunder, and lightning, as she moved around the kitchen like a graceful whirlwind. Filled with the energy of the music, she would pull me into her imaginary circle, encouraging me to follow her movements. These movements of shared joy created a powerful worldless bond between us. We lived in the moment, feeling no need to speak with each other or anyone else of our delight in singing and dancing” (75). “Years later, in 1981,” Moreno Vega recalls, “when I found my true spiritual home in Santería, I began to recognize the mind-altering power of music in African-based religions in the New World” (75).
[4] Moreno Vega’s comment on the priestly dimension of people who play and sing Afro-diasporic music led me to think about the eighth thesis of my “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality” (2016), where I wrote that “In decolonial artistic creation, the incarnate subject emerges as someone who can not only reflect on, but also shape, change, and reshape subjectivity, space, and time…. Decolonial music can interrupt the logic of space and make subjects experience multiple forms of time through various rhythms, while dance and decolonial performance can be seen as a ritual or the promulgation of a body that claims a body, a time and a space conducive to decolonization [“In decolonial artistic creation, the embodied subject emerges as someone who can not only reflect about but also mold,experience multiple forms of time through various rhythms, while decolonial dancing and performance can be seen as a ritual or enactment of a body that claims a body, a time, and space that is conducive to decolonization” (27)]. In that same writing and in other more recent ones I elaborated the notion that decolonial aesthetics can be understood in relation to the final sentence [“prayer”] that appears in Piel negra, máscaras blancas by Frantz Fanon: “Decolonial artistic creation and decolonial spirituality aim to keep the body and the mind open as well as to keep the sense sharpened in ways that can best respond critically to anything that aims to produce ontological separation. In that sense, decolonial artistic creation can be understood as a form of extending the prayer that Fanon makes to his body in Black Skin, White Masks. Decolonial aesthetic creation, including decolonial performances of self and subjectivity are, among other things, rituals that seek to keep the body open as a continued source of questions, as a bridge to connect to others, and as prepared to act” (27).
[5] To the extent that Western modernity produces a certain “disenchantment of the world” (Weber) according to the coloniality of power (Quijano), knowledge, and being, the decolonial turn entails a re-enchantment that facilitates the link between the condemnation of the earth and its fight against coloniality. That decolonial thought does not follow the guidelines of secularism is extremely clear in writings such as those of Gloria Anzaldúa and Enrique Dussel. Already in Against War he presented Dussel and Frantz Fanon as post-secular decolonial thinkers. Anzaldúa’s work particularly served me as inspiration and reference in the formulation of the decolonial turn as one that envelops artistic creativity and spirituality, as is clear in the eighth thesis of “Outline of Ten Thesis on Coloniality and Decoloniality.” Anzaldúa’s writing and philosophy serve as an example of what I formulate here in terms of decolonial artistic production such as sorcery or combative decolonial enchantment/re-enchantment. In the context of the “combative summer” of 2019 in Puerto Rico, similar expressions were reflected both in the public activities of combative prayer, and in the manifestations of “combative perreo.” It was these actions in that “combative summer” in Puerto Rico that led me to start developing the theme of combative decoloniality and combative decolonial aesthetics, as reflected in works such as “Towards a Decolonial Combative Aesthetics,” and other works that I mention in the last note of this work. Regarding the post-secular character of decolonial thought, “Is Decolonial Theory Secular?: Lessons from Frantz Fanon” (2022).
[6] This point is part of the argument regarding the relevance of the category of the “catastrophe” for the decolonial turn. Catastrophe literally means based on the etymology of the Greek term “turn down,” which points to a profound dismantling of the conditions that allow the continuity of any story or narrative. In that sense, coloniality itself can be understood as a catastrophe, which is based on the fact that in the third thesis of the “Outline of Ten Thesis” it says that “Modernity/coloniality is a form of metaphysical catastrophe that naturalizes war.” In other writings such as in the reflection on crisis, disaster and catastrophe that served as an epilogue to the published book Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After María edited by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón I describe the catastrophe of modernity / coloniality as metaphysical, demographic, and environmental. In addition, the argument is presented that although coloniality is a “downward turn” it is continuously challenged with counter-catastrophic actions that can be part of another turn: a decolonial turn. Another relevant point to the decolonial turn qua turn against catastrophic par excellence is that it involves the “deprot” of catastrophic conditions and the decolonial spell or enchantment of the world (qua space/time/subjectivity and inter-subjectivity) through the arts, music, dance, and the performance of spiritual activities that seek to create the foundations for another way of being and re-existing. Regarding this last point, see “Art as a territory of re-existence: a decolonial approach.” On the subject of “deprot” “as an exorcism by which the subject tries to “cleanse himself” or get rid of the deep traces or marks of colonization” see (“Philosophical interventions in the incomplete project of decolonization,” 336-337. The idea of the catastrophic dimensions of coloniality and the characterization of artistic creativity and decolonial forms of thought as counter- catastrophic seem to play an important role in recent publications such as The Coloniality of Catastrophe in Caribbean Theater and Performance, edited by Camila Stevens and Jon. D. Rossini (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the one dedicated to “all of the artists and scholars who engage in counter catastrophic strategies in the Caribbean.” See also Jennifer A. Reimber, “From Crisis to Cata/Strophe: Prepositional Poetics as Decolonizing Praxis,” JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies 4, no. 1 (2022): 155-75.
[7] As discussed in the previous note, in another context I have argued that the demographic, environmental, and metaphysical catastrophe of modernity/coloniality represents a “downturn” where the basic coordinates of a human world are broken and from which the hell of permanent war arises in modernity/coloniality. Given this, a “decolonial turn” is needed that reveals the problematic character of modernity/coloniality and the possibilities of change from the creativity and action of the earth’s damnations. See “Outline of Ten Theses” and “The decolonial turn,” trad. New approaches to Latin American studies, ed. Juan Poblete (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 193-2021). For a creative interpretation and artistic production regarding the decolonial turn see “Psychis: a decolonial turn” (2024) by filmmaker Tito Román. “Psychis” documents catastrophe at the level of mind and identity and offers examples of counter- catastrophic acts as part of combative decoloniality.
[8] I take the concept of “vortex” in the sense that I use it here from the South African artist and philosopher of Soweto Sibusiso Nkumalo, and the conception of human in Haitian Creole and the reference to the counter-plantation of the Haitian sociologist Jean Casimir. For the direct appointment, see Jean Casimir, The Haitians: A Decolonial History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020: 341).
[9] On the principle of coloniality see “The U.S. at 250, Coloniality, and Political Zionism in Perspective” (2025). At the moment I am developing the idea of decolonial creative principles and actions and this essay motivated by the most recent production of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is part of those reflections.
[10] I use the concept of building intentionally and keeping in mind the Fanonian conception of decolonization as the task of building or building the world of the “You” (Black skin, white masks) and the motto of the Feminist Collective in Construction, “Let’s build another life.”
[11] The references to the nation in the previous paragraph and in this one should be understood in line with Fanon’s approach about the importance of thinking the nation beyond nationalism (see Frantz Fanon, Los condenados de la tierra, translated by Julieta Campos (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001). This perspective is consistent with the approach of Meléndez-Badillo in his recent Puerto Rico: History of a nation, where he argues that “In spaces without a sovereign nation-state, the idea of nation becomes a field of struggle in which different social groups and institutions negotiate the understandings of belonging, of the past and … of other possible futures” (Puerto Rico: History of a nation. Trad. Aurora Lauzardo (Princeton: Princeton University Press; Mexico City: Planeta, 2024): 8).
[12] This section complements “The U.S. at 250, Coloniality, and Political Zionism in Perspective” (2025).
[13] In this sense, “the party” also has an ontological and metaphysical dimension: it poses the continuity of the spells/enchantments of the world in ways to concretize the decolonization of life and motivate the fight against catastrophe. The parties (think of the various festivals of villages, including those of San Sebastian in San Juan, Puerto Rico) have an irreducible decolonial dimension, which does not deny the contradictions that occur in them, including the impact of commercialization, capitalism, and manipulation by political leaders.
[14] Resident, iLe, and Bad Bunny, “Shorking the knives.” See also the forum organized by Joaquín Villanueva and Marisol LeBrón entitled “The Decolonial Geographies of Puerto Rico’s 2019 Summer Protests: A Forum,” (2020). The “combative summer” of 2019 also served as inspiration for the formulation of the concept of “combative decoloniality” as it appears in the call of the Frantz Fanon Foundation as part of the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of his death and the publication of The Damned of the Earth. My approach to the idea of decolonial combativity or combative decoloniality in this work is in dialogue with other works in which I have recently explored the subject, namely, “Liberation Philosophy and the Search for Combative Decoloniality: A Fanonian Approach” in Struggles for Liberation in Abya Yala, ed. Luis R. Díaz Cepeda and Ernesto Rosen Velásquez (Hoboken: Wiley- Blackwell, 2024), “Combative Decoloniality and the Abolition of the Humanities: A Manifesto” in The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature, ed. Laura R. Brueck and Praseeda Gopinath (New York: Routledge, 2025), and the “Palestine, the War Against Decolonization, and Combative Decoloniality,” in The SAGE Handbook of Decolonial Theory (in the process of publication). These, and other recent works such as “Towards a Combative Decolonial Aesthetics” in The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, ed. Tatiana Flores, Florencia San Martín, and Charlene Villaseñor Black (New York: Routledge, 2024), or the work with Zandi Radebe entitled “Combative Decoloniality and the BlackHouse Paradigm of Knowledge, Creation and Action” in Knowing-Unknowing: African Studies at the Crossroads, ed. Katharina Schramm and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Leiden: Brill, 2024) make it clear that although there are important parts of DeBI TIRAR MásS FOToS and the residence in the Choliseo that can be understood from the perspective of decolonial thinking and in relation to combative decoloniality, not all of Bad Bunny’s recent work can be understood that way. In that sense, the notion of a permanent combative summer that I suggest around the meaning of the residence “I don’t want to leave here” offers a perspective on the possibilities that it invites to think and feel. We will have to see what both Bad Bunny and his team, as well as the diverse audience that listens to Bad Bunny and those who will be able to see him live this summer, do with the possibilities that Bad Bunny’s music is opening up. Obviously, no one should expect an immaculate decolonial expression, much less combative decolonial, but we must respect the contributions and bet on the possibilities that contribute to a decolonial vision of Puerto Rico in the creative work of Bad Bunny. In the end, like any good artist, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio is not merely an individual, but part of a generation and recipient of a legacy that comes from many currents among which there are definitely voices, ideas, rhythms, and combative decolonial actions. For an analysis of these issues in a part of Bad Bunny’s work prior to DeBI TiraR Más FOToS see Andrés Ignacio Rivera Amador’s doctoral thesis, “Analyzing Decolonial Subjectivities in Reggaeton and Latin-Trap Music in Puerto Rico: A Critical Discourse Analysis” (Duquesne University, 2025). Rivera Amador explores the decolonial dimension in “Bandoleros” by Don Omar and Tego Calderón, and in “Yo perreo sola” and in “El apagón” by Bad Bunny in dialogue with specialists on the subject such as Petra Rivera- Rideau, co-author of Bad Bunny Syllabus.