February 18, 2025

Photo: Emmanuel Sanchez-Monsalve

Before he was Bad Bunny, when Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was still only Benito, named after his father, who was named after his father, growing up in a barrio called Almirante Sur in Vega Baja, about a 45-minute drive from San Juan depending on how good you are with potholes, he didn’t know much about Puerto Rico’s history. In school, he was taught that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the island; that Juan Ponce de León was its first governor, appointed by the Spanish Crown 4,000 miles away; and that Luis Muñoz Marín, the namesake of the big airport, became Puerto Rico’s first democratically elected governor in 1948.

“That’s basically 500 years in between of history that they don’t teach us,” he says. We’re sitting inside the claustrophobic back office of the Arthur Murray dance studio in Miramar, a San Juan neighborhood, a few days before Christmas. He’s between takes of his music video for “BAILE INoLVIDABLE,” an unexpectedly straight salsa track off his sixth studio album, which would be released two weeks later. The dark-wood-paneled room, its walls lined with VHS tapes, cassettes, and CDs, looks like it’s stuck in 1994. He’s still in the slightly wrinkled gray sweat suit he wore for filming, a gold chain with a teeny machete-shaped pendant around his neck. “They don’t talk about all the gringo governors that stole us just like Spain did,” he continues. “And all the gringo governors that killed Puerto Ricans, same as Spain fucking killed Taínos.”

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

By Madame Clairevoyant

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A biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.