The Symbolism Of Why Bad Bunny Climbed A Power Pole At The Super Bowl

Bad Bunny used his Super Bowl LX halftime performance on Sunday to spotlight Puerto Rico’s ongoing power crisis, climbing a power line pole while performing his 2022 protest song “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”).

Dancers dressed as jíbaros — traditional Puerto Rican farmers in straw pava hats — scaled poles that sparked and exploded around him as he waved a Puerto Rican flag in the colors of the independence movement.

The moment was widely interpreted as a direct reference to the island’s failing electrical infrastructure, which has been a persistent crisis since Hurricane Maria devastated the grid in 2017. On Christmas Eve 2025, yet another blackout left thousands of Puerto Ricans in the dark. No Film School called it “one of the most jarring visual metaphors” of the show — “a searing critique of Puerto Rico’s fragile power grid and the government’s failure following Hurricane Maria.”

The 13-minute performance — the first all-Spanish-language halftime show in Super Bowl history — drew an estimated 135 million viewers. It featured surprise appearances from Lady Gaga, who performed a salsa version of “Die With a Smile,” and Ricky Martin, who sang Bad Bunny’s “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” a track about gentrification on the island. Celebrities including Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, Jessica Alba, and Karol G danced on the field.

Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, closed the show holding a football inscribed with “Together We Are America” and proclaimed “God Bless America” while naming countries across the Western Hemisphere. A message on the stadium screen read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” echoing his speech at the 2026 Grammys, where his album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” became the first all-Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year.

The performance drew sharp criticism from President Trump, who posted on Truth Social that it was “absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” adding, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” Trump had previously skipped the event, calling Bad Bunny “a terrible choice.” Puerto Rican journalist Jorge Ramos responded on X: “Benito killed it! This is resistance. For the pride of being Latino and singing in Spanish.”

Petra Rivera-Rideau, co-author of a book on Bad Bunny’s cultural impact, told CBS News: “To have a Spanish language artist headlining this stage, which although not a national holiday, kind of functions like one — in the context where Spanish speakers, including Puerto Ricans, are getting racially profiled, are being harassed — to have someone like that on the stage is important.”