As the singer launched into the chorus of another song about Puerto Rican pride, a young woman with the island’s flag wrapped around her shoulders raised her hands to her face and wiped away a tear.
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“Viva Puerto Rico,” she shouted, as the crowd in the El Choli stadium in San Juan swelled. “I never want to leave this place.”
On this island, dotted in the Caribbean Sea between the Dominican Republic and the Virgin Islands, a profound political shift is under way, which has turned a generation of young Puerto Ricans into activists and thrown the future of the island’s status as a US unincorporated territory into question — to the alarm of politicians in Washington.
This summer, it is being reflected, fuelled and amplified as never before, by a 31-year-old artist who was working on a supermarket checkout until nine years ago.
The musician Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known professionally as Bad Bunny, is by any measure one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Between 2020 and 2022 he was the most-played artist on Spotify, and the first performer to claim the top spot three years running.
His forthcoming world tour sold 2.6 million tickets in a week and his decision to kick it off with a 30-date residency on his home island, instead of performing on the US mainland, has become a rallying call for Puerto Rican pride and nationalism, while delivering a welcome boost to the island’s fragile economy.
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