Dancers dressed as linemen showing moves on power poles during Bad Bunny’s performance in the Super Bowl halftime show did not do so by coincidence.
Instead, it was carefully planned to send a message to the officials regarding an issue that is plaguing his birthplace, Puerto Rico, i.e., intermittent power outages.
The Caribbean island has been seething since 2017 over the fact that the power grid there was not fully repaired.
Utilizing his spot at the Super Bowl halftime show, Bunny performed his track El Apagón, which literally translates to “blackout,” while dancers behind him danced on utility poles.
Adding a segment addressing the particular problem led to the Latin singer giving a voice to the voiceless, says Diana Hernández, a professor and co-director of the Energy Opportunity Lab at the Columbia Center for Global Energy Policy.
“For the public that might have forgotten, Bad Bunny climbing the poles gave voice and visibility to an unforgettable instance of being powerless in Puerto Rico in a very literal sense,” she tells Straight Arrow News.
Bad Bunny consistent advocacy
It is not the first time Bunny has raised the matter of Puerto Rico’s grid problems. He previously released a short documentary titled El Apagón, which, in Spanish, means “the power outage,” highlighting issues in the island’s power system in 2022.
Locals go solar
With roughly 3 million people facing faults in their island’s electrical system after Hurricane Maria in 2017, they moved to solar.
The current U.S. administration, however, axed $800 million from $1 billion in funding earmarked for fixing Puerto Rico’s power grid, citing reliance on renewable energy.
