Editor's Choice Ep. 13: P FKN R: Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican Resistance w/ Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau

Hosts Alexander Scott and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli speak with Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau about their new book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke University Press, 2026).

Díaz and Rivera-Rideau — creators of the "Bad Bunny Syllabus" — situate Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio within more than a century of Puerto Rican history and a much longer tradition of music as resistance. The conversation traces the political and economic conditions that shaped Bad Bunny's formative years: the end of Section 936, the debt crisis and the imposition of the fiscal oversight board Puerto Ricans call La Junta, the gentrification and displacement accelerated by Acts 20/22, and the devastation and abandonment of Hurricane María. Vanessa shares her family's own experience of the storm and its aftermath, and both authors discuss the summer 2019 uprising that forced Governor Ricardo Rosselló's resignation — with particular attention to the Black feminist organizing of Colectiva Feminista en Construcción and the deep genealogy connecting bomba and plena to reggaetón and perreo as forms of communal protest. They close with Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime performance, the politics of a Spanish-language anti-colonial statement on one of the most-watched stages in the world, and why, in Puerto Rico, the party is the protest.

Vanessa Díaz is associate professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020).

Petra R. Rivera-Rideau is associate professor of American Studies at Wellesley College and author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2015) and Fitness Fiesta!: Selling Latinx Culture through Zumba (Duke University Press, 2024).

Get the book:
P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance is available now from Duke University Press: https://www.dukeupress.edu/p-fkn-r (also available in Spanish)

Explore the Bad Bunny Syllabus: https://www.badbunnysyllabus.com/

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