Bad Bunny, the headliner of the Super Bowl LX halftime show, has never been reserved about his origins. He showcases Puerto Rico on the global stage through both his music and sartorial choices.
One of the most distinct examples lies in his embrace of jíbaro fashion. The jíbaro, a rural farmer with a history of working the land, has long held a complex position in Puerto Rican culture. When Bad Bunny wears a pava (straw hat) at the or a (shirt with four pockets) by, the significance transcends mere style. By centering a once-exploited and later stigmatized symbol of rural Puerto Rican life in global pop culture, he reverses centuries of elite appropriation and erasure.
The jíbaro is no longer a folkloric caricature. Carried into global pop culture by Bad Bunny, it has become a living symbol of dignity and resistance—particularly for younger generations—asserting that Boricua identity belongs on the world stage without hesitation.
This shift is evident across the archipelago. Walking through Viejo San Juan, it is now common to see young boys casually wearing pavas, not as costumes but as fashion. This image mirrors Bad Bunny himself, confidently seated on a goalpost in attire for the Super Bowl halftime show, his pava tilted with ease.
Until recently, such a scene would have been unimaginable outside folkloric performances or school events like La Semana de la Puertorriqueñidad. For decades, the pava was confined to caricature, tourism imagery, or nostalgic display. Its resurgence as casual, aspirational fashion coincided with the —a Bad Bunny album that honors Puerto Rico’s musical traditions while offering pointed critiques of inequality, displacement, and political failure.
Bad Bunny’s subsequent residency in San Juan further solidified this cultural shift. From July to September 2025, over 31 nights at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot, more than per show witnessed not just infectious rhythms but a sustained celebration of Puerto Rican identity. With over and , Bad Bunny used his global platform to showcase Puerto Rican pride on an unprecedented scale.
The residency also had tangible economic effects. Hundreds of thousands of fans traveled to Puerto Rico during what is typically a slow season. San Juan’s City Hall estimates the economic impact at , while a separate Gaither International study places it closer to . Here, culture directly translated into material benefit.
During the Debí Tirar Más Fotos tour, Bad Bunny’s performance wardrobe drew on the jíbaro aesthetic. To understand the weight of this gesture, it is crucial to grasp the figure’s long and conflicted history.
The jíbaro has never been a neutral symbol. Under Spanish colonial rule, rural peasants were frequently characterized by elites as uncivilized, lazy, and backward. Yet by the late 18th century, the jíbaro entered elite cultural production—not as an agent with autonomy, but as an image to be appropriated.
In 1776, Spanish artist Luis Paret y Alcázar, exiled to Puerto Rico, : loose white shirt, worn trousers, straw hat, plantains in one hand, machete in the other. Historian Francisco Scarano describes this as “”—the elite adoption of peasant identity for symbolic political gain. While the image projected resilience and connection to the land, actual jíbaros remained marginalized.
19th-century Puerto Rican criollo elites continued this pattern. In (1849), writer Manuel A. Alonso romanticized rural simplicity while erasing the racial and class realities of jíbaro life. These depictions often Europeanized the jíbaro’s features, turning him into a noble yet static emblem: useful for defining national identity but disconnected from the lived experiences of Black and Brown agricultural workers.
Later, in the 1930s, Luis Muñoz Marín recast the jíbaro as a . In 1938, he commissioned artist Antonio I. Colorado to make the pava the centerpiece of the . The party’s slogan—Pan, Tierra, Libertad—framed the jíbaro as the moral core of the nation, even as steadily eroded rural life.
The contradiction was striking. Muñoz Marín, from a privileged background and holding significant political power, often wore a guayabera while meeting subsistence jíbaros, many of whom lacked basic necessities, including shoes. The 1950s brought , rapid industrialization, and mass displacement. Rural populations were labeled backward, their ways of life devalued in favor of urban-industrial progress.
Communities once elevated through romanticized jíbaro imagery were largely excluded from the prosperity modernization promised. While monuments honored the figure, rural Puerto Ricans faced poverty, educational neglect, and economic marginalization. In urban settings, jíbaro even became slang for ignorance, reversing its earlier nationalist connotation.
Bad Bunny’s reclamation of the jíbaro must be understood against this backdrop. When he wears the pava or guayabera, he is not romanticizing or erasing the jíbaro. He is reclaiming it on his own terms.
Bad Bunny has transformed a symbol of shame into a cultural movement, boldly declaring that ser Boricua está de moda (being Boricua is fashionable). His cultural politics amplify marginalized Puerto Rican voices, from to and . When he takes the Super Bowl halftime stage, rural and urban landscapes will converge. Reggaetón will blend into . Puerto Rican identity will be presented not as a relic, but as dynamic, contemporary, and unapologetically alive.
