I admit that at first, I didn’t like the spectacle that Bad Bunny organized for the celebration of the final of the NFL championship, an acronym that represents American football. A huge party is organized, which is watched by hundreds of thousands of people.
This year it was up to a Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny, to put on the show, who sponsors a terrible dance called “perreo.” The scenes weren’t spectacular but rather the daily life of many South American towns, inhabitants who, in large numbers, had moved their lives to the United States; their number is estimated at 68 million people. When they were being mistreated by ICE, the police specialized in deporting illegal immigrants, Bad allowed himself to defend his culture and his language, which were, in some way, changing the identity of the United States.
He spoke in Spanish without simultaneous translation, without filters, without concessions or subtitles, highlighting that it is the language, after Chinese, most spoken in the world with a great difference over English and that it had settled in the United States, culturally, politically, and demographically, to the consternation of its president Donald Trump. It is the story of a language that is creeping into the world’s crevices, its songs enamor, and it is sung in many kitchens. It is associated with the sun, it was born from an ancient empire, and although that empire has fallen, its language remains.
That language that President Trump believed was limited to kitchens and hard field work was displayed on the balcony of the most important sporting celebration in the United States. It was the language of the disinherited, the exiled, the undocumented who forcefully burst into every American home. It’|s no wonder that hours later after the event, Donald Trump exclaimed that it had been a real disgrace, an offense to America.
A language that did not begin with Cicero but with vulgar Latin, that of soldiers and merchants that goes adapting to the various places they pass through. It is enriched by the Visigoths with some vocabulary and the Arabs fill it with words. Amidst this becoming, Castilian emerges as the dominant language but, born of power, it was saved by usage and makes it survive the empire. In America, it encounters indigenous languages and in each territory once again it adapts, transforms, and makes them its own.
It is a language spoken today by more than 600 million people, and for over 500 million, it is their native language. To this native mass, students who want to learn it are added over the years. An interesting fact is that 7% of the books published in the world are published in Spanish.
The organizers of the NFL final did not improvise. They offered 68 million Latinos who speak Spanish at home a mirror in which to see their demographic, cultural, and economic evidence. And to us Spaniards, who have exported it to the whole world, it should give us a reason for pride to forget part of the black legend that we have accepted.
Isabel Gómez Acebo
Religión Digital
English version translated with AI