In the same Caribbean from where Cuba emerges, in Puerto Rico, in 1994 Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny) was born. The twelve nominated for the Latin Grammy (2026) in January 2025 threw the album I had to throw more photos.
In it short film Documentary that accompanies it, the gentrification of Puerto Rico is visually exposed and the identity loss caused both by the migration of its people and the occupation of the territory by predatory tourism, the climatic crisis or housing evictions.
Many residents are no longer recognized in these spaces and feel “foreigners in their own homeland”, in which they were born and “want to die”, as a Puerto Rican is heard in the clip-documentary “Here people live”predecessor of I had to throw more photos.
Puerto Rico has lost about 2.4 % of its population between 2020 and 2023, largely due to emigration, a rate considerably less than the about 24 % that Cuba has lost to its resident population in four years for the mass emigration of its citizens; An escape that reflects the deep economic and social crisis that we are going through.
On the return of the Puerto Ricans emigrated to their country, recently, data from the American Community Survey (ACS) indicate that, between 2018 and 2019, there was a Net return From approximately 88 thousand Puerto Ricans to the island, which suggests a partial recovery of the population after the mass exodus after the passing of the destructive Hurricane Maria in 2017.
On the other hand, for many Cubans – a diasporic group that usually emigrates definitively when compared to other Latin American diasporas – the possibility of being voluntarily returning to the country is almost discarded almost immediately before the daily precariousness and hopelessness of the current social moment.
In these circumstances, it is difficult to imagine the island as a safe horizon or think of returning as a reasonable decision.
But there are those who do it and there are those who have even decided to stay, try to fight for a dignified life, to help build a future that many of us decided not to wait.
The three quarters of the Cuban population that still remains in Cuba is a side of the kaleidoscope that we practically do not look.
On the other hand, what we know about migrants who voluntarily repatriated in Cuba is barely anecdotal because there are no official figures in this regard: some return to open businesses or age at their home in a lifetime.
However, we know that in current conditions the output flow today exceeds any registered return, even in deportations from the US.
“I don’t want to leave here”: a hymn to what we are
“I do not want to leave here” is an emblematic title for a series of shows by an Afro -latino and Diasporic Pop artist such as Bad Bunny. In addition to its collection success, the “residence” managed to connect numerous Puerto Ricans from the diaspora with their land.
In my view, he launched some disruptive messages in the Latin migrant imaginary, which as Cubans also splashed us: 1) the country of origin not only as a nostalgia space, but as present and possibility of the future; 2) migration not as a definitive crossing, but as a circular movement, a coming and going and 3) the right to remain to build a life in the country of destination, in this case the United States – a right that is also sustained in a historical debt: for generations, Latin American migrants have sustained key sectors of the economy, culture and daily life of that country, and its contribution deserves recognition and gratitude – as an inseparable part of that experience of that experience of that experience of that experience of that experience. Migratory
He Tour Static in Puerto Rico ended up building and telling the country as a mosaic of culture and identities that are worth looking. When standing there, Benito transformed the periphery into the center.
Another emblematic fact is that would not include the United States In the list of destinations of his international tour “I had to throw more photos World Tour”, to avoid ICE raids between a significantly Latin audience, which reinforces its commitment to the security and representation of the migrant community in that country, especially the undocumented.
In an interview, he explained: “There were many reasons why I did not appear in the United States, and none of them was for hate; I have acted there many times.” He added: “Everyone [los shows] They have been magnificent. I have enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the United States. But specifically, for a residence here in Puerto Rico, when we are an uncalled territory of the United States … ”
He also stressed the concern for the security of his audience: “The people of the United States could come here to see the show. The Latin and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here, or any part of the world. But there was the issue that the fuck Ice could be outside [de mi concierto]. That is an issue that we talked about and that we were very concerned. ”
Bad Bunny’s recent work and posture show how even the most popular litter of culture can be a form of living resistance to the stories that have presented us exclusively as peripheral territories, lower cultures or “third parties” in the world order. Here we planted, and from here we are not going.
Resist to subvert
What we understand by the country goes beyond its geographical limits: a country is built, lives and imagines.
It is something that Bad Bunny has done, beyond putting his audience to dance. Its visibility opened space for us to rethink the way we count what we are and recalled that, as a free state associated with the United States, Puerto Rico is not only a summer territory for the gringos, but a place where “people still live”, with culture, customs and a life that is worth protecting and dignifying.
From my own experience I know that my generation has disconnected from Cuba with the same heartbreaking with which Millennials Puerto Ricans – and of so many other Latin American diasporas – have done it from yours. Bad Bunny is not Cuban, but for many of us it is as if it were, for all that his activism represents.
As Cubans that we are, however scattered that we are, I would like us to invent our own fictions about what it means to be in a world saturated with narratives that try to make ourselves aside, to the periphery.
We are a small island that has never gone unnoticed for the rest of the world. We cannot allow disagreements, polarization (a contemporary rereading of radical positions such as the one we saw during the crisis of the racks and that does not help us today) and political apathy continue to fragment us and move away from what, in essence, we are: an entire country. We must recognize the veiled mechanisms to make us disappear.
Nor can we, as a diaspora, those in it, stop looking at the island with respect and reverence towards those who have been brave when staying and building with their hands a future that none of those who are outside was able to sit down to wait.
They deserve our respect, those who fight daily – some because they have no other way out – against the blackouts, the scarcity, the laziness, the indifference of the leaders, the lack of food and medicines, and still rise every morning to look for life in the way they can, to live it in the best possible way, because they are the only one they have.
People who have invested the savings of their lives not to buy a plane passage and move to another country, but to move a business, even in the sea of economic uncertainties that prevails on the island.
The “residence” of Bad Bunny made me think of something that I believed lost among Cubans, and I am optimistic to believe that it is not at all: the possibility of imagining our land not only as past, but as a future; A place of return, symbolic but also real: of possible hugs, of reunion with our food, our music and our people.
In short, with that part of us who blurred as he learned to bloom in other lands and harden with resentment towards hierarchies that have failed to represent us as a people.
I want to believe that we can still build with our own hands the crystalline horizon that we were looking for when we left and when we stayed. We all, we are, ultimately, the homeland.
But for that horizon to cease to be an illusion, our desire is not enough: it is necessary to break the intransigence of all; that political decisions really guarantee the real right to return, to participate, to influence the course of the country. That allow us, without tibiezas, to think and help reconstruct Cuba, both from outside and from within. Is it possible?
