While watching Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, you may have noticed the artist climbing electrical poles with other performers while singing “El Apagón.”
The song comes from the artist’s fifth studio album Un Verano Sin Ti, the most-streamed album globally on Spotify back in 2022. The album, which translates to A Summer Without You, is an exploration of a metaphorical absence in Bad Bunny’s life and the resulting feelings that stem from Puerto Rican experience. His song “El Apagón” does just this, literally translating to “the blackout” and referencing the devastating and ongoing power outages in Puerto Rico.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, Puerto Rico residents lost about 27 hours of power each year from 2021 to 2024—all without accounting for electricity failures from hurricanes or other major disasters. Over the past ten years, four hurricanes have dealt damage exceeding $1 billion in Puerto Rico. In comparison, residents in the mainland US experience about two hours of power loss each year.
The nearly yearlong blackout in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 was the longest in American history. As a result of the damage, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the territory’s publicly-owned utility, declared bankruptcy. PREPA had a decades-long history of corruption. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, PREPA bought low-quality oil from suppliers for high-quality prices to fuel its power plants. The contracts allowed money to pass through executives and politicians, while residents continued to get service from a crumbling grid.
Puerto Rico then began to privatize power. In 2021, Luma Energy, a private Canadian-American company, took control of electric power transmission. But power outages grew worse as cuts increased on average by 30 to 35 percent since Luma came in, according to Luis Raúl Torres Cruz, a former member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives. Last December, Puerto Rico’s government sued Luma Energy over allegedly making false promises to improve the electrical grid, all while raising costs.
In “El Apagón,” Bad Bunny delivers the verse “Maldita sea, otro apagón / Vamo’ pa’ lo’ bleacher a prender un blunt / Antes que a Pipo le dé un bofetón.” According to Gizmodo’s breakdown of the track, the verse roughly translates to “Damn it, another blackout. Let’s go to the bleachers and light up a blunt, before I give Pipo a slap.” Pipo refers to Puerto Rico’s former governor, Pedro Pierluisi, who helped sign the island’s electric grid to Luma, but never made good on his promises of fewer energy disruptions.
But it’s not just Puerto Rico. The Trump administration has taken back federal funding designated to modernize the territory’s electrical grid. In January, the Department of Energy canceled $450 million for grid resilience programs, according to Latitude Media.
Bad Bunny summed it up last April: “¿Cuando vamos a hacer algo?” or “When are we going to do something?”
Yet his song “El Apagón” also contains the lyrics “Puerto Rico está bien cabrón” or, according to Genius’ translation, “Puerto Rico is fucking great.” There is tangible pride and joy from being part of the island’s people, despite the continued power outages that contribute to increased economic hardship. That was obvious for all to see on Sunday.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.