america, but plural

thirteen minutes on a field built for empire

I haven’t looked at a football field in a long time, but Sunday night one was rewired for me.

Football fields are complicated creatures, forever filled with joy and disappointment. I can’t look at a football field without reliving the night the Saints won the Superbowl. I’m back on the street, hugging strangers and crying with them, all of us repeating over and over, we really needed this. But I also can’t look at a football field without seeing a man on his knee, cast out and burned for eternity because placing a knee on the ground is more of an affront to an institution built on patriarchy than placing a hand on a woman. It makes terrible sense.

Football fields are the houses of an institution I’ve rejected, yet they fold out in front of me like a blueprint etched on the inside of my skull. When I sat down Sunday night for the Bad Bunny concert and looked up at the TV, I saw a book laid out in front of me that I had read a thousand times.

“I don’t know shit about football,” said a friend next to me.

“I do,” I said, remembering. “I can tell you all about it.”

It surprised me—the familiarity after all this time. But with the joy came the disappointment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to read that book again.

I shouldn’t have been worried.

Every step Bad Bunny took across that football field during his halftime show lit up a different part of my brain. Pulled directly on different strings connected to my heart. He alchemized that shit. Transformed a field into a history and a stadium, absent a president, into the palace of the people. It felt like spreading cajeta over a warm piece of bread. It felt like a reclamation of America. And I mean America in its totality.

I haven’t called myself American in years. If someone asks me where I’m from, I’ll say I’m from the United States, but I’ll never say I’m American. Because saying you’re American is the first giveaway that….you’re American.

I know, it sounds both extremely evident and extremely confusing. But Bad Bunny gets it.

It takes a whole lot of words to say I am from the United States of America. Eight words, to be exact. And believe me—I would much rather use the corresponding adjective of origin, but there’s no word for it in English. You can’t say I’m United Statesean in English. In Spanish you can.

That’s what Benito gets. That’s what his language gets. In Spanish, you know that when you say you’re American, it means you’re from the Americas. It means you’re part of a greater whole.

In English (in general) when you say you’re American, it means you’re from the United States. It means you’re one part separated from the whole.

It’s not a linguistic difference—with the exception of a single o or a, the words are the exact same—it’s a cultural difference. An ego difference. A hereditary difference.

American.

Americana.

In English, we try to cut ourselves out. In Spanish, we try to stitch ourselves together.

There we were, on two different sides of a Great Divide until Benito showed up, danced down that field, and zipped us all back together—not just with his words, but also with his imagery.

I saw my grandmother in his field of sugarcane. Telling me about her childhood on the banks of Bayou Lafourche and how, when she wanted to perm her hair, she and her brother saved up from the sugarcane harvest to buy a home permanent kit.

I felt New Orleans in his blackout. A reminder that failing infrastructure and leadership are a plague all across this country.

I tasted Mr. Okra in his taco vendor. A reminder that we take care of us.

He reminded us that we aren’t really so far away from each other. Our homes share the same story of sugar and exploitation. Our people share the same spirit of community and perseverance.

Benito stood on a ground that in so many ways is the physical representation of patriarchy, white supremacy, misogyny, and hyper patriotism, and he translated it into something else. He wove joy and disappointment together the way only the best storytellers can.

For 13 minutes, he made Puerto Rico’s reality universal.

For 13 minutes he was love in a field of hate.

For 13 minutes, he united us. Rubbed Vaporú on our chests and told us it was all going to be ok.

And we believe him.

He stitched us back together with words that half of us didn’t understand because sometimes words carry more than their meaning. They carry ideas. They carry a shared history. They bridge divides and carry hope. Because if you can rewire a football field, then maybe you can rewire a country.

Mira, yo perreo sola, but I sure as shit don’t live on this continent alone. On Sunday night, I watched the United States Super Bowl, headlined by a global artist from Puerto Rico, while sitting on a bar stool in Mexico. I spoke Spanish with the Argentinean on my right and English with the Canadian on my left (just kidding—they were Kid Rock fans, so I pretended like I didn’t speak English). When the show was over, I dried my tears and then sat on a curb and ate some street tacos made by my neighbor’s son–the neighbor who always yells after me as I walk by and tells me to have a beautiful time. “Pásatela bonita,” he always yells. Which is the Spanish version of the New Orleanian “Pass a good time” which comes from our Cajun French linguistic roots—the roots that run us all the way back to that sugarcane field.

Our America—our world—is a big, beautiful, connected place, and it has the capacity to carry us all. We just have to remember to carry each other and it’ll all be okay. That’s what Benito meant when he said the only thing more powerful than hate is love. Probably also what he meant by PERREO.

So, now when I say I’m American, just know that it means all of America.

And also know that it means I haven’t given up on us.

Also know that it means I think Benito is fine as shit.

Also, I still don’t support the NFL, but I appreciate the joy it gave us in those 13 minutes.

And I will def be calling Mike Johnson this week and telling him what a disappointment he is.

And I am proud of my Cuban and Cajun roots.

And I will forever be grateful to New Orleans, the most northern city in the Caribbean, for being such a beautiful gateway to the Americas.