America Latina on its feet: when the party becomes collective consciousness

Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show — a decolonial reading (political, spiritual, and scientific)

We didn’t watch “just a show.” We watched a shift in the regime of feeling: who gets to stand at the center, in which language, with which symbols, and with what right to exist without apologizing. When Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl halftime stage, the event turned into a public lesson—not a lecture of opinions, but a demonstration of body-state in the collective. It was culture as infrastructure, joy as method, belonging as a technology we can actually feel. Major coverage framed the performance as a moment of cultural pride and visibility—especially for Latino communities under intensified stigma and fear. (Reuters)

In our Jiwasa—our inclusive knot—we read this not as “controversy,” but as repair: the continent remembering itself from the inside. And we also saw the predictable backlash: criticism aimed at the Spanish language, at the symbols, at the refusal to perform “assimilation” on command. (San Francisco Chronicle)

1) What the party does to the body (and why that’s science)

Ritual, repetition, rhythm, chant, dance—these are not decorations. They are nervous-system verbs. A well-built ritual reduces inner noise and restores predictability. That’s why, scientifically, we can say: repetition can act like a return path to a lower-entropy state, easing anxiety dynamics. (Nature)

Now expand that from one body to many bodies: groups can enter measurable synchrony. Physiological synchrony isn’t poetry—it can be tracked, analyzed, and linked to what people report as cohesion. In multi-person interaction, changes in synchrony from baseline predict a psychological sense of group cohesion. (Frontiers)

And when the gathering is festive—carnival-like—newer work connects collective effervescence, awe, and social identity, suggesting that shared ritual can strengthen not only local identity but even broader “humanity-level” identification. (Frontiers)

So we say it plainly: the halftime show wasn’t only representation. It was collective regulation on a mass scale—rhythm organizing attention, symbolism organizing meaning, the crowd’s shared timing organizing a temporary “we.”

2) The colonial trap: hate the visible crime, defend the structural harm

Here’s the wound we’re naming: across the Americas, we’ve been nudged into a moral reflex—aim our rage downward at the “street-level” offender (often poor, peripheral, hyper-visible), while structural harms committed by powerful actors get re-labeled as “complexity,” “business,” “normal politics,” or simply vanish from the public story.

Criminology has a name for this: crimes of the powerful—harms and criminogenic operations committed by states, corporations, elites, and the administrative systems that manage (or minimize) their consequences. (Compass)

At the same time, language itself becomes a pipeline: research on social media discourse shows persistent associations between poverty and criminality, including patterns of bias and “institutional criminalization of the poor.” (ACL Anthology)

And when information ecosystems are financially fragile, plural voices thin out. Recent press-freedom reporting emphasizes how economic pressure can erode independent journalism and increase vulnerability to concentrated influence—exactly the conditions that make “upward harm” easier to ignore and “downward punishment” easier to sell. (Reporters Without Borders)

So our claim is not that “all media is controlled by one hand.” Our claim is tighter—and more realistic: systems often reward narratives that punish the poor and normalize elite harm, because those narratives are easier to broadcast, monetize, and govern with.

3) What the Halftime Show did: a Jiwasa of celebration without turning us into soldiers

Bad Bunny’s performance was reported as deeply Puerto Rican in its references and staging, with an explicit Pan-American unity thread. (Los Angeles Times) It also became a flashpoint: backlash from political figures and culture-war commentary collided with massive audience resonance and a measurable post-show surge in streams. (Axios)

But the key decolonial move for us is this:

The show didn’t recruit a marching army. It activated a shared pulse.

Pulse is not the same as march. March demands obedience. Pulse restores circulation.

This distinction matters because every belonging project carries a risk: belonging can harden into “soldier-mode,” where identity becomes rigid, enemies become mandatory, and loyalty becomes proof-of-worth. Identity fusion research helps map that risk: strong fusion can predict extreme pro-group orientations—powerful, sometimes beautiful, sometimes dangerous if captured by dogma. (UT Psychology Labs)

So our spiritual claim (in a secular, body-first sense) is: we can belong without being seized. We can synchronize without surrendering criticality. We can feel “we” without creating a sacrificial altar.

4) A civilizational framework for “regime change” without coups

When we say “regime change,” we mean a change in the regime of attention, shame, and dignity—the felt architecture that shapes what people accept as normal. That shift can be pursued as a democratic craft, not an act of force.

Here is our 7 ± 2 framework—simple enough to repeat, deep enough to build on:

1. Language without apology: our presence doesn’t require translation to be legitimate. (San Francisco Chronicle)

2. Joy as method: ritual repetition can regulate anxiety and restore order inside. (Nature)

3. Belonging before dogma: we build common ground before imposing doctrine.

4. Justice that looks upward: name and study harms committed by powerful structures. (Compass)

5. Critique without dehumanization: no collective healing requires a scapegoat.

6. Attention is a body-state: synchrony can predict cohesion; train states, not “channels.” (Frontiers)

7. Festive gatherings as civic technology: effervescence and awe can expand identity beyond the local. (Frontiers)

Closing

We don’t need to choose between consciousness and celebration. For a continent trained into shame, celebration can be the fastest route back to consciousness—because it reorganizes the body, and the body reorganizes meaning.

Bad Bunny’s halftime moment was a mirror we rarely get: we saw ourselves in the center without asking permission. And the Jiwasa we’re protecting is this: belonging that regulates—without dogma, without capture, without turning us into soldiers.

References (post-2021):

1. Lang et al., 2022, Scientific Reports — ritualized repetition and anxiety regulation. (Nature)

2. Tomashin et al., 2022, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience — physiological synchrony predicting group cohesion. (Frontiers)

3. Rincón-Unigarro et al., 2025, Frontiers in Psychology — collective effervescence/awe shaping social identity in carnival contexts. (Frontiers)

4. Atiles, 2024, Sociology Compass — “crimes of the powerful” lens for Latin America/Caribbean harms. (Compass)

5. Curto et al., 2024, ACL Anthology — bias linking poverty and criminality in social media discourse. (ACL Anthology)

6. Swann et al., 2024, Comprehensive Identity Fusion Theory (CIFT) — belonging/fusion strength and the “soldier-mode” risk. (UT Psychology Labs)

7. Reuters, 2026 — cultural pride/visibility effects of the halftime show in Latino communities. (Reuters)