It was a day many of us lived towards. Bad Bunny was finally on the world’s biggest stage, performing almost entirely in Spanish in front of hundreds of millions of viewers. The performance felt different from any I had seen before. It was vivid, culturally textured, and unapologetically rooted in an almost universal latino experience. There’s something special about seeing people that look like me, my neighbors and family members on that turf. I saw street vendors, community gatherings, braiders, nail techs, children dozing off on plastic chairs, straight up culture being honered, loved and celebrated. In so many of those moments I felt an immediate recognition that reached past music and into memory.
And still, my heart dropped. This sadness came over me and the pride I felt in my heart, partially turned into sadness. Because the inclusion I felt, left the moment Bad Bunny said “God Bless America” and began naming countries from south to north America. One by one he spoke about Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba. Until suddenly there was a silence where one country’s name should have been. Suriname did not come up. Not once.
I want to be clear: I do not believe he skipped us out of malice. The Surinamese flag was visible among the dancers; it was not erased from the performance. What feels painful is the absence in language, in naming and in recognition. It felt like being present in body but not in narrative. Though,I do believe there is a reason for leaving Suriname out of the mix.
Before I get into that, I want to tell you why this is something worth mentioning to me. Noticing this absence is important to because Suriname is a real place with a deep cultural identity, one that rarely surfaces in global conversations about music, culture, or the Americas. Suriname was a Dutch plantation colony beginning in the late 1600s and remained under Dutch rule until 1975. Its official language is Dutch but its cultural landscape is planted with creole, Javanese, Hindustani, Indigenous and even Spanish languages, and a blend of traditions that shows up in food, music, movement, and community. This country is not a footnote. It’s a nation whose history and culture are distinct, yet so often misunderstood or conflated with its neighboring countries: French and British Guyana.
The confusion, I think, has roots in colonial history. Parts of the Guiana region were controlled by different European powers for centuries. The Dutch held territories such as Essequibo and Berbice in what is now Guyana. Because of that history, many people outside of Suriname still think of Suriname as “Dutch Guyana”, though it has been an independent nation for over 50 years. Add to that how little Suriname is covered in global education, and it becomes easy for the world to remember the label but forget the nation. This erasure of identity is not an abstract concept for those of us who grew up there or descend from there. It is lived experience.
The act of inclusion at the Super Bowl felt empowering and bold. Bad Bunny created room for a version of “America” that includes every culture and language, community rituals, and cultural textures that are usually sidelined. That part was real and important. The aesthetic choices he made: the nails techs, the chairs, the vendors.. They belong to real lives that many of us recognize instantly.
What hurt was the reminder that cultural visibility still follows a pattern of scale and awareness. Global moments like this shape how millions of people think about belonging and identity. At that scale, naming matters.
I don’t want to come off as someone who complains, I want to be grateful for being included in the conversation. Even if it’s just a little bit. Because Suriname never really had that privilege, I almost feel like I have to be ok with even the smallest bit of recognitionz but is that fair? Are we not allowed to take up more space, simply because we’ve never had it?
I have been a fan of Bad Bunny and especially the album Debí Tirár Más Fotos since it came out, and I feel a deep connection with its music and cultural markers. There are parts there that remind me of gatherings in small towns, the cadence of community parties, the sound of percussion that feels like it belongs to more than one place at once and stretches farther than just Puerto Rico.
This is not a rejection of the performance or the artist. It is a request for deeper awareness. Suriname is not a blip on a map or a historical label. It is a living culture and it exists on its own terms. I do not want to be folded into someone else’s geography. I want clarity, not confusion. I want Suriname to be named wherever we are gathered to talk about the Americas.
And if the final lesson from all of this is that belonging is partly a matter of being spoken into existence, then let this be a small reminder: Suriname is not a historical footnote, destined to be forgotten. Suriname is a culture, a nation, a thread in the fabric that Bad Bunny, with all his reach and vision, invited us to think about when he said “God Bless America.”