Streaming Empire: Latin Music in an Anti-Immigrant America
Bad Bunny performs onstage. Photo courtesy of Jorge Rojas.
The Super Bowl halftime show has long functioned as a ritual of American cultural authority. It is not simply entertainment but a spectacle exported to over 100 million viewers and projected globally as a condensed image of who the United States understands itself to be. When Bad Bunny performed primarily in Spanish on that stage this year, the symbolism was striking: a language historically treated as outside the American mainstream helped define one of the country’s most visible national spectacles.
Spanish-language music at large no longer exists at the margins of American culture. In 2022, Bad Bunny’s Verano Sin Ti became the most-streamed album in the world. In 2026, the artist won the Grammy for Album of the Year for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, the first entirely Spanish-language album to receive the award. Following his Super Bowl performance, Bad Bunny’s streams in the United States surged, and multiple Spanish-language tracks climbed the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. What once required translation to enter the mainstream now occupies its center on its own terms.
Yet this cultural ascent unfolds alongside one of the most punitive immigration climates in recent US history. Federal enforcement operations carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disproportionately target Latin American communities. Border militarization has intensified across election cycles, while political rhetoric routinely frames migrants from Mexico and Central America as threats to economic stability and national security. Campaign ads warn of “invasion” even as Spanish lyrics dominate American airwaves.
The contradiction is stark: Latin culture is celebrated; Latin migrants are criminalized.
This tension is not new. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, American culture has repeatedly incorporated marginalized cultural forms without extending full political inclusion to the communities associated with them. Jazz was embraced as segregation persisted under Jim Crow. Hip-hop and rap generated billions in revenue during periods marked by aggressive policing and mass incarceration disproportionately affecting Black communities. Today, regional Latin music soundtracks national spectacles even as immigration policy becomes increasingly restrictive and anti-immigrant rhetoric intensifies. Across these periods, cultural visibility has not necessarily translated into civic belonging.
What sustains this pattern is a structural separation between markets and political rights. Cultural forms can be absorbed, circulated, and monetized without extending belonging to the communities that produce them. This does not preclude individual success. Artists themselves often benefit from this expansion, gaining visibility, wealth, and influence as their music reaches global audiences. Yet these gains are uneven and individualized, operating within market systems that reward cultural production without extending political rights. What is celebrated is not the people themselves, but a version of their culture that can be detached from claims to citizenship, mobility, or protection. At the same time, visibility is not politically neutral. Spanish-language performances on national stages, including backlash surrounding Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance, have provoked criticism that frames Latin cultural visibility as incompatible with traditional notions of American identity. Cultural inclusion, even at the level of spectacle, therefore remains contested. Rather than resolving the contradiction, contemporary American cultural capitalism manages it by allowing cultural expression to expand within the market while maintaining restrictive boundaries around political inclusion and legal belonging.
The question, then, is not simply why Latin music rose, but how this system has become more efficient at incorporating culture without altering political boundaries. What has changed is not public sentiment alone, but the architecture of distribution.
Streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music disrupted the gatekeeping power of terrestrial radio, which had, for decades, segmented Spanish-language tracks into niche formats and limited their exposure in major English-language markets. Under the broadcasting model, program directors determined which songs received airplay, prioritizing content expected to attract the largest possible audience, which in the United States historically meant English-speaking listeners. Streaming replaced program directors with engagement metrics. Algorithms amplify what captures attention, regardless of language.
But market expansion is not political recognition.
Streaming enables Latin identity to be highly visible and highly profitable while remaining politically precarious. It elevates Spanish-language music to the center of American spectacle while the legal status of millions of Latino residents remains uncertain. This shift has been gradual but accelerated in the streaming era: Latin music has grown from $140 million in US revenue in 2015 to over $1 billion in 2025, marking ten consecutive years of expansion and reaching a record share of the national music market. The infrastructure that distributes and profits from this cultural boom remains embedded within American corporate governance and capital markets. Streaming platforms have driven this rise, accounting for over 98 percent of Latin music revenue and replacing geographic and linguistic gatekeeping with algorithmic recommendation systems that amplify content based on engagement rather than language. Cultural production becomes more accessible and plural, while cultural monetization remains centralized.
The backlash reveals that the stakes of this visibility are understood. During the Super Bowl weekend, conservative activist networks promoted alternative “All-American” viewing events featuring Kid Rock and other country artists, framing the official halftime show as a departure from national tradition. Online commentary criticized the use of Spanish as exclusionary, arguing that a national stage should privilege English. President Donald Trump amplified the criticism in a post declaring that the performance “makes no sense” and that the dancing is “disgusting, especially for young children watching throughout the USA.” The objection was not subtle. Spanish was cast as unintelligible, and the performance as culturally inappropriate, reinforcing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable on a national stage.
The halftime show, therefore, becomes a proxy for a broader political question: who gets to define America?
The answer is not determined at the level of culture, but at the level of control. American identity is increasingly shaped by who governs the systems through which culture circulates. Cultural plurality can be displayed, even celebrated, so long as political authority over belonging remains unchanged.
Bad Bunny’s music complicates the narrative of simple assimilation, though no single artist can fully represent the diversity of Latin identity. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS foregrounds Puerto Rican identity, colonial history, and cultural pride. It is not a political celebration of bilingual crossover, but a declaration of identity on its own terms. That declaration now occupies one of the most visible platforms in American sports entertainment.
The United States has long wielded soft power by exporting a distinct national culture abroad. In the streaming era, influence operates differently. Rather than insisting on English-language dominance, American cultural capitalism demonstrates an ability to absorb and monetize global sound while maintaining control over the digital architecture that distributes it. As diversity becomes scalable, difference becomes profitable.
This does not represent a break from the past, but a reconfiguration of an existing pattern. The United States has long incorporated marginalized cultures without extending full inclusion. What is new is the scale and efficiency with which digital platforms enable that incorporation. Cultural differences can now circulate globally without requiring political transformation.
A Spanish-language Super Bowl marks a real cultural shift. But if the same political system continues to frame Latin American migration as a crisis, that shift remains incomplete. American power has not receded. It has adapted, integrating cultural pluralism into national spectacle while preserving the boundaries of political belonging. This adaptation allows the system to accommodate cultural change without redistributing political power, incorporating differences in ways that are highly visible but not politically binding. It reflects a broader transformation in how power operates: rather than resisting cultural change, the system absorbs it, converting what might have been pressure for inclusion into a source of stability. In this way, cultural incorporation no longer signals the expansion of belonging, but its containment. The soundtrack has changed. The structure has not.
Mila Noshirvani (BC ’27) is a staff writer majoring in political science and cognitive science. She is interested in exploring the intersections between law, policy, and the human mind.