The real story of Bad Bunny's 'Casita': colonialism, slavery and resistance

This week’s big talking point seems to revolve, on this occasion, around the controversy surrounding the huge Spanish‑language music phenomenon. We are talking, of course, about Benito Martínez Ocasio’s little house, Bad Bunny’s; a segment of his concert in which several public figures (until recently, mostly women) dance live in front of the cameras.

The event has been criticised by conservative feminists such as Paula Fraga (are the women taking part – Marta Ortega, Ester Expósito… – being objectified?) but defended by journalists like Ana Requena and Alejandra Martínez. They argue that there is a deliberate attempt to shine a light on feminism’s contradictions in order to instrumentalise it and, in particular, to cast judgement on the women who go to the concerts of a genre that, although less and less so, is still disparaged today: reggaeton.

At the centre of the storm, but overshadowed by the ideological tug‑of‑war, is the building itself. And like every detail of the touring project “Debí tirar más fotos”, it has a strong activist component rooted in Boricua, or Puerto Rican, identity.

The Caribbean island belongs to the United States as an unincorporated territory – an issue addressed in the tracks on “DTMF” and in Bad Bunny’s public statements. In practice, this means that its citizens enjoy fewer rights than citizens of a US state: they cannot vote in presidential elections, they have no voting representation in Congress, and several activists campaigning for the island’s independence have been imprisoned.

From indigenous peoples to the enslaved labour of the sugar mills

The building, as explained by Architecture Digest, is based on a real house in Humacao, a town on Puerto Rico’s east coast where the short film bearing the same title as the album was shot. The municipality’s anthem spells out its history, linked both to the island’s original inhabitants, the Taíno people, and to the diaspora and enslavement of its Afro‑Caribbean population up to the 19th century.

Present‑day Humacao was founded in 1722 on the ruins of the old Macao by settlers from the Canary Islands and jíbaro Taínos, those who came from the mountainous region in the centre of the island. It takes its name from Jumacao, one of the last indigenous leaders to fight the Spanish. Their descendants kept this spirit of resistance alive when the Canarians arrived and protested against the redistribution of farmland.

Because of its relative isolation until the 18th century, its architecture is distinctive. Urban planning in Humacao follows the grid set out in the Laws of the Indies based on the spatial relationship between square and church – as historian Norma Medina recounts (source in Spanish) – but its inhabitants continued to use materials such as thatch, roof tiles and local timber.

It was from the 19th century onwards that elements of European neoclassicism, such as masonry work, were introduced, thanks in part to the boom in the sugar trade, built on enslaved Black labour which extended far beyond Puerto Rico across Latin America. This style was incorporated into public buildings such as the town hall, the prison, the barracks and the cemetery.

From 22 September 1898, Humacao passed from Spanish to US administration (in what Spanish contemporaries at the time referred to as the Disaster of ’98, brought on by the loss of other colonies such as the Philippines and finally Cuba), changing the island’s status quo – it never achieved full independence – as well as its architectural development.

It is through this fusion of Taíno, Hispanic, African and US influences that the creator of the Casita, Mayna Magruder Ortiz, realised the potential of Humacao’s buildings beyond the featurette that Bad Bunny’s team initially produced.

Her inspiration for reimagining the house from the music video for the tour, she tells AD, comes from houses that carry on the 19th‑century legacy to shape the housing estates built for US expats in the 1950s. Specifically, the structure – built by the team led by Rafael Pérez – replicates a home in the white community of Levittown in Toa Baja, the first planned development for Second World War veterans on the island. Fusion upon fusion.

The interior décor of the house also draws on Antillean pieces and works by Puerto Rican artists such as Lorenzo Homar (co‑founder of the Puerto Rican Art Centre after an early period in the United States and known as “El Maestro”) and Alexis Díaz, an artist and muralist who should not be confused with baseball player Alexis Omar Díaz, born precisely in Humacao.

Bad Bunny, who follows in the anti‑colonial tradition of other Puerto Rican artists such as Residente or his siblings, singer iLe and producer Eduardo Cabra, all former members of Calle 13, will continue his Spanish and European tour until mid‑July.