Curley: The 500-year history behind Bad Bunny’s halftime show

If you watch the halftime show and you’re like, “Bad Bunny, I don’t understand what he’s saying.” And if you did speak Spanish, like my wife, she’s like, “Some of these lyrics are pretty dirty.”

So here’s what happened. So Spain gets Puerto Rico in, Columbus rolls in there, 1493, they take it. They’re like, “OK, fine.”

Well, the locals were like, “Hey, this is good. This is interesting. We got some new people here.”

The Taíno were the name of the locals there on that little island. They were sophisticated. They had arts and sports, vibrant culture, a nice little government structure, but they were no match for measles and smallpox, and then enslaving them and a bunch of other problems went with it — and the fact that Spain had all sorts of other headaches going on — they basically just abandoned the island for about 400 years. Really didn’t do much with it at all.

Then, in 1898, the United States took over. And again, the locals were like, “Yeah, yahoo.”

They celebrated that, OK, the U.S. is coming in here. So the U.S. does this thing where they transfer Puerto Rico, but they don’t actually take it as a state. They take it as property.

They said, “Well, we’re a republic, we’re not an empire.”

So Puerto Rico becomes like part of the United States, but only sort of a weird addition, because the Supreme Court in 1901 came up with this kind of cockamamie, better read the small print stuff, saying, “Well, you’re not a state, but you’re a territory, we’ll make you a territory to the United States. So you really, you won’t have as much say in how the government works. But don’t worry, you’re gonna love it.”

U.S. takes over Puerto Rico, imposes English, then the Jones Act

Well, the U.S. takes over and basically comes in and says, “Hey, the best thing we can do for Puerto Rico is change the pronunciation of it.”

Then they also say, “Don’t speak Spanish.”

They go into the schools, and you have to learn English. So they’re like, “OK, we’re cleaning everything up. We’re going to make you American, but we’re not going to let you into America.”

So things aren’t going really well. They just sort of get screwed over by the U.S. And then in 1920, another thing hurts them. They have the Jones Act. The Jones Act says that U.S. ships have to be built by the U.S. shipping cargo that would be delivered in U.S. ports. So you’ve got to have an American-made ship that’s flying a U.S. flag, and it’s going to only be able to drop off in U.S. ports.

Well, what happens is, when the ships come in from China with a bunch of cargo, they sail right on by Puerto Rico, and the people like, “Hey, what about us?”

And it goes right on by, because it’s not allowed to stop there, because it’s not a U.S. state. It stops in Jacksonville, Florida, offloads everything, and then, yay, the Jones Act of 1920, all the cargo has to get transferred into a U.S. ship made in the U.S., flying a U.S. flag, and then go to Puerto Rico.

Well, imagine the price. So the cost of everything is higher, and the wages aren’t any better, so people are paying a whole bunch of money for it.

Tax breaks bring business, then Congress pulls the plug

In 1976, the IRS came up with a 936 plan. This is a great one if you’re a business. So in 1976, they say, “If you want to set up manufacturing in Puerto Rico, you don’t have to pay any federal taxes on your profits.”

Well, every business races down there, especially pharmaceuticals, into Puerto Rico, and they start building big factories and employing everybody, and business starts booming really well.

But 1996 comes along, and Congress says, “You know what, let’s try to balance the budget. How can we balance the budget?”

And somebody says, “Yeah, I got an idea. Why don’t we get rid of that no-tax thing in Puerto Rico?”

“Yeah, but let’s phase it out in 10 years.”

So they phase it out. Well, what happens is all the businesses go, they just leave, and they leave behind everything. So then it falls into a big recession, and then they have all sorts of problems.

They try to get out of it. They do this thing called a triple tax-exempt bond, where the bond market loves it, so it buys it all up. But then, unfortunately, Puerto Rico could never repay that. They go about $70 million in debt.

And then Congress in 1984 said, “You’re not a state. You can’t declare bankruptcy; you’re just a territory.”

So these people are getting screwed every which way. Just read one of Bad Bunny’s lyrics. He can explain how to do that.

Still waiting on statehood

And then what happens is they just sort of sit and wait for something good to happen. In 2022, the residents of Puerto Rico said, “Yes, we want to be part of the United States.”

The House passed it. It died in the Senate, and it just sort of sits and waits. If it does become the 51st state, then you’re going to see Republicans want Guam. Same thing that happened with Alaska and Hawaii.

When they let Alaska in, in 1959, they knew that would be a Republican state. They said, “OK, we’ll let Hawaii in.”

So they were doing this trading. We’ll give you Alaska, but we get Hawaii. And that’s how it all set up.

So for Bad Bunny, I guess, put it in his words, what it’s like in Puerto Rico, “Pee, pee, poo, poo, tinky, winky.”

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