Dangerous Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is greater than a world song phenomenon; he’s a bona fide image of Puerto Rico.
The church choir boy became “King of Latin Trap” has songs, taste and swagger that replicate the island’s mixture of delight, ache and inventive resilience. His song mixes reggaetón beats with the sounds of Puerto Rican historical past and on a regular basis lifestyles, the place devotion and defiance ceaselessly are living facet by way of facet.
Dangerous Bunny has been known as considered one of Puerto Rico’s “loudest and proudest voices.” Songs like “El Apagón” – “The Blackout” – have a good time pleasure and protest in combination, honoring on a regular basis acts of resistance to colonial rule and injustice in Puerto Rican lifestyles. Others, like “NUEVAYoL,” have a good time the sounds and vibrancy of its diaspora – particularly in New York Town. Some songs, like “RLNDT,” point out non secular looking – that includes allusions to his personal Catholic upbringing, sacred and secular divides, New Age astrology and Spiritism.
As a pupil of faith who lately wrote a ebook about Puerto Rican Muslims, I in finding echoes of that very same power and artistry of their tales. Even if marginalized amongst Muslims, Puerto Ricans and different U.S. electorate, they in finding contemporary tactics to specific their cultural heritage and follow their religion, growing new communities and connections alongside the best way. Very similar to Dangerous Bunny’s song, Puerto Rican Muslims’ lives problem how we take into consideration race, faith and belonging within the Americas.
Dangerous Bunny plays throughout his ‘No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui’ residency on July 11, 2025, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Pictures
Tales of battle
There are not any precise numbers, however sooner than contemporary crises, Puerto Rico – an archipelago of three.2. million folks – had about 3,500 to five,000 Muslims, lots of them Palestinian. Financial hardship, herbal screw ups comparable to hurricanes Irma and Maria, and executive forget have since compelled many to go away, then again.
As of 2017, there have been additionally an estimated 11,000 to fifteen,400 Puerto Rican Muslims a few of the just about 6 million Puerto Ricans and just about 4 million Muslims in the US.
Like every Puerto Rican, those Muslims know the struggles of colonialism’s ongoing have an effect on, from blackouts and financial inequality to racism. As an example, within the viral 23-minute video for “El Apagón,” journalist Bianca Graulau outlines how tax incentives for exterior traders are displacing locals – a theme bolstered in Dangerous Bunny’s later track, “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii.”
The video for “El Apagón” features a brief documentary about gentrification at the archipelago.
Converts to Islam additionally face distinctive demanding situations – and no longer simply Islamophobia. Many are informed they’re “not real Puerto Ricans” as a result of their newfound religion. Some are handled as foreigners in their very own households and pal teams, ceaselessly requested whether or not they’re leaving behind their tradition to “become Arab.”
To be a Puerto Rican Muslim, then, is to barter being and belonging at a large number of intersections of variety and distinction.
Nonetheless, some attach their Muslim id to moments in Puerto Rican historical past. In interviews, they informed me how they determine with Muslims who got here with Spanish conquistadors throughout colonial occasions. Others draw inspiration from enslaved Africans dropped at the Caribbean. A lot of them have been Muslim and resisted their situation in tactics huge and small: fleeing to the wooded area to hope, for instance, or dwelling as “maroons” – individuals who escaped and shaped their very own communities.
Some ways to be Puerto Rican
Puerto Rican tradition can’t be smartly mapped onto a unmarried custom. The archipelago’s faith, song and artwork mix in combination influences from Indigenous Taíno, African, Spanish and American cultures. Spiritual processions cross by way of vehicles blasting reggaetón. Shrines to Our Girl of Divine Windfall stand beside U.S. chain eating places and work of art difficult independence.
Dangerous Bunny embodies this fusion. He’s rebellious but rooted, irreverent but deeply Puerto Rican. His song blends fresh sounds from reggaetón and Latin entice with conventional “bomba y plena.” All of it provides as much as one thing distinctly “Boricua,” a time period for Puerto Ricans drawn from the Indigenous Taíno title for the island, “Borikén.”
A mural in San Juan, Puerto Rico, photographed in 2017, says, ‘We don’t perceive this democracy.’
Mark Ralston/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
Puerto Rican Muslims strive against with what it approach to be authentically Boricua, although. Particularly, their lives divulge how faith is each a boundary and a bridge: defining belonging whilst growing new tactics to consider it.
Since Spanish colonization within the 1500s, maximum Puerto Ricans were Roman Catholic. However over the last two centuries, many different Christian teams have arrived, together with 7th-day Adventists, Lutherans and Pentecostals. These days, greater than part of Puerto Ricans determine as Catholic and about one-third as Protestant.
Along those traditions, Afro-Caribbean traditions comparable to Santería, Espiritismo and Santerismo – a mixture of the 2 – stay lively. There also are small communities of Jews, Rastafari and Muslims.
Even with this variety, converts to Islam are every now and then accused of betraying their tradition. One younger guy informed me that once he turned into Muslim, his mom stated he had no longer best betrayed Christ but in addition “our culture.”
But Puerto Rican Muslims level to Arabic influences in Spanish phrases. They have a good time lines of Islamic design in colonial and revival structure that displays Muslims’ multicentury presence in Spain, from the 700s till the autumn of the ultimate Muslim kingdom in Granada in 1492. Additionally they prepare dinner up halal variations of vintage Puerto Rican dishes.
Like Dangerous Bunny, those converts remix what it approach to be Puerto Rican, appearing how Puerto Rico’s sense of id – or “puertorriqueñidad” – isn’t solely Christian, however advanced and continuously evolving.
A member of the Council in Protection of the Indigenous Rights of Boriken, wearing Taino conventional clothes, sounds a conch throughout a march thru San Juan, Puerto Rico, on July 11, 2020.
Ricardo Arduengo/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
In team spirit
Many Puerto Rican converts body their religion as a counternarrative, rejecting the Christianity imposed by way of Spanish colonizers. Additionally they withstand Islamophobia, racism and international domination, with some converts interested in the faith so to oppose those forces. Very similar to Dangerous Bunny’s song, which ceaselessly evaluations colonialism and social constraints, they ward off towards techniques that attempt to outline who they are able to be.
To that finish, Puerto Rican Muslims additionally construct connections with different teams going through injustice. In reggaetón phrases, they shape their very own “corillos” – teams of pals – united by way of shared struggles.
They show on behalf of Palestinians, seeing them as any other colonized folks with no country. The primary Latino Muslim group, Alianza Islámica – based by way of Puerto Rican converts in 1987 – emerged out of the generation’s push for minorities’ rights across the New York Town metro space. And after the 2016 Pulse Nightclub taking pictures, the place about part of the 49 sufferers killed have been Puerto Rican, and the mosque attended by way of the shooter used to be deliberately set on hearth, Boricua Muslims joined with LGBTQ+, Muslim and Latino communities to grieve and insist justice.
Professional-Palestine supporters attend a rally to finish the battle on Nov. 12, 2023, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Miguel J. Rodríguez Carrillo/VIEWpress by the use of Getty Pictures
In those tactics, Puerto Rican Muslims ring a bell in me that notions of group, id or justice don’t stand on their very own. For many of us, they’re connected – portions of the similar battle for dignity and freedom.
For this reason, after I concentrate to songs like “NUEVAYoL” or “El Apagón,” I bring to mind the Puerto Rican Muslims I do know in puts comparable to Puerto Rico, Florida, New Jersey, Texas and New York. Their tales, like Dangerous Bunny’s song, display how being Puerto Rican these days approach continuously negotiating who you might be and the place you belong. And that faith, like song, can lift the sound of battle – but in addition the hope of someday overcoming the injustices and inequalities of on a regular basis lifestyles.
