Bad Bunny headlined a show that was globally celebrated as a political intervention and as an act of cultural integration. The Super Bowl LX halftime show became the stage for an emotionally charged concept of a visible, proud, and inclusive Latinidad in the Hispano-American language. The most powerful performative and explicit slogan called for a reinvention of what is American: America is not a country, it is a continent.
The gesture had immediate political repercussions. Broad cultural sectors of the Spanish-speaking world cheered enthusiastically, while the Trumpist cultural right deplored what it interpreted as an attack on American nationality. However, to stop the analysis at this bipolarity and position oneself within one of these two options implies relinquishing a more uncomfortable but necessary reading: the underlying problem is not Latin American cultural expression, but the type of Latinidad that was expressed and represented—asking which cultural matrix it responds to and who was left out of this representation. This becomes particularly relevant when this undeniable effort at symbolic integration is contrasted with the reality of U.S. migration policy, marked by massive, selective, unequal deportations differentiated according to migrants’ geographic origins.
Thus, the Super Bowl halftime show functioned as an inverted mirror: it displayed cultural inclusion while, at the same time, concealing deep hierarchies within Latinidad itself. To understand this paradox, it is necessary to examine the figures surrounding the criminalization of contemporary migration in the United States.
Since 2025, Ecuador has been the country with the highest number of deportations from the United States according to data from The Global Statistics and Ecuador Chequea, despite being well below the top ten countries with the largest migrant populations. The rate is revealing: for every thousand Ecuadorian migrants, approximately 23 are deported by ICE, while in the case of Mexico—the largest migrant community with approximately 40 million people—the figure rises to around 2 deportees per thousand. The asymmetry is striking: while Ecuador exceeds one million migrants, that is, 39 times fewer than the Mexican migrant population, it suffers deportation rates 20 times higher.
This pattern cannot be explained solely by administrative reasons related to compliance with requirements, but appears instead to point to a situation of structural discrimination in the enforcement of migration policy, where certain appearances, accents, cultural traits, and geographic origins are more likely to qualify for deportation. This reveals not only a statistical disproportion, but a human hierarchy in migration control, in which Andean migrants are especially targeted by U.S. immigration enforcement, even though these countries do not correspond to the largest communities.
However, this is not about establishing a competition of victimhood among migrant communities. The history of structural discrimination against the Mexican community in the United States is extensive and widely documented. The point is not to relativize those trajectories, but to note that the current asymmetry in deportation rates raises a specific question about differentiated treatment toward other, less visible Latin American communities. Why do Andean migrants receive more severe and differentiated treatment?
For historically structural reasons, the Latino has been culturally and symbolically hegemonized by Caribbean influence, both in aesthetic and migratory terms. Urban culture and music, reggaeton, salsa, merengue, and Caribbean iconography have become, by their own merit, the dominant language of visible Latinidad. Although speaking of hegemony in this context does not imply attributing exclusionary intent or deliberate imposition, this cultural predominance produces a globally accepted idea that “being Latino” is equivalent to dancing certain rhythms, speaking Spanish with a particular accent, assuming stereotypical behaviors, and representing a specific appearance.
Meanwhile, Andean-American migrant communities—Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and, to a large extent, Colombian and Venezuelan migrants from their interior regions—who are among the most punished in migratory terms, remain at the margins of processes of cultural recognition. And although some may more successfully assimilate into the dominant codes of visible Latinidad, their significant migratory presence does not translate into equal symbolic visibility or reduced legal vulnerability.
Figures from The Global Statistics and Ecuador Chequea confirm that among the 20 countries with the largest migrant presence in the United States, countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela (the latter two geographically situated between the Andes and the Caribbean) appear after the top ten, but when deportation rates are examined these same countries rise to the top positions and, together with Honduras, lead deportation lists. The contradiction is therefore glaring: visible Latinidad does not coincide with the most punished Latinidad.
Within this framework, being Latino should not mean the exercise of adapting to symbolic standardization, but rather recognizing the existence of a constellation of histories, origins, geographies, languages, and Indigenous, Black, mestizo, and white cultures that make up the continent. America is not a country, but neither can it be reduced to two types of cultures with two types of languages.
Caribbean Latinidad, through its perseverance, joy, and vitality, will continue to occupy the center of cultural representation in the United States, consolidating itself as a hegemonic Latinidad. However, other cultural experiences will remain peripheral, and what is concerning is that this differentiation is expressed in terms of violations of their human rights, especially their migration rights.
In this sense, the cultural agency performed during Super Bowl LX may unsettle ultraconservative sectors, open academic and media debates, and place cultural symbols under tension, but for now it does not challenge the structures of discrimination that weigh most heavily on those most vulnerable to deportation. Without an explicit questioning of this hegemonic Latinidad, the integration of other forms of Latinidad will remain partial and exclusionary, reproducing discrimination within the Latino community in the United States and across the world.
Autor
Political scientist and lawyer. Professor at University of the Americas (Quito). Master in Political Science and Government from FLACSO-Ecuador.
