The history behind the 9 photos featured in Bad Bunny's La MuDANZA music video

In his most intimate music video yet, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—better known as Bad Bunny—features nine black and white images, which present social movements in Puerto Rico from the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one. These pictures narrate the forgotten history of how Puerto Ricans have consistently stood up to repressions against their culture, political participation and autonomy of their own land.

Photographs by Ricardo Alcaraz and Farrique Pesquera accompany the verse “De aquí nadie me saca; de aquí yo no me muevo; dile que esta es mi casa; donde nació mi abuelo” (in English, “No one will take me from here; from here I will not move; tell them this is my home; where my grandfather was born”), in his music video for LA MuDANZA. These nine photographs, which could be missed if you blink, reflect moments between 1976 and 2002.

Read on to learn the historical context of the photos chosen by Bad Bunny and his production team.

1. The storming of Caracas Beach in Vieques (1979)

Resistance against U.S. Navy presence on the island town of Vieques began as soon as the Viequenses faced evictions in 1941. However, 1978 and 1979 were particularly significant: in 1978, a group of fishermen organized to oppose the military maneuvers. The following year, members of nationalist and socialist organizations on the archipelago created the Cruzada Pro Rescate de Vieques and supported the movement with civil disobedience.

At the time, Alcaraz was studying for his master's degree in Communications at the University of Puerto Rico. He began taking photos while participating in the pro-independence movement. In 1978, he documented the fishermen who were confronting the warships.

In February 1979, Alcaraz joined one of the first military ground occupations: on Caracas Beach, on the south coast of Vieques.  

“That was a raid that started at midnight. It was a weekend. We entered through a gate, we spent about three hours walking in the dark, and we arrived just at dawn, where some Navy barges were and the Marines were there. They were going to do a maneuver. So, we arrived; we occupied the beach. We set up a booth, and we spent, I think, two days interrupting,” said Alcaraz in an interview with 9 Millones.

During those two days of occupation, he took two photos featured in LA MuDANZA: “One of the photos was [of] us almost arriving and we sat ourselves on the beach... sitting [on the sand] and the barges in the background.”

Perhaps the most iconic photo, or the one that can be most appreciated in the video, also occurred during the Caracas Beach storming. It was the moment when the group left. “We left. That is, they let us leave, let's just say that. And it was in that retreat that we saluted the Marines,” he said with a laugh.

2. The civil disobedience that stopped the Navy bombing of Vieques (1999-2003)

Resistance against the U.S. Navy on Vieques reached its peak between 1999 and 2003. The collective outrage after the death of civilian guard David Sanes—who was shot by a military pilot at the Cerro Matias observation post—united thousands of Puerto Ricans to this cause.

“Peace for Vieques” was the slogan that drove sector rescues, civil disobedience camps, maneuver blockades and presentations at the United Nations. On February 21, 2000, the people united in one of the largest demonstrations in the history of the archipelago, closing part of the Las Americas Expressway and attracting global attention.

According to El Nuevo Día, more than 1,000 people were arrested for acts of civil disobedience during these four years of demonstrations on Isla Nena. Farrique Pesquera was able to capture several well-known demonstrations during this period. The three photos featured in Bad Bunny’s video for La MuDANZA happened between 2000 and 2002, to Pesquera’s best recollection when asked by 9 Millones.

In one of these events, on May 4, 2000, more than 100 people were evicted from the restricted area of Camp Garcia. When the militia resumed its maneuvers in 2001, with so-called “inert bullets”, the protesters responded by breaking the restricted area’s fence. Among the acts of protest, they denounced the high incidence of cancer among Vieques residents, which hovered around 31% in 1999.

It was not until two years later, on May 1, 2003, that the U.S. Navy finally withdrew the military and ceased its maneuvers on Vieques.

3. The burial of Santiago “Chago” Mari Pesquera (1976)

Alcaraz captured this photo during the funeral of Santiago “Chago” Mari Pesquera, the son of Juan Mari Bras—then candidate for governor under the Puerto Rico Socialist Party—and Paquita Pesquera. The 23-year-old was assassinated in Rio Piedras in 1976, an event that shook the Mari Pesquera family, which had been receiving violent threats during the election campaign.

“That murder has never really been well clarified,” Alcaraz shared about the criminal case that is still open to this day.

“It was something very tough for our generation... And many, many people went. I tried to do what I could, but I couldn't get to where he [Juan Mari] was under a tent... I was kind of outside, but then that was when they were singing the anthem of Puerto Rico, I think,” he said.

The period of surveillance and political persecution toward the independence movement between the 1950s and 1980s—documented in the so-called “Carpetas” of the Puerto Rico Police and federal intelligence agencies—endangered thousands of citizens’ safety and fundamental rights. It wasn't until 2015 when thousands of these folders became accessible to the public, documenting a history of persecution on the archipelago.

“It was a very, very difficult time, very hard because it shook up a lot of people, because at that time, in the 1970s, there were several political assassinations. And Chagui was one of them,” he remembered.

Among the murders of that time associated with political motives are those of young Antonia Martínez at the University of Puerto Rico, Carlos Soto Arriví and Arnaldo Darío Rosado at Cerro Maravilla, and Ángel Luis Charbonnier, during an act of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party.

4. The “No More Colony” March (1989)

Decolonization movements in Puerto Rico have waxed and waned in support throughout history. One of the moments that reawakened the discussion was in 1989, when President George H. W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress—in his first Address before a Joint Session of Congress—to create a referendum allowing Puerto Ricans to decide the archipelago’s future.

As a result, the federal Senate bill “Puerto Rico Status Referendum Act” (Senate Bill 712) was filed on April 4, 1989. The federal Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee oversaw a process of public hearings and meetings that showed hope. However, the bill fell through when it was reintroduced the following year, in 1990, as Senate Bill 244, after a tie vote in the committee, according to 80Grados.

Alcaraz's photo portrays a demonstration from a time when people were urging for a true commitment to decolonization.

“This one is a bit metaphorical because there are some protesters, but they are all backwards walking with the flag. So, the flag serves as a design with the star in the background, as a metaphor for walking toward the star,” he recalled.

5. March in defense of the Spanish language (1993)

Both Alcaraz and Pesquera were contributors to the Claridad newspaper, with track records documenting the country's history. Among the demonstrations, Alcaraz captured a protest against Law 1 of 1993, which made Spanish and English official languages of the archipelago, reverting Law 4 of 1991 in the process, which declared Spanish as the only official language.

Both laws respond to the positions taken by the governments of the time—Rafael Hernández Colón, in 1991, and Pedro Rosselló’s government, in 1993—during efforts to choose a new political status for Puerto Rico. According to El Pais, close to 100,000 protesters attended the event.

For centuries, Spanish has been the main language in Puerto Rico. During the first decades of the 20th century, the first U.S. military governments on the island attempted to promote a process of Americanization through the teaching of English as the first language.

However, the project faced palpable cultural rejection. English’s adoption on the island has never succeeded in superimposing itself over Spanish as the lingua franca. A 2019 census report reported that, among those who speak Spanish as a first language, 76.5% of the population considers that they speak English “less than well”.

The thing that Alcaraz most appreciates about collaborating in Bad Bunny's video was to capture the stories of those who fought to forge a different country, and that, in his opinion, should not be forgotten:

“In a sense, it is an apologia to all the struggles that have taken place,” he shared.