Shakira and J.Lo made America see Latinos in their complexity, beauty, pain | Opinion
No, I didn’t miss Pitbull and his pelvic thrust.
Shakira’s inimitable craft and complexity showed off the global chops of the 305 in what some are calling one of the best Super Bowl shows ever. And, in the most necessary of years, Jennifer Lopez took Puerto Rico out of the shadows and into national living rooms.
In a historic, iconic performance, singers Shakira and J.Lo represented the invisible Latinos of this country, using the power of dance and music to deliver a louder political message than mere words can convey.
America’s favorite halftime show may never be seen with the same eyes again.
You can’t box us in a stereotype, their act said loud and clear, taking off from where Beyoncé left off with her all-girl army formation of Super Bowl 2016.
We are diverse people with cultures so rich that a Colombian of Lebanese descent, Shakira, swings her hips to a Levantine dabke and wags her tongue with a shrill, an Arabian zaghrouta, both traditional ways to express joy and happiness.
You needed the heritage lesson.
We are diverse people so rich in history that a Boricua, Jennifer Lopez from the Bronx, wraps herself in two flags, the American as her superpower cape, and the Puerto Rican one with pride on the inside, always in her heart.
Children in cages
Awash in red and silver, the women traveled the road from in-your-face to poignant presentation when J.Lo’s 11-year-old daughter, Emme, stepped out from an oval-shaped silver cage, and sang with her mother as Latina girls sat in illuminated cages.
The children in real American cages are angels.
Shame on you, if you don’t want to see what you’ve done, if you don’t want to hear our condemnation. We will not let you forget.
Here we are, reaching out with bodies, faces, and all the skimpy you need to pay attention.
You see us now, USA, don’t you?
If you still have white supremacy rage in your heart instead of tears in your eyes, there’s something wrong with you.
Get loud, vote
Yes, Shakira and J.Lo kept America glued to their hips, their hair, their hotness at 43 and 50.
And, in one of the most watched live television broadcasts of the year, their lips carried the message “viva la raza” and, Latinos, “get loud” at the ballot box. Vote your truth. Be seen in the 2020 election.
“Come on people, let’s get loud!” J.Lo sang.
Presente.
“You gotta do it, you gotta prove it.”
From the cradle to the workplace, do you know how many of us have been told, so many times and in so many ways, not to be so loud?
These women’s music and messages were spectacular, affirming, risky, bold, and representative. And the Spanish and the English flowed as if they were making love to each other.
If you didn’t understand what was going on, if you didn’t understand the Spanish rap J Balvin and Bad Bunny brought to the musical conversation, you thought all sorts of things about JLo’s athletic moves on a pole and the camera panning to Shakira’s shimmying intimate places.
Vulgar, one too many women tweeted.
A “Zumba class” face-booked a journalist friend with a wicked sense of humor.
These women brought heat, hip and tongue action and the MAGA prudes (or pretend prudes) exploded.
“It’s a brothel,” tweeted Sarah DeLa Fuente, who describes herself as “anti-Communist, conservative, #MAGA and #Deplorable yet uses as her profile picture the image of a Victorian-era woman with huge breasts bulging out of her corset.
You might say that a brothel is where the husbands of women who think being sexy is a sin can be found, but the profile picture says closet material.
Dears, what Shakira and J.Lo were showing the entire time, from their joint press conferences before the Super Bowl to the tap in the butt and embrace after the halftime show ended, is that strong women celebrate and support each other.
As for vulgar...
Vulgar is the president.
Vulgar, the worst kind of it, is ripping screaming kids from their parents and incarcerating them for months in Miami-Dade with the complicit silence and vote of a community with its own children’s exodus in the 1960s.
Empowerment
As a woman of letters, a critic, and unapologetic feminist, I’ve always had a problem with the hip-hop, rap, and reggaeton culture that oftentimes demeans women in lyrics. I’ve struggled to understand the generation that embraces it, tone deaf to the misogyny.
But this wasn’t what was going on Sunday on stage at Hard Rock Stadium.
All the contrary, Shakira and J.Lo’s performance was about empowerment of women, of Latinos, of cultures banned.
It was an embrace of America the same way the voice of another Latina, Demi Lovato, powerfully belted out “the land of the free and the home of the brave” taking in another layer of meaning to the national anthem.
We are here, we are us, we are Americans.
See us.
This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 11:48 AM.
