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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
How Bad Bunny made Puerto Rico’s economy boom during hurricane season
By Max Saltman, Isa Cardona, Abel Alvarado, Isabel Rosales, Ana Melgar,
CNN
Updated:
8:10 PM EDT, Sat September 13, 2025
Source: CNN
It was a “mind blowing” idea, Jorge Perez remembers, two years
after he first heard it: wasn’t going to tour the US.
In August 2023, Perez – a tourism official who manages the island’s
biggest concert venue, the Coliseo – got a phone call from two
producers for Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the genre-bending Puerto
Rican rapper, singer, actor and occasional professional wrestler better
known as Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny, the producers said, wanted to skip the continental US on the
tour for his upcoming album. Instead, he would stay in Puerto Rico for
, all at the Coliseo. If fans from outside Puerto Rico wanted to see
Bad Bunny, they would need to come to San Juan after the first nine
concerts. Those initial nine performances would be open only to island
residents.
“I had no idea it was gonna be so huge as it really is,” Perez
recalls from a nosebleed seat above the stage in the Coliseo. Bad Bunny
“could have done this anywhere …Vegas, any large city, and he chose
Puerto Rico, where his roots are.”
Never has Puerto Rico, or Puerto Rican music, experienced commercial
and artistic success on the scale of Bad Bunny’s residency, which
began in July and ends this week. The effect has been volcanic. Over
the past three months, Bad Bunny has drawn an estimated $200 million
into the economy so far, according to , and Perez expects that after
the residency ends on September 14, the final tally will be far higher.
It’s something not seen “in the 20-year history of the Coliseo
itself or in the entertainment industry of Puerto Rico,” Perez says.
“It hasn’t only been the San Juan area,” Perez says. “This has
impacted the whole island.”
People who come for Bad Bunny stay in local hotels, eat at local
restaurants and even spend money on Bad Bunny-themed tours. Fans want
to see his childhood home in Vega Baja, his church, the grocery store
where he worked before he became one of the world’s biggest stars.
The boost was exactly what Puerto Rico needed, Perez says. The island
has seen a “decade of slow economic movement.” First came Hurricane
Maria in 2017, which nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and the
island’s infrastructure. Then came COVID, which decimated the tourism
industry worldwide for several years.
Perez thinks that after the residency ends, the ripple effects will
keep bringing people to Puerto Rico, with the fans who saw Bad Bunny in
concert leaving as “ambassadors” for the island.
Nonetheless, Perez says, “it’s gonna be difficult to top.”
‘We Latinos have to stick together’
Normally, this time of year would be the low season in Puerto Rico,
with visitors avoiding the island’s powerful hurricanes. One
wouldn’t know it, however, from the partying crowd at La Placita in
San Juan.
Evelyn Aucapiña is one of many at La Placita who came to Puerto Rico
to see Bad Bunny. She and a friend bought their tickets at the first
chance they could, in the dead of Chicago winter.
“We were like, ‘we’re gettin’ out of here, it’s too
cold,’” she says.
Aucapiña estimates she’ll spend around $2,000 for her whole trip,
between hotels, flights and other expenses. It’s worth it, she says.
She understands why Bad Bunny is avoiding the US mainland. While the
residency has been planned for more than two years, in a recent
interview with I-D magazine the singer said that he worried Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would profile and arrest fans at his
concerts in the continental US.
“I have family members that live in fear,” Aucapiña says. “We
Latinos have to stick together.”
Aucapiña sees the economic boom Bad Bunny has brought to Puerto Rico,
combined with that care for his fans, as “the best of both worlds.”
“This is how Latinos are supposed to come together, in my opinion.”
Peruvian-Americans Owen Valasco and his girlfriend Leyla Gamonal agree.
They spent $1,000 each on tickets and hotels for what they considered
“a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“Us being Peruvian,” Valasco says. “If we had an artist as big as
Bad Bunny is, I would love for them to do the same thing and bring
awareness to Peru and tourism and to help the economy boom.”
A ‘better future’ in Puerto Rico
The pain of leaving Puerto Rico for opportunities in the US is a
constant in the island’s history, and in Bad Bunny’s music.
“No one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of
returning,” Bad Bunny murmurs in his song “Lo Que pasó A
Hawaii.” “If one day it’s my turn, it’s gonna hurt so much.”
“I think that one of the main things that will come out of this
residency,” Jorge Perez speculates, “is that the younger generation
that has considered leaving Puerto Rico for better opportunities will
say ‘We can stay in Puerto Rico. We can impact the world.’”
One of those young people is freelance illustrator Sebastian Muñiz
Morales. Just 20 years old, Muñiz scored a job designing Bad Bunny’s
official merch when he and a friend DM’d the rapper’s creative
designer, who had put out a call on Instagram for artists to work with
Bad Bunny.
“I just sent an emoji,” Muñiz recalls, sitting at his dining room
table in Ponce, Puerto Rico. “We both sent an emoji, we didn’t say
like ‘soy illustador grafíco, pick me!’”
The emoji worked. Though he still hasn’t met Bad Bunny himself,
Muñiz’s designs are all over Puerto Rico. The first time Muñiz saw
people in the wild wearing something he’d made was at a winter market
in Old San Juan, just after Christmas.
“It’s very surreal,” he says. “It drove me back to a time where
I was like, ‘Yo, I was drawing this at 2 a.m.!’”
The chief centerpiece of Muñiz’s illustrations is “El Concho,” a
stylized toad that “screams Puerto Rican” and serves as Bad
Bunny’s mascot for the residency. Muñiz’s shirts feature El Concho
boxing, flying the Puerto Rican flag and hawking piragua, Puerto
Rico’s distinctive style of shaved ice.
Along with experiencing the residency as a member of the rapper’s
team, Muñiz has witnessed its effect on the island with his own eyes.
“In any town you go to, you’ll basically find two or three people,
and I’ve talked to them – they’re here for Bad Bunny.”
Like many young people in Puerto Rico, he’s felt the pull of the
outside world. He’s had friends who have left Puerto Rico for
opportunities elsewhere.
“Puerto Ricans, we have this thought that ‘here, there’s no
future,’” Muñiz says, but Bad Bunny “made us understand that
Puerto Rico is more than that.”
“I mean, seeing Puerto Rico through it makes you feel a little more
patriotic, feel better about where you’re from,” he continues,
referring to the residency. “We’re not seeing it from another
perspective, but rather what Puerto Rico really is.”
“I don’t have that thought anymore, like, ‘wow, I have to leave
to have a better future,’ but instead, ‘I have to fight so that my
better future is here.’”
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