Cultura Is Currency: What Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Performance Means for Identity, Business & Wealth
Welcome back to Banking On Cultura. Season 7 is HERE 🎙️🔥
In this solo episode, Victoria Jenn breaks down the deeper meaning behind Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, and why it hit so many of us like medicine. This wasn’t just a performance… it was representation, history, pride, and unity on one of the biggest stages in the world.
We talk about:
✨ What Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl moment meant for Latino culture
✨ Boricua pride + Puerto Rico’s history being seen globally
✨ Why assimilation was survival, and why authenticity is the new power
✨ The connection between Latino and Black communities (and what happens when we unite)
✨ How to channel the momentum into purpose, healing, and action
✨ Reinventing yourself in business + life without losing your roots
And if you’ve been feeling stuck, disconnected, or like you’re performing your way through life… this episode is your reminder: Your culture is not a limitation, it's your advantage.
🎟️ PLUS: Victoria shares details on the upcoming Centered CEO Mastermind Retreat 2026, focused on somatic healing, identity, values, and stepping into your most authentic self.
If this episode hits you, comment your biggest takeaway and share it with someone who needs this energy right now.
In this episode:
3:45 - Unity Through Cultural Expression
11:53 - Bad Bunny's Cultural Impact
20:02 - Love Overcomes Hate
34:37 - What's Next With This Magic?
Full Transcript:
What's up everybody? Welcome back to Banking on Cultura. I am your host Victoria Jen Rodriguez and y'all welcome to season 7. Season 7, the premiere, darling. Coming to you live from where? Laasita. And I had a whole another episode scheduled to drop today. But after Benito Bowl, I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We cannot launch season 7 on the heels of that absolutely historic moment without acknowledging what went down. And so today's episode, we're going to dig into the performance. We're going to dig into the business aspect of it all. We are going to talk about the cultura of it all and really use this as an opportunity for us to reignite the fire within us. I don't know about y'all, but after watching that performance and just all the ridicule this man has gotten, all the critics, all the shenanigans, all the pressure, and how he came out and he executed and represented us so well. I don't know about you, but Latinos, we up right now. We up. Okay. What a time to be alive. What a time to be Latino. And what a time, baby, to be Boriqua. Can I get a amen? Um, what a time it is to be a person of color, quite honestly, because that performance really just wasn't for Latinos. If you really paid attention, it was for any person, any community who has ever felt like they were less than, like they were treated as a stepchild, like they were valueless because they didn't look, sound, talk, walk, bark the same as a white person. That's just what it is. Let's just call it a spade. A spade. So for any person who has ever felt like that, for any country who has been colonized and taken over by another power, okay? By another power. This was for you. This was for us. And even for the Blanitos, it was for you, too. Because ultimately the undertone of this entire performance, this entire saga, this entire uh you know I would say shift is really based on unity and based on bringing everyone together where everyone can see themselves in this performance. Why do you think he included Lady Gaga? He included Lady Gaga in his performance. And by the way, I don't know if you guys caught this, but before Lady Gaga went on, he was singing the intro to his song Monle. And basically what he was saying was, um, "Is this what you want? Is this what you want to see?" And then it pans to Lady Gaga, a white woman, super light-skinned white woman singing in English. Bet. He put some sasson on it and he made it a salsa version. How meaningful is that? Another symbol that hey, English is beautiful. English is commonly known in this country, but look how much more dope it is with a little ceil. And I think, you know, listen, I I I've been pondering on this and I could see why so many Americans are upset by this performance. And it is because if you really think about it, America has no culture. America has no culture. America's culture is literally a hybrid, an infusion of all the immigrant cultures that are here, of all of the things that they brought to this country by conquering other countries, other cultures, bringing it here and creating the melting pot of what you see America as today. Because what is American culture? Truly, what is American culture? It doesn't exist. And so, I could totally see how some folks would be offended by all of this flavor and vibrancy and color because they're used to vanilla. They're used to blend. They're used to things just kind of moving like this. Whereas culturally for folks of color, we don't move like this. We move like this, honey. Okay? We put our hips into it. All the things. And I'm talking about our food, our music, the way we dress, how we represent ourselves in rooms, how we speak, how we push trends. And so, I could see how they would be envious of that because they don't have a real place to center themselves. You know, culture is one of those things where it becomes a part of your DNA. It is a part of who you are. It literally is attached within you. And regardless of how much you try to assimulate and I know many of us have had to do that because it was how we could survive, it was how our parents survived. It was how our grandparents survived. And so we were taught and preconditioned to believe that we needed to assimilate. We needed to fit in. We could not stand out because it was about survival, right? And so we assimilated. We put our culture to the side. Maybe we didn't wear our hair like this. We put our hair in a tight bun, right? We didn't wear the red lipstick. We were very monotoned. We didn't talk as much at meetings. We toned down our light. We toned down our cultura, our competitive advantage because it made others uncomfortable. But it made them uncomfortable because they couldn't relate, right? They couldn't relate. And if if you really want to dig under the trunk, right? If you really want to dig under it all, it is because they did not know themselves, right? They do not know themselves. People are threatened by others who are confident in their skin, who have something to align to their identity, right? They envy that because they don't have that, right? They don't have the identifiers. And so when they see someone else who is different that embodies something like it's engaging, it's intriguing, it gets the people going, it's a little threatening and intimidated. And so what do they try to do? They try to put you in a box. They try to bring you down, right? Hey, you need to look like us. We are the standard, right? When we all know when we are around our families, when we are in our environments, when we feel love, when we are comfortable in our own skin, there is no stopping us. So, I can see why there is animosity. I can see. And if you don't have a place where you can feel proud of coming from, where you feel such a deep rooted connection to where you come from, it is literally a part of your identity and how you show up in the world, how you run your households, how you manage your personal relationships, the food you consume. If you don't have something like that to be proud of, especially knowing the history, American history, if you don't have a place where you can be proud of because you know it is a place of love, unity, beauty, resilience, community, right? If you don't have a place like that to rep for yourself, I could see how that would make you feel uneasy inside, right? But it's okay if that is you and and you know someone who is feeling a way about them, invite them in. Invite them in. One thing about Latinos, we are a welcoming community. We invite you in. So, welcome them in. And I think that was part of, you know, one of Bad Bunny's big messages of the night is like, you're welcome here. You're welcome here. Come into our salah, right? Come into our casita. Come into our world. Ingrain yourself here. We welcome you with open arms. Right? And that was just a something that we should carry with us when we go into the office, when we're in boardrooms, when we are in um the park, when we're getting our nails done, and we come across somebody who perhaps is not educated on our cultura is bland. Brighten them up a little bit. Put some sung on them a little bit. They need it. And it's okay. It's okay for you to to be that light in the darkness for someone else. So, one of the things I really really appreciated about this performance as well was it really was an infusion of humanity. Literally, the entire performance an infusion of humanity. And it took Bad Bunny and his amazing storytelling and his production team and his crew and I know Bad Bunny had to be is involved in in putting together the the experience. I know he's involved because I don't know if you guys know this, but when he was putting on his residency in Puerto Rico, he studied. He went to professors to teach him the history of Puerto Rico. the director, the older man that's in the video that is played at the beginning of the residency with the koki, right? He has so much history about Puerto Rico and he took that history and those insights
and cultural symbols to create this movement. and he put it on the biggest stage in America for everyone to educate themselves on the community, right? And everyone who's hating, they watched it. Cuz how can you hate on something you haven't seen? When you have that much hate, you almost are like foaming at the mouth. You have to see it, right? You have to see it. What is the commotion about? You just got to know. So, trust me, they saw it. Okay? and they added to that 134.5 million view count and counting. Not even considering the replays of the Super Bowl halftime show. All right, Bad Bunny made history, the highest viewed Super Bowl of all time, and this is the first time in history that there was a competing show happening at the same time. And he still got in those numbers. And you want to know why? It's not because football is America's sport. No, it's not because of that. It is because it was a moment where Latinos, the black community, and a number of other communities galanized around this, mobilized around this and said, "You know what? This is bigger than us. we are going to show up. And when they showed up and Bad Bunny showed out, a whole new community of people not only learned about our culture, but appreciated our culture. And by the way, shout out to the black community. I always say this, if the Latino and black community mobilized together and eliminated the tension that exists between our two communities because the fact of the matter is that we have suffered many of the same struggles. We have grew up in the same neighborhoods side by side. We have been discriminated against. We have been enslaved. We have been stripped of our dignity. We have had to fight for our position in this world. Your struggles are our struggles. If we combine the black and Latino community, do you understand how much power and influence we would have together if we did not fight against each other? If we did not allow the system to influence us to believe that we are enemies instead of sisters and brothers. Do you understand how powerful that would be? They want us to be at odds with each other. They create these unnecessary barriers between the two communities for essentially that to keep us segregated from each other. For us to operate in our silos, for us to have it's you versus mentality. Because when we operate in that way, we're weakened. We are weakened because we're scattered. We're not following the same mission and vision. And I just want to shout out the black community who has been uh talking about the performance, who has been showing love, who also has been having this exact conversation within their own communities about how Latinos and the black community need to come together. I appreciate you and I see you and I thank you. Bad Bunny's performance has started all these conversations. Literally, I'm I'm on social media. History lessons, history lessons about what went down in Puerto Rico. History lessons about what the US has done. Right? This administration is trying really hard to erase even American history to make it seem as if mistakes weren't made, lives weren't taken. Okay? And it's up to us to ensure that that history does not go uh to the wayside that that history is not forgotten. It is our history. We need to teach our children this history. Our aunties, our grandfathers, our grandmothers, our parents because guess what? They were brainwashed too, right? They were brainwashed. I have to say this generation right here, the millennial generation that has had the opportunity to live both in I would say the dulu land and now the reality land. We've learned how to survive between those two worlds, right? We've done the survival mode. We've gone to school. We worked in corporate. We got our money, right? We assimulated, right? We assimulated because that's what we were taught we needed to do. And then I would say we're at a point in our lives now and in our careers where we know better, where we know better. We want better. We want to live differently. We are identifying success very differently. We're defining it differently. We're moving differently. We are more in tuned with ourselves than ever before. And so this performance is just galvanizing that shift. I truly believe that this has created a movement within itself where listen, you can't tell a Latino anything right now. Nothing right now. Okay? And that's how it should be for all communities. None of us should feel like we don't matter. None of us should feel like we are less than. None of us should feel like we just arrived. No, we've been here for generations. All right? We're not new to this. We are true to this. This is our country just as much as it is yours. Okay? And we may not be proud of what this country has done, but we do live here, too. And it's okay to want a government, to want a society, to want a system to take accountability. And it's also okay for us to explore new and better ways of doing things. As we are all living this human experience together, it's almost like ah it's so it's like a good versus evil vibe. Are you guys picking that up? Literally, when I was watching the show, I was like, "Oh my god." Like, they have this other show going on and what is represented there, right? Depending on, you know, what you've been consuming, you think that that's like evil, right? And then they look at us and they think we're evil, but we are thinking we're good. It's like this good versus evil thing right now. And that's why that billboard at the end was so powerful. Right? What is more powerful than hate? Love. Right? Because that is what we need right now. So it's like even if you try to hate on Bad Bunny, even if you try to hate on Latinos, one of the most beautiful things about our culture is we love and we love hard honey. Okay? We love. That is one of the most beautiful things about our cultura. And he put it front and center. And really quick to back up what I said about the black and Hispanic community coming together. The fact that this happened during Black History Month is monumental. That's like God. Yo, God had played so much of a role with this halftime show. Like this is God literally giving us the signs. Like are you paying attention to the signs that are being put in front of you? It's like you can't ignore the signs anymore. You have no other choice but to pay attention. It literally is being served to you on a platter in your face. God is like, "Ma, this is going down during Black History Month. Pay attention black community, right? Pay attention. Latinos signs right in front of you." So now what? You know, I was I was watching this um gentleman on social media, and I don't know if you guys follow Amanda Seals, but I love Amanda Seals, and her stance on this whole performance has been, you know, performing is not revolutionary. Like, performing is not going to decolonize Puerto Rico, right? Is not going to no longer make it a Commonwealth, right? A performance doesn't do that. And so her argument is although you know she knows everyone's really excited about what's happening but if you really follow the dollars and you think about it the NFL got what they got. We literally made a corporation bigger by tuning in right millions and millions of views converts to millions and millions of dollars. Now, the NFL has new Latino fans, even though Latinos were one of their primary um fan bases, by the way. But now they even have more Latinos because Latinos are thinking about, wow, they they let Bad Bunny perform and and this was so amazing and our cultura and and it was just on full display, which was incredible. And I know that this moment was needed for us. We needed this moment. America needed this moment. Not just Latinos. There has just been so much sadness. Sadness over the last year and a half. And this right here was just like a moment to breathe, a moment to connect as human beings, a moment for us to be emotionally influenced in a positive way instead of how we've been emotionally traumatized over the last year and a half. And there's significance there and I think that that's important. But to Amanda Seal's point, what will we do now? What are we going to do now? How are we going to galvanize now? How are we going to mobilize ourselves now? As we are on this high, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with this energy? What are we going to do with our businesses? How are we going to, you know, leverage this energy and everything that we've learned and this moment to create something magical in our lives that impacts other people? Like, don't forget that. Don't let the high of this performance leave you after this week, after it stops being circulated on social media, after it stops being so fresh. Like, hold on to it. Write down what this is doing for you. Write it down. Write down your goals. Write down your dreams. Write down your aspirations. Write down the type of impact you want to have. The type of human being you want to be. Write it down. All the feelings. Write it down so that you can come back to this moment a month from now, two months from now, 3 months from now and leverage it to reinvigorate, remind to empower you to go in on you. What did bad belly say when he was talking to the camera? What he was saying was, "The reason why I ended up at the Super Bowl halftime show is because I believed in myself and I never I'm going to get emotional." Woo!
And I never stopped believing in myself.
And you shouldn't either because you are more valuable than you think.
We need that, right? We all needed that. And so now that we got it, what are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with it, y'all? We can't let this performance, this shift, not extend beyond the media craze. we need to hold on to it. So, make sure that you are putting together your plans right now, right? Paying attention to what you want. What do you value? What do you care about
and why now? Like, we are at a crossroads, y'all. We are at a crossroads. We are at a beautiful moment to reinvent yourself to do things differently, right? Do things differently in a way that not only serves you but serves your community. You have that opportunity right now, right? That bunny lit that fire under us. So, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it? that that is something that I've been thinking a lot about. What are we going to do about it? One of the things that I've been working on even before this performance because I've been feeling the pull. I've been paying attention to the signs. I've been spending more time with myself and really thinking about, you know, what is it that I do want and what do I really care about and how do I center myself? So regardless of what is going on in the external marketplace, the shenanigans, regardless of what is happening, I am clear. I am clear on my path. I am clear on my purpose. I am clear on my calling, right? And really spending time with that work. I came to the next evolution in my business where I used to spend years hosting hundreds of people at conferences, right, and leading largecale events. Now I am pivoting and I'm going to smaller, more intimate experiences where my attendees can really take off their mask and strip themselves of identities that no longer serve them, right? and letting go and being okay with letting go and setting boundaries, resetting their values. What are your values? Have you actually sat down and and written down like what are your values? Do you know what they are? And it's okay if you don't. A lot of people don't. A lot of people don't because we are following everyone else's path. We are listening to everyone else instead of ourselves and trusting ourselves, our intuition, right? Our that thing that makes us different from everybody else. And so I decided to curate retreats, but they're mastermind retreats. So it's not just an opportunity for you to go, you know, vacation and experience new things. It's deeper than that. Yes, we'll be surrounded by luxury and we'll do all of that because we deserve that, but we need to reconnect with ourselves, right? We need to reconnect with ourselves deeper. We need to go more deep with ourselves. We need to go beyond the surface level because we're we're good at performing. We've been trained on how to perform and that's exhausted. We're overextending ourselves. We're burning ourselves out pretending to be someone that we're not performing every day. Every day. Wouldn't you want a space where you could like just be you and find you again? Maybe you've lost who you are because of work, because you're just keeping up with the Joneses, because you're just on survival mode and you've lost your essence of you, right? Maybe you're at a crossroads. You're evolving to someone new. You're embracing a new identity and you just don't know how to let go of your old identity. This is the type of work that we'll be doing at the centered CEO mastermind retreat going down February 28th through March 1st, 2026 this year in the Pocono Mountains. I'm going to be joined by Jessica Diana who is an intuitive. She has expertise in somatic healing. She has expertise in intuitive thinking and she's going to be doing a lot of that work in partnership with me because we are at a moment right now where our people are struggling not only financially, not only socially but emotionally as well. Right? Emotionally we're just not we're not in tal something is off. We're we're missing something. We're missing something. And as a result of missing that something, we are walking into rooms less confident. We're not owning the spaces that we're walking into, right? We're not showing up in our true identity. We're not showing up in our true identity. And it's impacting us. It may not be impacting our performance. It may be impacting your personal relationships. It may be impacting your well-being because you're miserable. You're exhausted. You're tired of all the things. So, that's just an example of some things that we're going to be covering at the retreat. I'll put the link in the show notes. Please join us. I think we have five spots left. But if if it's aligned to where you are, if you've outgrown playing small and you're ready to really go allin and operate from your full authority without, you know, jeopardizing your well-being, your values, or even the type of money that you can make, then this experience is for you. So, I welcome you to check it out. But I I share that with you because I've I'm sitting down and I'm thinking about what does the community need? What does the world need right now? And how can I use my gifts? How can I serve as a vessel to uplift my community to mobilize us to charge us forward? Like pay attention to that. We just got some medicine. Bad Bunny's performance was Medicina. That was medicine for us because we've sick. We've been literally sick emotionally, physically, mentally. We have been sick for so long. And he gave us some medicine. He was like here to feel good. That's why so many of us feel so strongly about this. Don't get emotional again, Victoria. So many of us could see ourselves. We felt so seen. We felt so heard, right, with the little boy that he woke up off the bench. How many of you have fell asleep in the salah on a whole bunch of couches? I mean, a whole bunch of coats in a room when you were at your parents' parties. Like, we saw ourselves like it spoke to our inner child. We literally were seen in so many different ways that we're like alive right now. So what are you going to do with it? Now you've got some medicineina. You've been cured a bit. So now what? What are you going to do next with this right with this magic that you've been given? What are you going to do? And that's what I want to leave you with in this episode. like what's next for you? How can you use this energy to propel you forward? What are you going to create? Who are you going to become? Who are you going to serve? How are you going to play your part in moving forward? What Bad Bunny stands for, right? Freeing our people. believing in yourself, doing things outside the box, coloring outside the lines, really tapping into your full authenticity. Who are you at your most authentic self? Who and and you may have forgotten because you've been playing the game so long. You've been performing so long. And that's okay as long as you realize it. Right? We're at this big age where self-awareness, you guys know. You know, if you're performing, you know, if you're not really tapping into all of you, you know, if you're allowing fear to drive your decisions, you know what is holding you back. So now, Bad Bunny said, "Oay
said, what are you going to do now?" What are you going to do now? y'all, that um it took a couple of days for me to process that performance, which is why we're dropping this episode, you know, a little later than usual on on a Tuesday because I needed to get my thoughts together. I needed to gather my emotions. I needed to really put into words because some of what happened was indescribable. You can't even describe it. You just felt it, you know? You felt it and that is what made it so powerful. And for so long we've we felt all these emotions of distrust, dishonesty, sadness, evil, intensity, nervous system all crazy. By the way, that's something we're focusing on at the retreat as well. We will be focusing on centering your nervous system and giving you tools and resources so that when you are not in close-knit environments, safe environments like the one we are curating for you at the retreat, you're able to still center yourself and hold yourself together. But with that being said, environments matter right now, y'all. Who you are hanging out with matters. Who you are spending time with right now matters more than ever before because we are at a shift right now. We are all vulnerable. All of us in the best way. In the best way because now we can really see, you know, when when we're vulnerable, we can see things differently versus when we're playing the game. You know, when we're vulnerable, that's when real truth comes to fruition. That's when real truth comes headto head with us, right? We're no longer denying or we're no longer being dulu, right? It's right here in front of our faces. Right here in front of your face. Right here. Right here. So, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Anywh who, y'all, I love you. Thank you for tuning in. get ready for this season because, you know, I'm different. I'm definitely different. The way I'm showing up is different. On social media, I've been talking a lot about this shift that I'm experiencing about letting go of old identities, embracing new identities. So, I'm right here with you. Everything that I'm sharing with you is not me, you know, talking to you as if I have all the answers because guess what? I don't. I don't. I don't have all the answers. You have the answers for you. You have the answers that matter for you. I have the answers that are are meaningful to me. That's going to help me evolve to the next level. My position in this world and I truly believe that is just to guide you to those answers and to guide you back to you. Because if nobody's told you lately, you dope as hell. Okay? You got it going on. All right? You are amazing and incredible and you deserve the best that life has to offer you and you deserve to do things scared because guess what? If it's scary, it's it's probably meaningful, probably means something to you. So tap into that. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. If you appreciated today's episode, please share it with someone that you think that needs to hear this. Uh please uh subscribe, like, comment, leave us feedback. We love hearing from you. And stay tuned for an amazing season ahead. I love you, Mi. We up right now. So own that okay? Just don't let this moment fade away. Hold on to it. Okay, hold on to it. We need you to hold on to it. You need you to hold on to it. Don't let it fade away. And listen, Bad Bunny's performance is on repeat. So, if you need to be invigorated again, go watch that bad boy again. I watched it at least 10 times so far. Obsessed. Obsessed. Because there's something new that I uncover every time that I watch it. All right, Mi. I love you. Besitos and I'll see you in the next episode.
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