Los Benitos x Pan-American Unity

One hundred years ago, Pan-American Unity was a popular idea that North, Central, and South America could celebrate our differences, cultivate fellowship, and cooperate toward a shared destiny. But it fell out of favor when

land reform, workers’ rights movements, and calls for a more equitable distribution of resources in Latin America began to feel threatening to the United States. Even so, the Americas have continued to build a common history and deepen cultural ties such that the embrace of Pan-Americanism has become an inevitability with one key component missing - U.S. buy-in.

As a Mexican-American who has lived on both sides of the border, I have long felt the friction between Latin and Anglo America, and have always longed for the embrace that would allow for a kind of multiculturalism that would allow for a celebration of our differences and a fostering of mutual respect. Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show performance felt like this embrace. It felt like an invitation to pursue peace and cooperation through respect for one another’s sovereignty, which reminded me of Benito Juárez’ famous credo: El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.

What was Pan-American Unity?

In the early 20th century, Pan-American Unity was the idea that the Americas belonged to a shared cultural, economical, and political destiny. It was partly rooted in genuine cultural exchange: Mexican muralists created narrative structures for worker empowerment that had ripple effects across the Americas, Latin and U.S. popular music dialogued in meaningful ways, and there were big cross-over moments in Hollywood as well as in Spanish-language cinema, especially in the films that would emerge from the Época de oro del cine mexicano. 

But Pan-Americanism was also deeply political. During the World Wars, the U.S. promoted this alliance framework as a way to strengthen political bonds and stabilize the hemisphere under its own leadership. Latin America was celebrated as a “neighbor,” but often in ways that reduced it to an aesthetic inspiration, an exotic curiosity, or a romantic relic, while its political movements were treated as dangerous.

In other words, Pan-American Unity was real, but uneven; from the U.S. perspective, it was a cultural embrace paired with a fear of Latin American sovereignty.

Why did it fade?

Pan-Americanism faded because the Cold War galvanized U.S. paranoia such that Latin America could be celebrated culturally as long as it stayed politically manageable. But once socialist and anti-imperialist movements grew across the continent, the U.S. abandoned messages of unity in favor of strategies of containment: destabilizing Latin American governments in order to exploit their resources, and later militarizing the U.S.-México border. 

But even though the project of Pan-American Unity faded, the party was far from over. In the 20th century, Pan-Americanism was often a strategy of empire. Today, Pan-Americanism has become a reality born of the people.

How Pan-Americanism has reemerged

If Pan-American Unity faded as an official ideal, it didn’t disappear entirely. It simply continued without the cooperation of the United States.

In many ways, the demographic transformation of the U.S. is a consequence of the way it began to impose itself as a paternal, policing figure in the Americas, as opposed to a cooperative equal. For decades, U.S. intervention across Latin America destabilized governments and economies in ways that protected U.S. interests while irreparably damaging local livelihoods. Entire regions were left vulnerable to political violence, corruption, and economic collapse. Migration was a predictable outcome. Moreover, the history of Latin American and Indigenous peoples in what is today the United States long predates the creation of the U.S. nation, so questions of legitimate ownership naturally arise. 

But even while the U.S. worked to maintain power, Latin America continued cultivating its own fellowship. Peoples' movements didn’t vanish, they matured. And by the 1960s and 70s, that consciousness found a voice in La Nueva Canción: a folk revival that blended labor rights with recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, land-based identity, and a vision of solidarity that transcended borders.

Its icons came from across the Americas—Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara in Chile, Mercedes Sosa in Argentina, Silvio Rodríguez in Cuba, Geraldo Vandré in Brazil, Amparo Ochoa in México, to name a few, each articulating and maintaining a shared recognition of the dignity of all people as a human right, the primacy of Indigenous sovereignty across the Americas, and a vision of a more just future. Songs like “Canción para mi América”, by Uruguayo Daniel Viglietti and popularized by Venezuelan singer Soledad Bravo are emblematic of these philosophies. 

The United States appeared culturally at the margins of this movement—not as the leader, but as proof that culture has always flowed across borders, through artists like Linda Ronstadt and others shaped by bilingual, transnational realities.

Pan-Americanism was kept alive and is now more alive in the U.S. than ever because Latin America never stopped building it. Canada, although culturally distinct, also formed part of this return because it acts as a country that respects the sovereignty of its neighbors. And now the U.S. is confronted with a new reality: it must either reconcile with its role in destabilizing the hemisphere, or finally learn how to live cooperatively in the name of peace, equality, and justice.

What Bad Bunny’s performance represents

Benito Juárez, the first Indigenous president of México said, “El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.” Literally, Respect for the rights of others is peace. In other words, peace is achieved through recognizing one another’s sovereignty.

Last night, our other beloved Benito, Bad Bunny, echoed that same truth in a way similar to the activists of the Nueva Canción era; by means of cultural expression.

His performance didn’t feel like a prediction of what the U.S. might become. It felt like recognition of what it already is; a multicultural nation whose history has always been shared with the rest of the Americas, Puerto Rico being the most undeniable aspect of this fact.

What made the performance so powerful to me was that it wasn’t framed as vengeance. It wasn’t a demand to tear everything down. It was an invitation to celebrate our shared history as a continent, our individual cultural histories, and to broaden our frameworks for understanding the Americas in order to move forward in dignity, camaraderie, and mutual respect.