Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational subjectivities, cultural expressions, and political contestations

On 2 February 2020, while we were in the process of composing this introduction, more than a hundred million global television viewers witnessed perhaps the most hotly discussed Latina/o/x live musical event since the electrifying 1999 Grammy performance of “Livin’ La Vida Loca” by Puerto Rican entertainer Ricky Martin. The Latinidad on display in 2020 was distinctly female, Colombian, and Puerto Rican: Shakira and Jennifer Lopez headlined the Super Bowl halftime show, making them the first two Latinas in history to perform on it together. Juxtaposed against the racial tensions of the post–Colin Kaepernick National Football League; white middle-class viewers’ concerns about the ostensibly “vulgar” spectacle of two unapologetically sexy and talented Latinas; critiques regarding the show’s centering of white Latinidad1 ; and the rampant anti-Latina/o/x sentiment of the Trump era, the 2020 halftime show offered many insights into the fundamental nature of US Colombianidades. It was, we argue, a critical moment in the potential rebranding of Colombian identity in the global popular imagination, in which US Colombians and Latina/o/xs become central, not peripheral, to the collective celebrations and histories of US cultural touchstones such as the Superbowl, as problematic as they may be.