What We Remember Becomes the Archive: The Politics of Sound in Debí Tirar Más Fotos
Politics, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, is “the activities of the government, members of law-making organizations, or people who try to influence the way a country is governed.” But politics extends beyond institutions and elected officials. It exists in the everyday decisions that shape access, identity, memory, and survival. It’s about who has power, who doesn’t, and what that imbalance creates. Music operates within these same systems of power. It can challenge power, preserve stories, and amplify voices that are excluded from political spaces. Music carries what systems often fail to: memory, protest, cultural pride, and collective resistance. It becomes a form of political participation, especially for those whose realities tend to be left out of the narrative.
Bad Bunny’s Debi Tirar Mas Fotos is not just an album, it’s a political statement. Through sound, he captures the impact of colonialism, gentrification, cultural erasure, and diaspora. These themes aren’t just mentioned, they are embedded in the structure of the music itself. The album blends genres like plena, jibaro, salsa, and reggaeton that carry deep cultural weight not simply as a stylistic choice, but as a way of reclaiming sonic space. In doing so, Bad Bunny resists the erasure of cultural memory and transforms music into a living archive. The album doesn’t claim to fix these conditions—it sits in the complexity of grief, pride, and displacement, offering remembrance as a form of resistance.
The album opens with “Nuevayol,” a track that immediately sets the tone for what’s to come. Sampling El Gran Combo’s “Un Verano en Nueva York,” Bad Bunny grounds the listener in diasporic memory before the first verse even hits. He’s not just nodding to what came before or what shaped the genre, he’s reminding us that Puerto Rican identity has always been shaped by movement, migration, and loss. The layering of Dominican dembow with reggaetón reflects both cultural blending and the pain of dislocation. This isn’t just a musical crossover, it’s an emotional geography. By starting with “Nuevayol,” he’s tracing a history of exile and connection of diaspora as survival.
To me, Bad Bunny is saying that diaspora isn’t a rupture, it’s a continuation. A way of holding on. Music becomes the thread that ties those pushed out—or born elsewhere—back to the island. That really stayed with me. As someone who comes from a different but parallel diaspora, this song hit hard. Exile isn’t just about leaving, it’s about always searching for a piece of home. Sometimes, that search leads you to sound.
Another defining track, “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” moves into more direct critique. It draws an explicit connection between Puerto Rico and Hawaii—two U.S. territories deeply shaped by violent colonial histories and ongoing cultural suppression. The lyrics paint a vivid picture:
“Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa, quieren el barrio mío y que tus hijos se vayan.”
(They want to take the river, the beach, my neighborhood—and your children too.)
This lyric doesn’t need to be dressed up, it already says everything. It speaks directly to the violence of gentrification and colonial displacement, where land and culture are extracted, and communities are left with nothing. It’s a warning wrapped in poetry. And what makes it more powerful is the intimacy, he’s not shouting, he’s just telling the truth. They don’t just want the land; they want what the land represents. They want the beauty without the people. They want the culture without the context. They want the beaches without the neighborhood.
To me, this doesn’t feel hypothetical, it feels like it’s already happening. And the way Benito delivers it, with space, with weight—feels like he's asking us to pause, to really sit with it. The silences in the song are part of that. They echo the blackouts Puerto Rico continues to face, but also feel like a metaphor for something deeper: political neglect, historical erasure, and the constant silencing of voices that try to speak out.
What makes this track stand out is how it doesn’t rely on explosive production to get its message across. Instead, it leans into vulnerability. It makes you feel the fragility of home, how quickly it can be taken. And not by accident, but by design.
That theme continues in “Turista.” What initially feels like a soft, even romantic ballad becomes something far more cutting. The metaphor compares a fleeting love to the way tourism extracts joy, culture, and beauty from Puerto Rico without care for the people who live there. The relationship is one-sided—and so is the harm.
What stands out here is the softness. There’s no yelling. No dramatic declaration. Just melancholy and resignation. It’s the sound of watching your culture be performed for people who don’t understand it. Like being a living exhibit in a museum. It’s the feeling of being watched, but never truly seen. And that’s the power of this song. It doesn’t scream about commodification, but it makes you feel it. Tourism, even when celebrated, can become a form of violence. And Benito doesn’t just tell you that, he lets you sit with it.
While every track on this album could be unpacked, one that especially stayed with me was “La Mudanza.” The title alone—“The Move”—already tells you something: this isn’t movement by choice. The track weaves personal reflection with political memory. There’s a lyric that says,
“Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera.”
(Here, people were killed for waving the flag.)
That’s not metaphor, it’s history. The Puerto Rican flag was once criminalized. To display it was to resist. This line pulls that resistance into the present, asking us to consider what has changed, and what hasn’t.
“La Mudanza” feels like a love letter to Puerto Rico, but also a record of grief. Benito thanks his parents. He calls for independence. He reflects on what made him. It’s emotional, but not sentimental. It’s grounded in love, history, and pain. For me, it brought everything full circle. It reminded me that culture isn’t just something we inherit, it’s something we fight to keep. This track doesn’t end the album with closure. It ends with conviction.
What Bad Bunny does throughout this album is more than clever or creative. It’s deliberate. With every song, he’s showing how music can hold the things politics tries to erase: the violence of colonialism, the grief of displacement, and the joy that refuses to die. As someone from the Caribbean, even from a different island, I felt seen by this album. It’s not just about Puerto Rico, it’s about what happens when a people are told their home isn’t theirs. And how music can speak when the rest of the world isn’t listening.
These issues—colonialism, gentrification, displacement—are still happening. They haven't gone away. They’ve just been repackaged, wrapped in a different bow, made to look like progress or investment. But underneath the new language is the same harm: communities uprooted, cultures commodified, and land stripped of the people who gave it meaning. The violence isn’t always loud; sometimes it comes quietly, through rising rents, disappearing traditions, and the slow erasure of memory.
Editor’s note: This post was originally written for publication on April 11th, 2025.