Coming off the chart-topping success of his recent album, Bad Bunny just announced a massive world tour, which will have the Puerto Rican superstar visiting multiple countries for the first time. But there’s one notable exception to the world tour: Bad Bunny is playing zero shows in the United States.
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On Monday, Bad Bunny announced the all-stadium world tour in support of his sixth studio album Debí Tirar Más Fotos. According to Live Nation, each concert “will bring the album to life, fully immersing audiences in its world, celebrating the essence and culture of Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican heritage.”
The tour will kick off on November 21 in Santo Domingo. From there, Bad Bunny will jetset across Latin America, with dates in Costa Rica, Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. After brief stops in Australia and Japan, Bad Bunny is returning to Europe for the first time since 2019, playing shows in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy. After eight months, the tour will come to a close on July 22 in Belgium.
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Of these dates, Bad Bunny will be visiting Brazil, Australia, and Japan for the first time. But, besides a 30-day residency in Puerto Rico taking place the summer before the tour, there are no shows in the United States. While there are some big gaps in the concert schedule that could serve as placeholders for US music festival bookings, American fans will likely have to sit this one out.
So far, Bad Bunny has not commented on why the US is excluded from the world tour. But it’s not inconceivable that Trump, who has spent the entirety of his campaign and presidency demonizing Latin American immigrants and Spanish-speaking people generally, has something to do with it.
During his first term in 2017, Trump was criticized for his lackluster response to the damages of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a US territory. Notably, he suggested the death toll of more than 3,000 was fabricated, and he withheld $13 billion dollars in aid until the months prior to the 2020 election, according to PBS. Bad Bunny’s song “Una Velita” commemorated the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Maria by skewering the government’s failures.
Prior to the election last fall, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe opened Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally with racist jokes against Puerto Rico, referring to the US territory as a “floating island of garbage.” Immediately afterwards, Bad Bunny shared clips of Kamala Harris ads in which she speaks on Puerto Rico.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and competent leader,” Harris said in one of the clips. Taking a jab at Trump’s much publicized throwing of paper towels, Harris said that he “abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
For those of you lucky enough to live outside the US, ticket sales for the Debí Tirar Más Fotos Word Tour begin on May 9.
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