Sugarcane was a main character in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time performance. The musical production opened with workers standing along the rows of a cane field, machetes in hand.
Puerto Rico native Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio opened with the sugarcane field as an “homage to Latino labor, heritage and the generations who laid the groundwork before him,” according to a press release.
You might not have recognized the tall brown stalks topped with green blade-like leaves, and when you did, perhaps you thought of the sugar bowl on your breakfast table. Or the bottle of rum in your cabinet?
But there is something much more sinister about sugarcane. Its production, as it was in Puerto Rico, came through colonization and the brutal enslavement of kidnapped Africans throughout much of the Americas. Sugar brought great wealth for colonizing countries. After sugarcane seedlings were brought to Hispaniola in 1493, Spanish and later French landowners on this island were the largest exporter of sugar to Europe.
The production made its way to South and Central America, and even for a time, in the United States.
Even today, the cane fields across the Americas, the portrait is not so sweet. Workers face disease, abuse and forced labor.
Sugarcane is the predominant crop grown in El Salvador. The country is the 8th largest exporter of sugar in the world and the second largest in Central America. With few options for jobs many people work in the corporate sugarcane fields. They often work from dawn until dusk. They can take few breaks and face enormous exposure to the agritoxins used on the crops.
Rosalía Lopez de Grande and her family live with an arm’s reach of cane fields in San Luis Talpa in the La Paz department. A small delegation from Presbyterian Hunger Program met them at their home in March 2024.
Every man in her family has worked in the fields, carrying loads of chemicals to treat the crops, hiding to avoid those toxins dropped by helicopter or drone, and covering their faces from the heavy smoke as sugarcane is burned before being harvested.
Rosalía has buried her husband and three of her seven sons since 2012. They all died after being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Her son Oscar travels four hours for dialysis twice a week. Rosalìa herself lost a leg because of diabetes, and she likely will face more amputations.
ARUMES (Asociatción Red Uniendo Manos El Salvador), our Joining Hands network there, works with other national advocacy groups to fight the effects of agritoxins. The campaign is known as Azúcar Amargo, Bitter Sugar.
In 2022, the U.S. government halted all imports of sugar products from Central Romana Corporation after an investigation showed that the company isolated workers, withheld pay, demanded excessive overtime and that its workers suffered poor living conditions. Many of the workers were of Haitian descent.
In March 2025, the Trump administration revoked the ban. Advocates in the Dominican Republic say working and living conditions have not improved.
So back to the statement that the sugarcane in Bad Bunny’s performance was an homage to the Latino labor that paved the way for later generations.
That is true, but what a cost.
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