Latin Americans party hard as rap king Bad Bunny hops into town

Outside the Latin American food market in Seven Sisters, north London, Vicky Alvarez put on her pava, a traditional Puerto Rican straw hat, and danced to reggaeton with other revellers. Many were wearing Bad Bunny T-shirts and had bought their own pavas – which have been popularised by the pop star on his world tour.

Fifteen minutes down the road, Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, was getting ready for his own performance. Last night, at the first of two sold-out nights at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, 100,000 fans watched the Puerto Rican rapper and singer become the first Latin American star to headline a stadium in the UK. 

Ocasio has become a global phenomenon of rare magnitude. His Super Bowl half-time show last year became the most watched show of all time on social media – and despite performing almost exclusively in Spanish, he is the most listened to artist in the world on Spotify. His Debí Tirar Más Fotos tour has made him the first Latin artist to make $1bn from touring and that’s without any dates in the US, which he boycotted over concerns that his concerts might be subject to immigration raids. 

Traders and volunteers at the Seven Sisters Latin Village have been preparing for for months. Central to the party is La Casita, a replica of a typical Puerto Rican home, which has been built at the entrance of the market and is inspired by a building which is part of the set at Ocasio’s concerts. 

María José Gonzales Zevallos, a 30-year-old community coordinator at Wards Corner, the market’s community space, stayed up until 3am painting the structure last week. She spent Saturday morning setting up the market for the weekend-long fiesta, which involves DJs, dance competitions and a Bad Bunny lookalike competition. Vendors selling tacos, empanadas and juices expect to make double or triple their usual profit and around 10,000 Bad Bunny fans are expected, 10 times the usual footfall. Alvarez has prepared an air-conditioned room, just in case Ocasio turns up. “I am ready and waiting,” she said. 

The weekend has been about more than a concert. “[Bad Bunny] so proud of being Latin American and that is a very political thing now,” Gonzales Zevallos said. “He says the things that we’re not allowed to say, we all have a Bad Bunny in us.” 

An estimated 500,000 Latin Americans live in the UK but there is no Latin American category on the census. Last year Haringey council added Latin American as an ethnicity option on its local monitoring forms. Jacobo Belitly is campaigning for national recognition before the next census. 

The absence of a census category, he said, has knock-on effects. Children can’t access language support at school and diseases which Latin Americans have a higher propensity towards, such as sickle cell anaemia, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, aren’t recognised in the population by the NHS. “We saw during Covid-19 that there was a disproportionate impact for Latin Americans,” he said. “But the powers that be can just say: if I don’t see it in the system, then I can’t do anything about it.” 

Belity added: “We’re not the first people asking for this, and we won’t be the last. There is definitely a gap between this moment where people are saying: we love music in Spanish, we love Bad Bunny, but then they turn away from these important issues we’re facing.” 

This weekend Alvarez was ready to celebrate. Her legs “often hurt”, she said, but when Bad Bunny comes on “I jump right up on my feet, and the pain disappears. There’s nothing that can stop me from dancing.”

Photograph by Antonio Olmos for the Observer