SAN JUAN, P.R. — Michelle García Mercado stepped off the airplane from Orlando, and her body, finally, felt at ease. She was in Puerto Rico. She was home.
"I feel at peace," she said. "I feel happy for the first time in months."
She came back to the island primarily to attend one of the 30 concerts that the global superstar Bad Bunny is performing in San Juan this summer.
But García Mercado's long weekend visit turned into a scheduling frenzy, as the 29-year-old maneuvered to fill every open moment with family, friends, and visits to her favorite hangout spots. She wanted to soak in the people and places her heart has ached for in the three years since she reluctantly moved away.
García Mercado is just one of so many Puerto Ricans who've felt forced to leave their island because of a lack of economic opportunity amid its decades-long debt crisis, worsening infrastructure, rising prices amid a wave of gentrification, and deteriorating services.
That's why Bad Bunny's decision to play all 30 concerts on the island has been so groundbreaking. It's brought back many thousands of Puerto Ricans who've moved away, and is mending some of their sorrow over that decision to leave.
A cathartic experience
The residency's very title hints at those wounds: "No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui" – "I Don't Want To Leave Here."
From the stage, Bad Bunny addresses the hurt directly.
"To those of us who've had to leave, but dream of returning," he said to his audience toward the end of one recent concert, "and to those of us who are still here. We don't want to leave! We're still here!"
He then launched into the title song of his latest album, a nostalgic track about wishing you'd taken more photos of the people you've lost. All around the arena, people embraced their friends, kissed their grandmothers, and cried into the arms of their mothers. It was a communal catharsis.
"It's that feeling of melancholy that so many people feel over a world that is slipping away from them," said Yarimar Bonilla, a Princeton political anthropologist who has seen the show a few times. "We're all suffering from a heartbreak over our homeland."
Bad Bunny is telling fans it doesn't matter where they live, Bonilla said, they're no less Puerto Rican. That reassurance has been like a healing balm for the souls of many who've left or who were born somewhere else, and who've harbored guilt or self-doubt about their Puerto Rican identity as a result.
"For those of us in the diaspora, it feels like we've been forgiven," Bonilla said. "It's like a recognition that we left unwillingly, that we've never forgotten this place, that we're still a part of it."
Determination and resistance
The concert is a pulsating celebration of Puerto Rican traditions and rhythms, among them salsa, plena, bomba and reggaeton. And it's giving young people, especially, a renewed sense of pride and purpose.
García Mercado, the 29-year-old who left for Orlando, said she's now more determined to permanently move back to Puerto Rico.
"I'm going to make a plan," she said.
Her friend, Jason Domenech, 27, who left to study and work in Boston, said that, unlike many Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, he does not often wear or display the Puerto Rican flag. But when he returned home for the concert last month, he bought a designer shirt that made a subtle reference to the flag's stripes and colors.
"It was the first time that I was like, I want to scream that I'm Puerto Rican," he said. "But without being super loud about it, you know?"
Tanisha Galarza, a 23-year-old from Guayanilla, a town on the island's southern coast, attended the concert with her mother. They cried through much of it.
Galarza is a budding musician who plays the cuatro, a Puerto Rican folk guitar. She wants to make her career in Puerto Rico but has sometimes worried that she, like a few members of her family, may have to leave to get ahead. She left the concert feeling inspired to do everything she could to stay.
"It's an amazing feeling," she said.
Angeline Mundo and her family moved to Miami in 2014. She, her husband, and her daughters came back for the show.
"I try to figure out every day a way to return to my homeland," she said. "I brought my family to the concert because I want to teach my daughters to love their culture, to love who we are."
She said her older daughter, a teenager, has taken a renewed interest in Puerto Rican culture thanks to Bad Bunny.
"He's done something that no one else has been able to do," she said. "He's revived that pride in everyone — young people, old people, doctors, people from the neighborhood. Everyone."
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