Artist Ektor Rivera has created a painting titled "The Discovery of Americans" (2025) that reimagines Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" to celebrate Puerto Rican cultural figures, with Bad Bunny at the center. The work was commissioned by Miami art collector Seth Goldberg as a response to conservative criticism over Bad Bunny being selected to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. The five-by-eight-foot painting places George Washington in the background while Puerto Rican icons including Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Roberto Clemente take center stage, with Bad Bunny draped in the Puerto Rican flag. The artwork has garnered over 2.3 million views on Instagram and Facebook.
This matters because the painting uses a canonical American historical artwork to make a pointed statement about Puerto Rican identity and citizenship, directly challenging narratives that question whether Puerto Ricans are "American enough." By inserting contemporary Latino celebrities into a foundational American image, Rivera reframes who gets to be celebrated as American, addressing the political controversy surrounding Spanish-language representation at a major national event. The viral success of the piece demonstrates how art can intervene in cultural and political debates, using visual appropriation to assert belonging and counter exclusionary rhetoric.