While I have written posts on the ancestry of a few different NFL players playing in the Super Bowl (Patrick Mahomes in 2021 and 2023, and Travis Kelce in 2024), I have also readily admitted to not watching football. I cannot name a single player that plays for the Seattle Seahawks or even my local New England Patriots! So, for this Super Bowl related post, I will share some fun research I have been working on related to what I am excited about, the halftime headliner Bad Bunny!
I have worked on the Puerto Rican ancestry of several family members and friends, a few colleagues, and my colleague Cécile Engeln's mother Blanca Bruso has shared some stories of her ancestry from Borinquen. Over the winter holidays my wife's youngest brother proposed to his girlfriend, whose maternal ancestors are likewise from Puerto Rico. Interestingly, my future sister-in-law and Cécile's mother share autosomal DNA from their respective AncestryDNA tests, but we have not been able to figure out how they are related to one another (we are still trying!).
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio "Bad Bunny" was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico in 1994, the son of Benito Martínez and Lysaurie Diolanda Ocasio Declet. I had looked a few years ago at Bad Bunny's maternal Ocasio ancestors to see if he might be distantly related to U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (I haven't found a connection, Bad Bunny's maternal great-great-great-grandfather, Pascual Ocasio Brilla immigrated to Puerto Rico in the mid nineteenth century from Italy ["Ocasio" being a "Spanishized" variation of the Italian surname Cascio],1 while AOC's Ocasio ancestors were still in Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth century and I have not found anything stating they were of Italian descent.) Cécile pointed out that Bad Bunny's song "La Mudanza" provides many nuggets of information on his ancestry—
Benito, hijo de Benito, le decían "Tito"
El mayor de seis trabajando desde chamaquito
Guiando camiones como el pa y el abuelo
Aunque su sueño siempre fue ser ingeniero
Un día Tonito lo invitó pa hacer una mudanza
Pa buscarse alguito, par de pesos, pa algo alcanza
Gracias a Dios que ese día no estaba busy
Porque en la mudanza fue donde conoció a Lisy
La menor de tres que se criaron con doña Juanita
Porque su papá y mamá partieron estando chiquita
Prometió graduarse antes de casarse y lo cumplió
Diciembre del nueve do', con Tito se casó
Ante de irse pa Almirante, donde se conocieron
Vivieron en Morovis, en donde hicieron al nene
Que en Bayamón por primera vez vieron
Un aplauso pa mami y papi porque en verdá rompieron
(English translation)
Benito, son of Benito, they called him "Tito"
The oldest of six, working since he was a kid
Driving trucks like his dad and grandfather
Even though his dream was always to be an engineer
One day, Tonito invited him to help with a move
To earn a little something, a few bucks to get by
Thank God he wasn't busy that day
'Cause during that move, he met Lysi
The youngest of three, raised by Doña Juanita
Since her mom and dad passed away when she was little
She promised to graduate before getting married, and she kept her word
In December of '92, she married Tito
Before moving to Almirante where they met
They lived in Morovis where they had their son
Who they saw for the first time in Bayamón
A round of applause for mom and dad 'cause they really nailed it
I found Bad Bunny's maternal grandparents in the Social Security Death Index, and from there in the 1950 U.S. Federal Census, and was able to extend several generations of his ancestry back using Puerto Rican civil and church records, largely on Ancestry and FamilySearch. Much of his maternal ancestry is in Morovis, the locality mentioned in "La Mudanza," and also the birthplace of Cécile's great-great-grandfather, Ramon Rodríguez Berríos (1890-1955). Going much further back in Bad Bunny's ancestry, I identified his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Isidoro Rodríguez Berríos (ca. 1825-1913), still in Morovis. I wondered if I could find a Berríos connection.
The short answer is, I'm not done, and maybe some readers can help. From the research of Cécile's mother, Ramon's mother Dolores Rodríguez Berríos (ca. 1866-1893) was the daughter of Marcelo Rodríguez Méndez and María Berríos Natal, based on Dolores's death record.2 While I have not been able to identify Maria's parents conclusively, in looking for older couples in Morovis with the appropriate surnames to be her parents, I found a promising couple, José María Berríos Robles and Jovita Natal Olmeda. On the death record of their son José Segundo Berríos Natal in 1917, José María is listed as a native of Manatí, and Jovita of Morovis.
Bad Bunny's ancestor Isidiro Rodríguez Berríos was the son of Benito Rodríguez Garcia and María de Gracia Berríos Robles. Seeing "Berríos Robles" also on Bad Bunny's side had me excited, although I was led to some documents showing a slightly complicated family unit.
María de Gracia was born in about 1805. Her parents were Fabián Berríos Robles and Juana Robles Méndez. They married in 1816, about eleven years after their daughter's birth. The wikitree profile of Fabián, with some sources provided by a descendant, notes Fabián and Juana had at least seven children: Hermengilda, María Manuela, Candelaria, Anicasio, Miguel, and Francisco. But no José María!
However, the marriage record of Fabián and María is interesting. They married at Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, Manatí on 14 May 1816. However, this marriage refers to Fabián as the widower of María de Rosario Robles, and also says the marriage required a dispensation from two impediments of kinship, one of consanguinity, and the other of lawful affinity. Only one year earlier, Fabián had married María del Rosario Robles Pérez, for which a dispensation was made for a second-degree impediment of consanguinity.
Dispensations were given by the Catholic church to allow persons to marry that were related by blood or affinity (in-laws). These are terrific genealogical sources as charts are often provided to show how the parties are related. A distant cousin of my wife, Julian Nunez, provides several examples of dispensation records in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic on his website Progenies. I plan to write more about these records as they relate to some of my wife's ancestors in a future post.
Regarding the dispensations for the two marriages of Fabián Berríos Robles, they were required as Fabián, María, and Juana were all first cousins to one another. María and Juana's fathers were brothers and their sister was Fabián's mother. So, for Fabián's marriage to María in 1815 a dispensation was required as they were first cousins. However, when María soon died and he married his other cousin Juana (with whom he already had children), this second marriage now had two impediments of kinship, as Fabián and Juana were first cousins but also Fabián was the widower of Juana's first cousin María (also Fabián's cousin).
So, as this related to Cécile's proposed ancestor José Berríos Robles, he does not appear to be a child of Fabián and Juana, but he could be a child of Fabián and María. The chronology works and José María was a native of Manatí and moved to Morovis, which was where this Berríos Robles family was as well! I would love to find specific records for José María's parents or showing him as the father of María Berríos Natal. If those speculative connections are correct, then Cécile and Bad Bunny are both seventh cousins of the half blood as well as ninth cousins, sharing common ancestors from the early nineteenth century! See the chart below kindly designed by our colleague Ellen Maxwell.
Notes
1. Pascual’s year of immigration is stated as 1863 in 1910, 1858 in 1920, and 1866 in 1930. All censuses list his naturalization status as “Ex” (extranjero [alien]), with the 1920 census also noting his wife and daughter, who were born in Puerto Rico, as subjects of Italy, similar to my post about my colleague Irene’s ancestors in Puerto Rico still having Danish citizenship after the Foraker and Jones Acts. Also while Pascual’s 1934 death certificate lists him as 100 years of age and born in 1834, his ages in the 1910 (63), 1920 (80), and 1930 (again 80), suggest a later birth.
2. Ramon Rodriguez Berríos was the “hijo natural” (illegitimate son) of Francisco Cajigas and Dolores Rodriguez Berríos, and as such, had the two surnames of his mother. For information on Cécile’s ancestry not mentioned in this post, refer to the Ancestry Tree of her mother Blanca Bruso, and the sources cited therein.