Word Food: Puerto Rico & Universal

Pushback Talks Season 9 is here with "Word Food"!

This season, Fredrik & Leilani return with their signature bite-sized episodes: sharp, surprising, 15-minute explorations of the words that shape our world. Each week, they pick a single word (or two) and unpack how its simple surface hides deeper social, political, and economic realities.

Think of it as thought-provoking “intellectual snacking” – quick enough for your commute, rich enough to shift how you see power, privilege, and the systems around us.

This week’s episode:

Puerto Rico: a look at how occupation and resistance shape cultural expression, using Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance as a case to show that messages of resistance are vital in today’s political climate.

Universal: a discussion about how human rights, although defined as universal,  are not protected for everyone. 

New episodes drop every week.

Make this your ritual for keeping your curiosity – and your resistance – alive!

Transcript

Fredrik Gertten 0:02

I'm Fredrik Gertten and I'm the filmmaker.

Leilani Farha 0:05

And I'm Leilani Farha, and I'm the advocate.

Fredrik Gertten 0:09

Hello, advocates. This is Pushback Talk. And this is our, you know, the way of us keeping alive, you know, putting words to each other, and we call it word food.

Leilani Farha 0:23

Word food.

Fredrik Gertten 0:25

Leilani, nice to see you. Are you are you ready?

Leilani Farha 0:32

Always ready.

Fredrik Gertten 0:33

Are you how did the French say? Are you pret?

Leilani Farha 0:38

There's an expression, I was born ready.

Fredrik Gertten 0:43

Let's go. Vamos. The first word for you will be Puerto Rico.

Leilani Farha 0:51

Puerto Rico. I was there a couple of years ago. I have a uh heart for Puerto Rico. Um years and years ago, I was a judge in this, well, I still am, but a judge in this uh competition for really good uh housing projects. It's called the Habitat Awards. And one year we awarded it to a community in Puerto Rico who had resisted eviction and had created a community land trust and really saved a beautiful community. And then a few years ago, I was in Puerto Rico and I got to visit the community, and we had a screening of Push, the film, which everyone should see. And it was just so beautiful, and the people were so beautiful and real warriors, you know, maintaining their claim to the land. But what also struck me when I was there was how simpatico Puerto Ricans are with Palestinians, of course, because it's a very similar struggle. People may not know that Puerto Rico is basically an occupied territory by the United States. I mean, that's, you know, and they have a whole liberation movement, etc. So that's a that's my Puerto Rico.

Fredrik Gertten 2:09

You know, we did actually an episode with the the land trust people in San Juan uh for this podcast. So you listener can go look for it. It's in uh the backlog of our episodes. So that's very inspiring to hear more about their struggle. But for me, when I saw Bad Bunny show in the Super Bowl, which was like I mean, normally when people talk about the Super Bowl, I don't watch it, I never watched the I don't care about the game, but people normally talk about the commercial breaks, all the amazing overspending. But this year nobody's been talking about anything about what was in the commercial break. Everybody talked about Bad Bunny, and you know, I have a heart for Latin America, and you know, and it's it's so emotional, it's such a good storytelling, every detail of bringing up community, and of course, this anti-colonial uh storytelling that so many people identify with. And and I think for me, you know, people are so much into the depression of our time that we the fascists are running everywhere and everything is so horrible, and it's like they are so strong. But suddenly the message that came out from Bad Bunny's show was like, we are strong, you know, it's you can fight back with joy, with smiles and music and pride. And I think the message is so strong, so it actually makes people feel that they can straighten them up, you know. It's and of course, people, Latinos and a lot of other minorities, so-called minorities in the US, are under a lot of pressure uh because of Trump and ICE or whatever they are. It's such a strange thing of having this Elon Musk now. He I saw Elon Musk posting that his grook is actually telling the more correct story of if you ask the question if the US is an occupied territory, and his search engine now explains that it's not, you know. So it's like it's it's it's a struggle of storytelling. But in this struggle, uh Bad Bunny and the Puerto Ricans told their story in a very good way, and and now we also talk about Hawaii. That was also a taken.

Leilani Farha 4:39

And you know, well, it was so interesting too because I saw on social media, I of course I watched the Bad Bunny performance at the Super Bowl. I never watched the Super Bowl, but I will occasionally watch an artist performing there. Uh, but it raised all sorts of a lot of people were putting on social media hey, what happened to Hawaii and why did he raise Hawaii? And um, I thought that was really interesting and it provoked a conversation about, well, the occupation of territory, the takeover of territory, what sovereignty means. Um, so many Americans didn't even know that Puerto Ricans are American. I mean, it's and didn't know that they can't vote in certain for certain parts of the like they can vote for their own governor but can't vote for president. I mean, and yet they're ruled by the president. So really interesting. And there was also an interesting critique of Bad Bunny because he invited in Lady Gaga and he was wearing clothing from this company, Zara, both Zara and Lady Gaga associated with Zionism. And I thought it was an interesting critique. I didn't really engage in it myself because many things can happen at once. And what he did was so important, in my opinion, to, as you said, bring joy to a situation that is um not always discussed in joyful terms, to bring joy, to bring joy to ask for change, to demand change is quite unique these days, right? I mean, a lot of us are in the trenches not feeling much joy. And so I think two things can happen at once. I think he can be doing an amazing thing.

Fredrik Gertten 6:26

There was actually uh a Palestinian in the one of the many details, there was also a Palestinian in the show.

Leilani Farha 6:33

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 6:34

So I mean, but anyway, I'm I I'm not going into that kind of critique of Dedigaga. I I just loved it, and then the message that went through was amazing. So we have a point of the case.

Leilani Farha 6:53

And that is not an easy thing to do, to sh to show oppression through joy. I mean, yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 6:59

And and then, of course, I mean, we talked about in that episode and about the land trust in San Juan, is the disaster capitalism. How when there was this big orcano, uh a lot of communities were destroyed, how the big money moved in. And this is the story. I mean, we there was a big uh fire in in Hawaii, and the neighbors have been struggling really hard to keep their homes because the investors want to come in and take it. And now we see the same kind of wordings about Gaza that oh, we can come in and clean it up and build some nice hotels. And that's exactly the same model. You know, you tear something down and then we can we can save it by building something for us, not for you.

Leilani Farha 7:48

It's kind of and the way in which all of that wipes out people, like wipes out culture, wipes out uh peoples. I mean, indigenous peoples, indigenous Puerto Ricans, indigenous Palestinians from Gaza.

Fredrik Gertten 8:04

It's or the Hawaiians.

Leilani Farha 8:06

Oh, the Hawaiians.

unknown 8:08

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 8:09

So Puerto Rico in our hearts. I've never been there, but I want to go there and visit uh the community land trust.

Leilani Farha 8:17

I I will go back eventually once I can travel to the United States again. Right now, that's not a possibility, nor do I want to.

Fredrik Gertten 8:26

It's such a yeah, they might not let us let us in. That's the problem.

Leilani Farha 8:31

That's right. That's right. Okay. My word for you. It's a really big word.

Fredrik Gertten 8:40

Universal. Universal. Oh, I start to think about the publishing company that is like buying up all the rights of the music all over the world, that they basically own everything published. And when we do films, then we always have to talk to Universal.

unknown 9:00

Okay.

Fredrik Gertten 9:01

And uh for it was for actually for push. Uh, remember at the at the bar in Toronto when they were singing, and you know, and the community, really warm community bar in Toronto. And and the singer, Michael, was singing uh La Vie en Rose, the French Edit Piaf song. And we wanted to have it, but Universal didn't even want to sell it to us. They refused to, you know, even let us have it in a documentary. Because then, of course, they can sell it for a lot of money to somewhere else, and they want to keep, you know, and they have nothing to do with the songwriter, you know, they they just bought up this catalogue. So fuck Universal, uh big time, and all these people who are buying up rights of something that is kind of in many ways, I would say, belong to all of us. Because what Edith Piaf did belongs to all of us, not to Universal.

Leilani Farha 10:04

Absolutely.

Fredrik Gertten 10:05

But Universal, I guess you are looking for something different.

Leilani Farha 10:09

Well, I love it. No, I love it because this is the filmmaker and the advocate, right? So the filmmaker goes boom, right, to Universal owning the music that he needs for his films. Yeah. Super interesting. And of course, for the advocate, I mean, the big debates right now as a human rights lawyer is around whether human rights are in fact universal when they are certainly not upheld for certain groups of people.

Fredrik Gertten 10:39

You mean that whites have more rights than than uh than other colors of skins?

Leilani Farha 10:44

Yeah, and certain whites, yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 10:46

Certain whites have even more rights, yeah.

Leilani Farha 10:48

Exactly. Exactly.

Fredrik Gertten 10:50

Um I think they should publish a list of who has the most human rights.

Leilani Farha 10:54

Yeah, who's allowed to have the most human rights? Well, I think we already know that list. It's I think it would run parallel with uh the richest people in the world down, right?

Fredrik Gertten 11:05

Yeah, no, I mean I mean, I remember when I was we were sued for the film Bananas, and I constantly got a question that I was a bit awkward to get because people asked me all the time if I was afraid of my life, you know, if they would kill me. Uh and I I always said, first of all, I didn't like the question, but also that there is a higher price on killing a Swedish filmmaker than killing a union leader in Colombia, you know. I could in some way feel much safer because of the colour of my skin and my passport and so on. So yeah. So the universal human rights and the universal human rights law is should be for all. I mean it's it's designed to be for all, but it's not really it's not really happening. And what is happening right now, which I think is very interesting, and I think that's also thanks to your work, is that more and more people use the talk about the international law. I mean AOC now went to Europe and she talked about uh universal law, so it's it's obviously the language is getting there, yeah. And I think that's what your job when we did push, you said a home is a human right, a safe home. So language is moving, and I think that's as we are up against a storytelling machine, you know, where where Musk and Bezos and all these big guys are pumping in millions of dollars to tell their story, still the the value of a clear language is makes it difficult for them, you know, because your language of uh of human rights and and international law, they still have to fight it every day because the message is very clear, and they have problems to to to counter it. And I think that's interesting.

Leilani Farha 13:18

Yeah, and I think I always love I love the moment where something like human rights and the universality is both completely irrelevant right now and never more relevant. And that's a really interesting for me. I like that place. It feels good. And I do think that there's a general understanding that even if you don't know much about human rights law, I think there is a kind of coalescing around the moral bankruptcy of Western world leaders. And to rally around moral bankruptcy ends up meaning you're rallying for human rights, you're rallying for something, and it tends to be human rights. So I I have a friend who wrote a book called Universal, which is why I threw that word at you. And tell me about the book. Yeah. It's uh it's by Alex Neve, the former Secretary General of uh Amnesty Canada, and he is now actually on uh a UN body responsible for monitoring Venezuela. So really, and he just got appointed, so super interesting moment for him. Um but his book has created a big conversation in Canada. He's touring around with it, and it's really he's he doesn't have rose-colored glasses by any means. He's seen everything. I mean, he was the head of Amnesty Canada, he traveled the world, he saw that universality was a bit of a joke for so many, many people. Uh, but he has this unending optimism that human rights is the way to go. It is valid, and the universality is a must that you there's no such thing as human rights without universality. And and he's really pushing it, really pushing it. I have, you know, I think I'm more a little bit more of a skeptic. Um I mean, I still believe in human rights, but uh getting to the universality, I think, is going to take a lot of shifting.

Fredrik Gertten 15:26

Yeah, I mean it's it this struggle, we sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. You know, it's like it's it is it will be back and forth for a long time. Yeah, but I think uh language strengthens people who want to fight back. So we need this language that you and your your colleague is fighting for. Yeah, that's good. I'm uh I like the universal, universal love.

Leilani Farha 15:56

Universal laugh. That's where we need to go.

Fredrik Gertten 15:59

Thank you, Lelani.

Leilani Farha 16:00

Thanks, Frederick.

Fredrik Gertten 16:02

And to friends, if you want to support the podcast, send us some money on Patreon. It's not bad. Patreon.com pushback talks. See you.

Kirsten McRae 16:11

See you.com slash pushback talks. Follow us on social media at make underscore the shift and push underscore the film. Or check out our websites makeshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breaking social film.com.