On the title track of their forthcoming album, Libertad, Puerto Rican band Chuwi imagines a future for Puerto Rico that sounds almost ordinary: a train running from Aguadilla to the metro area, rice fields growing in the mountains of Arecibo, clean water, fresh food, and the freedom to move through the island without fences. None of these things should sound utopian. Yet for many Puerto Ricans, they have become so far out of reach that they feel like fantasies. For Chuwi, they should be possible at home.
The song’s chorus makes that vision explicit: “Soñé que por mucho tiempo/No hubo llantos ni dolores/Que las heridas del pasado/Terminaron de sanar,” Chuwi sings. “Y la felicidad/ Estaba cerca de nosotros/ Tú lo llamas un sueño. Yo lo llamo libertad.”
The dream isn’t simply better infrastructure or more abundant resources, but an island healed of its past wounds—a place where happiness no longer feels so far-fetched.
It’s a fitting vision for a band whose music has long explored Puerto Rican identity, land, and belonging. With Libertad, Chuwi completes a trilogy that began with their first two EPs, Tierra and Pan.
“We wanted it to be like our finale, which is why we decided to go for an album, not an EP, and complete the Pan, Tierra y Libertad trilogy, which is a reference to the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) slogan of the reigning political parties in Puerto Rico,” says Willy Aldarondo, Chuwi’s bassist, vocalist, and one of the band’s primary songwriters.
“The origin is basically that this party was established in the 40s (it was founded in 1938 to be exact), and it was marketed as a party towards the interests of the disenfranchised working class, mostly rural farm working class of Puerto Rico,” he adds.
Pan, Tierra y Libertad—bread, land, and freedom—represents the material and social aspirations tied to the party’s original political agenda. For Chuwi, the phrase connects Puerto Rico’s political and cultural history to the future they hope to help realize.
“The album is the sentiments of someone who is discovering step by step that they’re lacking liberty and learning why and who and where, eventually leading up to a dream, a vision of what we would like Puerto Rico to have,” he adds. “And what does it mean to be free? How do you achieve it? What do you do with it once we have it? That’s the thematic core of this project.”
Before collaborating with Bad Bunny on “WELTiTA,” from his 2025 album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Chuwi had already established a sound rooted in Puerto Rico. The project began in Isabela during the pandemic, when the Aldarondo siblings—Lorén (lead vocals), Willy (bass, vocals, and songwriting), and Wester (keyboards, piano, percussion, and background vocals)—started making music together. Their close family friend Adrián López (percussion, drums, and background vocals) joined them. Drawing on Puerto Rican bomba y plena, salsa, merengue, and indie tropical, they’ve never fit neatly into one genre—and they still don’t.
That focus on Puerto Rico and its diaspora drew Bad Bunny to Chuwi. After collaborating on “WELTiTa,” the band joined his 31-day “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” Puerto Rican residency, then opened for his Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour across Latin America, Europe, and Australia. Introducing global audiences to their homeland brought new responsibility—and helped inspire Libertad.
“I think one of the biggest things is how it exposed us to so many different ways of life,” Wester says about touring with Bad Bunny. “I remember that being a huge factor in almost confirming a lot of the things we felt about Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican politics and what the future of Puerto Rico might look like, especially when we did the tour in Latin America and then Europe. You can see the contrast of countries that were surviving colonialism and countries that were doing the colonialism, but also seeing that a better future really is possible.”
In Europe, Wester says, the band noticed fresh food, clean water, clean streets, and reliable public transportation.
“All of these things informed us when we were finishing some of the songs like, yeah, this is possible,” he says. “This isn’t Utopia. This is actually very doable. We have to figure out how we get there.”
Lorén believes Bad Bunny’s decision to have Chuwi open both the residency shows and the world tour was intentional.
“The first couple of minutes we got to talk about Puerto Rico in a political state and also about the Caribbean’s music and the joy we bring,” she says. “We had the opportunity to do that in a lot of places in the world, and we got to do that [in places like] Germany. And then with his show you got to celebrate Puerto Rico’s most beautiful parts—the culture, el perrero, la bomba. So, I think it was very intentional that we were opening that stage to give a bigger component to what Puerto Rico is.”
Touring with Bad Bunny also revealed how songs rooted in Puerto Rico could resonate far beyond it.
“I think this year has changed us tremendously in a positive way. It’s confirmed to us that yes, we do say Puerto Rico in our songs and we talk about Puerto Rico, but also traveling the world, the themes of our songs are kind of worldwide,” Lorén says. “Even Spain—our colonizer—is having rent issues. Huge rent issues. So, I do think that Chuwi, in a couple of years, we’ll still be talking about Puerto Rico because we do [still] want to live here. That has not changed. I believe we’ll still be living here. I hope we’ll still be living here. But traveling, we understand now that there is a global connection to the themes we’re saying; I think it’ll just be understood in different languages.”
That global resonance hasn’t made Chuwi’s music any less rooted in Puerto Rico. If anything, Libertad repeatedly returns to the question of who gets to claim the island—and who doesn’t. One of the album’s most powerful explorations of that tension is “Aquí Lo Mío No Es Tuyo,” sung by Adrián López.
“He aquí, no perdamos la esperanza/Lucha injusta sin final, yo sé que cansa/Machete en un puño y en el otro mi orgullo/No mires mucho que aquí lo mío es tuyo,” he sings.
“The song was created when we were having the last elections, and Juan Dalmau was running,” says Adrián, referring to Juan Dalmau Ramírez, a longtime leader of the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) whose 2024 gubernatorial campaign focused on Puerto Rican independence.
“We had hopes that times would change and the governance would change,” he adds. “I wanted to express that there’s still that hope, but with a little bit of—not anger—but we’re tired. For example, the song’s title says, ‘What’s mine is yours.’ And I like that we are very hospitable, and I’ve heard that a lot in my time, and that’s very good and everything, but for me—not my land. That’s not yours. That’s ours.”
Adrián wanted that exhaustion to move listeners to act.
“It’s been a years-long fight; a lot of generations have gone through it now, and now other generations are being part of that fight,” he says. “I was trying to come at an angle where you would listen to that, and you would want to be like, ‘Oh wait, what’s happening? Let me educate myself so I can do something about it.’ That’s what I was trying to get at with that feeling, I think.”
The tension between Puerto Rico and its diaspora surfaces in “Plei,” a relationship song shaped by distance from home. Willy says the band imagined a Puerto Rican couple spending a winter in the United States, exploring how that separation from the island can seep into a relationship.
The anthem-like “P.T.L.” features the U.S. national anthem played on traditional Puerto Rican instruments. Willy says the idea came to him almost randomly. Still, the more he considered the juxtaposition, the more it fit the album’s larger questions about Puerto Rico, the United States, and freedom.
“I think if we go into political terms and political beliefs, anyone, [whether] you want statehood, [or] you want independence—whatever version—I think everyone in Puerto Rico can agree that would be incredible,” Lorén says of the necessities they dream of for the island. “It might take years, but in old age, we might be able to see this. It’s possible in our lifetime.”
While the band’s music has always centered Puerto Rico—its culture, vibrancy, and struggles—they consider Libertad their most political project.
“It’s 100% the most political thing we’ve done,” Willy says. “It’s still driven by the same energy as the previous projects, where it’s not that we’re starting with the politics and building from that. We’re starting from our experience in our lives, and our lives are political on this island.”
Chuwi approached the album’s sound with the same intention they brought to its themes.
“Most of the songs on the album are inspired by Cuban folk genres,” Willy explains. “It’s also another part of the trilogy we were doing. The first EP drew on popular Puerto Rican folk genres, and the second focused on Dominican Republic folk genres. So [with] this one we wanted to get inspired by Cuban genres.”
They also wanted a sound that lived up to the title, Libertad: one that felt free.
“A sound that felt free, possibly even chaotic, untethered, to challenge yourself to go a step further into how free can we make these songs sound? Like unrestricted,” he adds. “But at the same time, in a way that is enjoyable and accessible to some level. That was the musical ethos guiding the instrumental musical aspect of the album.”
Libertad returns to a simple conviction: a Puerto Rico with reliable services and the freedom to thrive isn’t a utopia. Moving from frustration to hope, Chuwi imagines a home they know could exist.
“We don’t have to create a vision of a crazy, abstract, fantasial version of the home we want to construct,” Willy says. “We can create a realistic version of the home we want.”
When asked what they ultimately want listeners to take away from the album, Lorén jumps in: “That it’s okay to dream because the dream could be very real.”