Andrea Eurice’s Content is a Love Poem to Puerto Rico

Andrea Eurice always says she’s Boricua or Puerto Rican. It’s her first statement in a very straightforward manner because of the pride she feels for her home of Puerto Rico. She loves the Caribbean island so much, that it’s become her source of inspiration and purpose for her poetic content creation on social media.

It doesn’t matter where in the world she’s at, she’ll always brag about the island and its culture because it’s what she identifies with. It’s what makes her feel at home and that’s one of the many reasons why she became a content creator.

Everything goes back to her childhood spending time with her grandmother.

“My grandmother watched telenovelas and I always thought I’d be an actress from Televisa presenta. I was happy when I listened to the: tuuuun, Televisa presenta and the Salomé songs. And she’s wild. I loved all of that,” Eurice said.

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For a while, she wanted to be Mexican because of all of the telenovelas that her grandmother watched. Then, as time passed by, Eurice started watching Disney Channel and understood a bit better the idea of Hollywood. She wanted to be a Disney star, but as she continued growing, that idea sort of disappeared. At some point, she wanted to move to California to study acting at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

But her father told her she was too innocent for the world of California and Hollywood and suggested she should study biology.

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“I was the first one to go to graduate school in my family. It was something my parents were really excited about and I know it was from a place of love and appreciation. It was not about status because I was not raised like that,” Eurice said.

Yet, Eurice originally wanted to be a journalist when she enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). Her father suggested she study biology once again and on the first day of classes, she transferred from communication. Since she had good grades from high school, she could easily change fields.

Then, during her undergrad – when she was nineteen years old – she went to Spain for an exchange. She lived there for a year and studied literature and biology. When she moved back to Puerto Rico and while working her high-end luxury retail job, several clients told her she should have her own company or do something related to business.

While wondering about her career, she decided to spend the day with a neonatologist to see if she really wanted to be a doctor. There, she noticed medicine was a profession she admired a lot, but it was not something she wanted to devote herself to.

“I started thinking: what should I do? And like any millennial, I went to Google and wrote: what to do with a biology degree? I found an ad on Google about the Karolinska Institutet, which is the university that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine,” Eurice said. “It had a very specific master’s degree that combined biology with business.”

Moving to Sweden

It was perfect for her because it merged her practical side working in stores and customer service with her scientific side. So, she applied for the master’s degree, got accepted, and moved to Sweden in 2018. While she started this new phase of her life, Eurice searched for various job opportunities.

She noticed the university paid people to be their bloggers. That was when she decided to make her Instagram account public and began creating content. That way when she’d arrive to Sweden, she’d already have a portfolio to show and get hired. She got the job and then, she continued creating more content because she loves doing it for fun. She loves taking photos and editing videos.

“I think I did it to make that repressed dream of being an actress or journalist a reality. That part of me of that’s very alive in communication is the place where I can translate that passion to social media,” Eurice said.

Her love and passion for content creation allowed her to understand it as an artistic discipline. She’s telling stories and there’s an art to that. Her storytelling relies on her curation of photos and videos merged with the messages she wants to transmit to her audience.

When it comes to editing the videos, she has to think about the layout, the lighting, and what to film. Whenever she does a voiceover, she likes to write it down as a script and often times, it comes off as a reflection. It’s like writing a poem or an essay and that it in itself is art for Eurice.

While she explores her content as art, she also experiments with herself as the main character of her videos, stories, and photos. Eurice projects herself as an open book and enjoys going out to the streets and meeting new people. Keeping herself open to whatever might come and experimenting with her content has created positive reactions from the people of Sweden.

“They tell me here in Stockholm that they like my content because it doesn’t feel it’s perfect. I’m not a professional video editor. With the editing, I zoom in and zoom out with the reactions of my friends with the style of The Office,” Eurice said. “It’s very fun.”

She enjoys it a lot because it’s not that serious and she projects her personality. She’s always laughing, making jokes, and speaking with strangers, which became short interviews in her content.

Eurice knows she’s been interviewing strangers her whole life, but it is until now that she has a microphone and camera to document it. Throughout her days, she speaks with people she meets along the way and they start talking about life. They’re random people most of the time and she never meets them again after that interaction.

La tremenda oportunidad puertorriqueña

She’s doing “man on the street” interviews and when the Puerto Rican global megastar Bad Bunny announced he’d be in Sweden performing, things intensified for Eurice.

“When Bad Bunny said he was coming to Sweden, I said: this is a tremenda oportunidad to share about my culture because people will be more receptive. We have a common subject, which is that Bad Bunny will be in Sweden,” Eurice said.

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The tremenda oportunidad transformed into Eurice creating a new format for her content. She went on a quest to find some plastic chairs like the ones photographed in Bad Bunny’s Grammy award-winning studio album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.” Some investigation was required to find the special plastic white chairs.

While she was on vacation in Puerto Rico in January of this year, she checked how much it would cost to bring the chairs from the island to Sweden. It was not an option because it was way too expensive. Then, when she got back to Sweden, she checked on Amazon a few chairs and noticed she had to pay $160 of taxes. Everything would cost her more than $200, so it was not worth it either.

She continued on her quest for the chairs and was inspired by her father’s use of the Facebook Marketplace. She finally found them there and asked a friend to join her on the adventure to pick them up. They used the public transportation to get there because it was about an hour and a half away from where she lived and came back on an Uber.

The chairs are quite used, but it’s not noticeable on the videos she posts. They have their history and they make her feel at home. Once she had the chairs, she started incorporating them on her short interviews with random people on the street, asking them if they know anything about Bad Bunny and Puerto Rico.

She created a new form of art based off of Bad Bunny’s album cover. She recreated that universal Puerto Rican and Latin American masterpiece with a twist. She’s living inside the cover of Bad Bunny set in a European environment and landscape. This could drive many other interpretations as to how far Puerto Rican culture has traveled and how it has conquered other parts of the world thanks to Bad Bunny.

But anyways, Eurice was set and determined on making great things happen for herself. If you take a closer look at her videos, she’s developed an engaging storytelling where she uses cliff hangers on purpose to grab your attention. Maybe her early childhood memories of watching telenovelas with her grandmother had an impact on this fun and appealing storytelling.

She simply created these reels where you’d wait for the new “episode” to see what would happen next. That could go from meeting a stranger on an airplane and teaching him about Bad Bunny or going on a quest to get to la casita during Bad Bunny’s two concerts in Sweden in July.

“I think it was mostly about daring to go after your dreams without knowing what would happen. For me, this is an example that when you believe in something and want to do something, do it regardless of the results and not knowing which is the path,” Eurice said.

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With that determination, Eurice did an Excel sheet with the ideas she had in mind. About the content she wanted to create and as time went by, these ideas changed. She was very clear of what she wanted and also knew that pursuing her dreams meant living in the uncertainty because nothing was guaranteed, especially when reaching for the stars – or a megastar like Bad Bunny.

Nothing was written and she simply rode the wave as things went by. So, on July 9^th, she was attending her event of Latina Spicy Girl Walk, which is a community for Latina women that Eurice created. It’s a movement she started in which Latinas go out for a “hot girl walk” and meet other Latinas.

After the event that day, she spent some time with her family, and while she was on the way on an Uber, she received a message from Bad Bunny’s team.

“It was like: your message was heard. Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact words, but basically, they saw my content and gave me the opportunity. They told me it would be a pleasure to have me in la casita,” Eurice said.

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Minga y Petraca in la casita

Obviously, that was a huge gamechanger for Eurice. She had been planning the content for a year with her sister Daniela. They spoke about going to the concert together and planned to spend the summer in Stockholm because her sister lives in Puerto Rico.

Back in March they talked about the outfits they’d wear for the concert on July 10^th. Eurice said she bought some tupitos (tops) as a do-it-yourself outfit decorated with Puerto Rico and put some glitter on top of them. But her sister understood the word “dubi” instead of “tubo.” Dubis are the Spanish name for hair rollers in Puerto Rico.

That misunderstanding turned on a lightbulb in Eurice’s head. She started thinking and landed on the idea of dressing up as Minga y Petraca, which was a popular television show in Puerto Rico in the nineties.

So, for the first concert of Bad Bunny, Eurice and her sister went to la casita dressed up very nicely and on the second date, things changed.

“It was very nice that Benito believed in our vision and thought it was cool. That it was fun. He invited us to the second night through his team. We never spoke with him directly, but it made it all the way to him that we’d dress up as Minga y Petraca,” Eurice said.

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So, Minga y Petraca made a stellar appearance at la casita. They made their performance and became some of the most iconic characters to be at la casita throughout Bad Bunny’s world tour.

They were iconic because of the inside joke with other Puerto Ricans who would also understand where they were coming from. That’s why they made a major impact in ways they never imagined.

To this day, Eurice still does not understand fully the magnitude of what they did and how far it would go. Her cousin who lives in Italy, told her they appeared in an Italian newspaper as inspiration for the outfits you could wear for Bad Bunny’s concert.

They did a performance without that even being the initial intention.

“I think you have to be faithful to your vision, your creativity, and your dreams. When my sister and I got dressed, we said: we’ll be Minga y Petraca. We’ll be there like Minga y Petraca all night,” Eurice said. “Como dos doñitas bailando.”

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Honoring Puerto Rican Culture

They were genuinely having fun and transmitted that to the audience, which allowed them to identify with the popular culture of Puerto Rico. Not only did they create an impact physically at the concert on July 10^th, but also digitally on social media. It was evident they were having a great time because it was obvious on their faces.

They were happy at all times and it was shown in their contagious spirit. It was in their pride of being Puerto Rican and living in that moment celebrating big time.

It was the result of her hard work pursuing her dreams. She had an idea, developed it, created the content, and the content reached Bad Bunny’s team. Then, the idea of dressing up as Minga y Petraca reached his ears and he excitedly supported it.

But it was also the result of a deeper personal feeling for Eurice.

“On a personal level for me, that I live in Sweden, it was like: wow. I’ve been feeling so different for so many years. I feel I don’t belong and in that moment at la casita, I felt I belonged. I felt I was at the right place,” Eurice said.

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It was about deeply believing in her ideals and supporting her dreams no matter what. Working hard for them to become a reality, even if they’re the weirdest or craziest ideas. Clearly, standing out and being authentically genuine made it happen big time for her. Following her bliss and passion was the right feat.

Living and experiencing the moment was the best thing ever for Eurice and her sister.

“I think that was a poem for Puerto Rico. The fact that we could come together with something that only Puerto Ricans know. We spoke about Puerto Rican culture that day. Specifically popular Puerto Rican culture,” Eurice said. “We paid homage to two characters that are not on TV anymore, but we remember them from the heart.”

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Their performance awakened a sense of nostalgia in the audience. It awakened memories and feelings for certain people. Eurice received many messages saying that it was quite exciting to remember going home and waiting to watch Minga y Petraca’s show.

Eurice felt it was a beautiful thing to create that deeper connection with people who also miss their home or that particular moment of seeing Minga y Petraca on television.

She also noticed they had a broader impact on a Latin American level as well.

“This says a lot about us as Boricuas and Latinos. We’re people who like to celebrate. That one day we can be dressed up all nicely and the next we can be characters that have a great time. There’s that spirit,” Eurice said. “The message is the same. We want to take that Latino happiness and charisma around the world.”

Her devotion and determination landed her and her sister on one of the world’s greatest stages: la casita of Bad Bunny’s world tour. Her passion transformed into content that’s a love poem to Puerto Rico. It’s content that honors the island’s culture through storytelling that engages the audience with wanting to learn more about Puerto Ricans.

It’s content that’s art because of Eurice’s personality and need to share the vibrancy of Puerto Rico to the world. But it’s also content that reflects her love for pursuing her dreams no matter what.

“Do more of what connects with your creativity. While you’re doing, you’re learning. Take it easy and simply do,” Eurice said. “I think it’s more important to take action than waiting for perfection.”

To learn more about Andrea Eurice’s content that is a love poem to Puerto Rico, you can follow her on Instagram at @andreaeuricee.

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