Link to Article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/puerto-rico-declares-state-of-emergency-over-gender-violence
Analysis: Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency over it’s deep rooted problems of violence against women. This declaration is welcomed by activists who have been calling for it for years.
This decision came on Sunday in the US territory, which has seen sustained levels of violence that on average results in one woman’s death per week. This figure, measured in a 2019 report, exceeded last year’s estimates, echoing the problem in other Caribbean and Latin American countries.
Puerto Rico’s declaration also offers protection to gay and transgender people, and includes measures such as creating a mobile app for victims to ask for help and report attacks.
Authorities will also be creating a new program to check in with women who have taken out restraining orders against abusers, and a new committee will be responsible for enforcing policies and proposing other measures.
Puerto Rico’s Governor Pedro Pierluisi said the order aims to combat “an evil that has caused too much damage for too long”. Pierluisi further stated, “Victims have suffered the consequences of systematic machismo, inequity, discrimination, lack of education, lack of guidance, and above all lack of action”.
Puerto Rico’s declaration has been a long time coming. Puerto Rico and many other South American and Caribbean states have a long and continuing history of gender based violence and discrimination against women. Male chauvinism and toxic masculinity have no place in any society, much less modern society. The prevalence of gender based violence in Puerto Rico is even more appalling considering its status as a US territory. US territories are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the United States government. As a part of the US, a country that emphasizes gender equality, or at the very least the progression towards gender equality, Puerto Rico shouldn’t be having these problems.
During Cold War state-centered Geopolitics, a period of reawakened geopolitical thought during the Cold War, the globe became a virtual chessboard between the western democratic and the communist worlds. Puerto Rico was a key component of the US’s hemispheric defense strategy during the height of the Cold War. Following the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of the US-friendly government, the US became concerned with the spread of the Soviet Union’s influence in Latin America. These types of concerns related to Domino Theory. This theory states that political events in one state will cause similar events in neighboring states, like a falling domino causing the entire row of upended dominoes to fall.