In honor of the women of Puerto Rico and their daughters and grandaughters, mujeres like my abuela L.

Violence against women of color, especially Latina women, cannot be separated from a colonial context (despite what any Washington Post reporter may write). Specifically for Puerto Rican women, our bodies have been used as a battleground since the days the Spanish landed on Boriquen, to when the U.S. invaded in 1898, to today.

Pero today, in honor of Be Bold, Be Red, I want to specifically address the mass sterilization of women that took place in Puerto Rico.

…There are a number of examples in post Civil War America of eugenic programs but none as effective and widespread as the mass female sterilization in Puerto Rico. Beginning in the years following WW I, a program was initiated by the United States government, the medical community and the local government of Puerto Rico, to name a few, which resulted in the unprecedented sterilization of 1/3 of the female population by 1965, and the continued use of sterilization on a broad scale by Puerto Rican women as a form of birth control (Presser 1980)…

…In the film, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias states that population control was indeed a social policy in P.R. that targeted a group that was believed “shouldn’t have children” by other groups (Garcia 1985). According to one interview, each and every female in one extended family had been sterilized. The elder woman wept, saying that the family would end with no more women able to have children (Garcia 1985). Another woman, only 22 years old, was told by her doctor that sterilization was the only choice for birth control. She was given no other advice, information or options (Garcia 1985). Yet another woman believed that the procedure was reversible and that no surgery was involved. Even though the doctor knew her desire to have more children later, she was not told the truth. She concedes that she went through with the procedure on her own, but she is sad because she is young and would like to have another child – she states that if she would have known the truth, she would not have agreed (Garcia 1985).

In one town alone, Barceloneta, 20,000 women were sterilized between 1956 and 1976 (Garcia 1985)…By 1958, the total birth rate of Puerto Rico was on the decline and varying geographically, 10-42% of the women in towns and cities were sterilized (Garcia 1985)…

…Public schools drilled that having small families practically guaranteed financial stability and the capability to “have more” — like the nice pictures of the white, happy, American families, with picket fenced homes shown in the text books (Garcia 1985)…

…Not only was this island used as a testing ground for a population control program, but as a laboratory for the pill as well. In 1956, the first birth control pills were tested on Puerto Rican women living in government housing-they were 20 times stronger than the pills used in the U.S. 30 years later (Garcia 1985). Many women became ill, and as Garcia has shown, were completely in the dark that they were being used as guinea pigs for a potentially dangerous drug…

… “People applying for housing, or welfare, or food stamps, find themselves receiving orientation, education, and motivation towards sterilization” and “those that suffer the most from a condition of excess population are the groups with the least income and smallest amount of education” (Big Mama Rag 1975 p.3) This program was operated in an open fashion and a recruitment campaign was admitted to and it was said that 10,000-12,000 births were prevented, with the goal of 100% of childbearing age women to be sterilized. This is an incredible and clearly genocidal comment (Garcia 1985). By 1980, Puerto Rico had the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world. In 1977, Dr. Richard T. Ravenholt, a population officer for AID stated, “if U.S. goals were met, one-fourth of the world’s women would be sterilized to prevent revolutions that would interfere with multinational corporations financial success” (Garcia 1985). This is a ludicrous statement and implies that pregnant women and or mothers are the source of revolutions that would impede the almighty dollar!

Via / Female Sterilization in Puerto Rico by Sara Hoerlein