Puerto Rico
In GEN. More on Medium.
Can a century-old colonial crisis be solved before a once-in-a-generation opportunity passes the island by?
Gabriela Medina was around 10 years old when she first learned in school that the United States’ president was her president, too. The Congress she’d heard about? The one that met thousands of miles away across the ocean? Well, they made laws that applied to her as well, laws that often superseded the ones enacted by leaders at home in Puerto Rico.
But what really stuck with Gabriela was something so fundamentally unfair, so mind-blowingly unjust, it began shaping her political identity. As a Puerto Rican living in the archipelago, she would never be able to choose who represented her…
That’s how Alana Casanova-Burgess describes the new podcast La Brega, a limited-run series for WNYC. In a conversation with GEN’s Andrea González-Ramírez, Casanova-Burgess discusses the frustrations of having to constantly explain Puerto Rican issues for a non-boricua audience, and says her show is specifically geared toward Puerto Rican listeners.
“Even if you’re Puerto Rican, you’re going to learn something here!” Casanova-Burgess says. “Or maybe the way I should put that is, especially if you’re Puerto Rican, you’re going to learn something here.”
Activists, survivors, and families have been calling for the government to take action since 2018
Nearly three years ago, Suliani Calderón Nieves, a 38-year-old health care worker in Puerto Rico, was murdered by her ex-husband in front of their two children. Since then, her mother, Sonia Nieves, has become a relentless advocate against gender violence, traveling across the island to speak to communities and call for government action.
Nieves’ activism couldn’t have come soon enough. A GEN investigation found that after Hurricane Maria in 2017, the number of women killed by their partners in the territory doubled and that the government was doing little to protect victims from their abusers. …
My ballot is a quiet love letter to nearly four million U.S. colonial subjects who are denied the right to vote
“Mamá Blanca will never get to do this.” That’s what crossed my mind every time I thought about casting my ballot in New York City on Election Day. My 85-year-old grandmother has believed in the political project of statehood for Puerto Rico all of her life, but she’ll likely die without ever voting for a president or having real congressional representation. The very country that calls itself a beacon of liberty and democracy will never allow her the opportunity to exercise the right to vote in federal elections. …
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez issued an executive order on Monday to prioritize ending the island’s epidemic of violence against women. Proactive measures to curb the crisis are long overdue…
The kidnapping and murder of 20-year-old Rosimar Rodríguez has given new urgency to Puerto Rico’s epidemic of gender-based violence. Hundreds took to the street on Monday to protest the government’s lack of action on this crisis. As I reported for GEN back in June, more than 150 women have been killed by their current or former intimate partners in the past decade. The murder of several transgender women, the unsolved gang rape of a young woman, and the number of missing girls and women have also shaken the U.S. territory.
Consumers have been boycotting the brand since its CEO came out for Trump
Chef Eric Rivera grew up with a pantry full of Goya products. Adobo, beans, rice, tostones, sazón — you name it, his parents likely bought it. It was a way for the Riveras to stay connected with their Puerto Rican roots as they built their lives in Washington state, thousands of miles away from the island.
But today, Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States, is facing intense backlash from Latinx consumers following comments from CEO Roberto Unanue. “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,”…
After Hurricane Maria, the number of women killed by their partners doubled. Survivors say the government’s misguided response has put more lives in danger.
This feature was reported in partnership with Type Investigations, where the author is an Ida B. Wells Fellow. A Spanish-language version is available here.
The night before Suliani Calderón Nieves was murdered, she drove to her mother’s house in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, to drop off her two kids. The 38-year-old health care worker had begun rediscovering her freedom after a contentious divorce and was headed to an event in town, where she was going to read a poem she had written. As she was leaving the house, her mother, Sonia Nieves, took a moment to admire her daughter’s long black…
Luego del huracán María, el número de mujeres asesinadas por sus parejas se duplicó. Sobrevivientes dicen que la respuesta desacertada del gobierno ha puesto aún más vidas en peligro.
Esta investigación se realizó en conjunto con Type Investigations, donde la autora es una becada del programa Ida B. Wells. Una versión en inglés está disponible aquí.
La noche antes de que fuera asesinada, Suliani Calderón Nieves condujo hasta la casa de su madre en Bayamón, Puerto Rico, para dejar allí a sus dos hijos. Suliani, una supervisora de un hospicio de 38 años, comenzaba a redescubrir su libertad tras un divorcio contencioso y se dirigía a un evento en el pueblo donde iba a declamar un poema que había escrito. Cuando estaba saliendo de la casa, su madre, Sonia…
Citizens are fed up as Puerto Rico tests for the coronavirus at a far lower rate than the rest of the U.S.
A cacophony of honking and chants erupted Wednesday morning outside the Puerto Rico Health Department headquarters in San Juan. But unlike the pleas spreading across the U.S. to reopen the economy, these protesters, all of whom demonstrated from the confines of their cars, had an altogether different demand: to perform more tests to diagnose the novel coronavirus.
This piquete servicarro — drive-through protest — was organized by three groups: the feminist organization Colectiva Feminista en Construcción, the anti-debt group Jornada: Se Acabaron las Promesas, and the food distribution initiative Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico. “The incompetent handling of these cases…
