What Puerto Rico’s State of Emergency Means to a Mother Who Lost Her Daughter to Domestic Violence
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. Puerto Rico has also seen a wave of murders of transgender people and an uptick in missing girls and women.
The pressure from activists, survivors, and families like Suliani’s led Gov. Pedro Pierluisi to declare a state of emergency over gender violence at the end of January. Pierluisi’s executive order freed up funding to deal with the crisis immediately, created a committee tasked with reviewing current public policy, and called for development of a mobile app to report…
