On January 24th, 2021, Puerto Rican governor Pedro Pierluisi signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency to allocate resources to create more gender equality in Puerto Rico, responding to the pleas of thousands of protesters to improve the ongoing gender violence crisis in the US territory. The new order will create a committee called PARE (in Spanish: Prevention, Support, Rescue and Education of Gender Violence) to take measures and form policies to address the crisis.

“Gender violence is a social evil, based on ignorance and attitudes that cannot have space or tolerance in Puerto Rico that we aspire to,” Pierluisi said. His response was very much appreciated by protesters who may have witnessed and/or been subjected to the ignorance of others. “For too long, vulnerable victims have suffered the consequences of systematic machismo, inequity, discrimination, lack of education, lack of guidance and above all, lack of action. It is my duty and my commitment as governor to establish a stop to gender violence, and for these purposes I have declared a state of emergency,” said Pierluisi.

Many Puero Ricans agree with Pierluisi that gender-based violence is a problem when it comes to both physical and mental health. Protesters have used their voices to rebound from this. “Fighting does work,” said Lourdes Inoa Monegro, program director at Taller Salud (a non-profit organization working on behalf of women experiencing gender violences). Members of the Taller Salud say the state of emergency was long overdue. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, domestic violence against women, homosexuals, and transgender people increased with around 50 more sexual assault cases in just women alone compared to the previous year.

These groups of people have become such a target, that Puerto Rico’s Gender Equality Observatory has worked to gather statistics of these events. “At least 23 women on the island of 3.2 million were killed by their current or former intimate partners that year [2018], causing the intimate partner murder rate to soar to 1.7 per 100,000 women, up from 0.77 per 100,000 in 2017,” said Inoa Monegro. That is more than double the number of murdered women in the previous year. 

With the rising number of violent incidents, many protesters are becoming more active than ever, fighting back in the only way they can. In 2019, a total of 60 indirect and direct murders were linked to gender violence. So far a transgender man and a young woman were murdered in the first three weeks of 2021. Both of these cases are considered to be related to the victim’s advocacy efforts. This means that the governor’s declaration may be a definite move in the right direction, but there’s more to be done to solve this issue. “The work doesn’t end here” said Vilma Gonzales, the director of nonprofit Paz Para La Mujer, “Now is when we get to work.”