Our bodies: our first line of defense in the fight for women's rights
Interview w/ Tania Rosado, Director of Taller Salud
“Minimizing fear, reducing the risk of death, prioritizing life – that should be our government’s priority. If not, then a “government” makes no sense,” says Tania Rosado, director of Taller Salud, in response to the government's inaction in the face of a rise of femicides in Puerto Rico.
When the government of Puerto Rico implemented an island-wide curfew on March 16, 2020, many victims of gender violence were left without support and protection. On that day, Taller Salud opened an orientation and referral hotline that operated for 120 days to maintain direct contact with the communities and respond to the lack of services that exists in the eastern region of the island.
The organization, based in the municipality of Loíza, continued to provide support through case management, and individual and group therapy while also developing educational and support materials disseminated on social networks and WhatsApp groups. Their goal: to be a space for survivors or women in active relationships of violence and assure them that they were not alone.
But Taller Salud is no stranger to activating themselves in a time when the government fails to protect our women and our LGBTQIA+ communities. Decades of insufficient government services coupled with the poor resources funneled to ensure the protection of victims of abuse and violence are just a few of the factors contributing to increase of cases of femicides plaguing the island in the past 8 months, under a government enforced curfew.
According to the data collected by the Gender Equity Observatory as of November 25, 2020, there have been over 50 direct and indirect femicides on the island. To obtain this data, the Gender Equity Observatory, a non-profit entity that serves as a coalition between feminist and human rights organizations in Puerto Rico, must cross-check various sources including the Police Department, the Office of the Attorney for Women and information offered in the press. Often times, the numbers don’t add up.
Since 2016, Taller Salud has been working to address gender-based violence at the intersection of gender and race through its program Tu Paz Cuenta in an attempt to understand if and where the two identities produce greater exposure to violence and hoping to address the vulnerabilities when it’s time to receive the help and support necessary. This program prioritizes Afro-descendants and serves victims and their families, approaching their lived experiences by embracing ancestral strength while, at the same time, acknowledging the historical and generational oppression that accumulates only to manifest itself as complex trauma. In this way, Tu Paz Cuenta is able to focus on developing tools for and while training professionals in roles intended to serve our communities – the emergency room personnel, court officers, municipal employees, social workers, school personnel – with an aim to educate them about complex trauma and subconscious biases that arise when providing support to our most vulnerable communities.
“Our demands are directed to the decision makers. Every person who has the power to declare a State of Emergency but has failed to do so is as murderer – the murderer of Valerie Ann, of Rosymar. From my point of view, it is the government that is carrying out this violence against our women. They’ve had the opportunity to increase the scale of protection but they have not. They’ve had the opportunity to pool the resourced to improve services and invest in protecting our women, and have not ,"said Rosado, who since 2016 has led the community-based feminist organization located in Loíza.
As of October 10, Governor Wanda Vázquez has claimed she is reviewing and evaluating a draft of an executive order in an effort to stop violence against women. For years, feminist organizations have proposed comprehensive solutions that have fallen on death ears. Rosado stated: “When backed into a corner, living in constant state of emergency, for such a prolonged period of time, you feel lost. People are dying while we are debating. This is our reality and if we want to increase the possibility of helping more and more people, of countering the violence of the government and the cruel way in which it abandons our most vulnerable communities, we need not engage in any small debate. "