Positive and Negative Relationships: #NiUnaMenos Movement in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is currently having a crisis in the surge of gender violence cases in the island. Just two weeks ago, 20 year old Rosimar Rodriguez Gomez was kidnapped in front of her home after leaving her father’s birthday. Her family quickly reported the kidnapping, but the police treated the case as a missing person’s case. A week later, Rosimar’s body was found dead on the side of a road in decomposing stages. The police, instead of using the various sources and evidence they got from their family to possibly save Rosimar, did nothing (Gonzalez, 2020). Additionally, just a few days ago a 35 year old transgender woman named Michellyn Ramos Vargas was found dead in the town of San German due to various gunshots (Puig, 2020). These cases, unfortunately, have not been the only tragedies of femicide on the island this year.
Despite the ever growing cases of gender violence in the island, the government fails to recognize how serious this situation is. In fact, over two years ago there was a community uproar for the puertorrican government to declare gender violence a state of emergency that lead to no progress (Colón, 2020). Due to the failure of the government to answers to the public’s claims, a movement called #NiUnaMenos (or “Not one [woman] less”in English) has surged on the island. This movement advocates for the protection of women across the island, to put a stop on gender violence, and to make the stories of survivors of sexual assault and harrasment known to the world (Univision, 2020).
For the past few months, there has been a certain division between the puertorrican community due to the upcoming elections. Such division can be seen on social media, where there has been a current dispute between either voting for politicians in the New Progress Party or the Popular Democratic Party, or voting for independent candidates in order to stop with bipartisan politics. However, it has been shown how these clashes have been put a pause after the #NiUnaMenos movement. People have slowly started to unite in order to show support to make this situation known to the world.
Movements like that of #NiUnaMenos can show us how networks theory can apply to real life. Elections can lead for negative relationships given to the political differences of people. In this case, people that support bipartisan candidates have a negative relationship with people who support independent candidates. Most people who support independent candidates do not approve of the current government, while people who support bipartisan candidates have a good relationship with the government. Therefore we can see how such a network is balanced, where the government and the bipartisan supporters have a good relationship, but independent supporters have a negative relationship with both of them. However, with movements like that of #NiUnaMenos, we can see that these relationships can quickly change. Now, there is more disapproval within bipartisan supporters of the government given their lack of support to the movement, and thus they begin to have a negative relationship with them. Additionally, bipartisan and independent supporters are able to forget their contrasting political views in order to make the government accountable, and thus gaining a positive relationship. While the network is still balanced, we can see that social media was able to change these relationships in the span of a few days. While there are various downsides to the internet, such is able to give a voice to the voiceless, thus helping the communities join forces in order to fight to earn the respect that they deserve from the government.
Links:
https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/notas/la-familia-de-rosimar-rodriguez-le-da-su-ultimo-adios-y-confian-en-que-se-haga-justicia/
https://www.metro.pr/pr/opinion/2020/10/01/opinion-adriana-gutierrez-colon-una-mas-una-menos.html
https://www.elvocero.com/ley-y-orden/identifican-a-mujer-transg-nero-asesinada-en-san-germ-n/article_a2868952-0315-11eb-9fb1-3717efaf0023.html
https://www.univision.com/local/puerto-rico-wlii/artistas-puertorriquenos-piden-que-se-declare-un-estado-de-emergencia-por-violencia-de-genero?phased_release=mmss_c2p_mr_anchor