The Senate approves measures to address violence against women

the Senate gave way in today’s session to measures to seek to address at the legislative level the problem of gender violence, an applicant for governor Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia to declare a state of emergency against gender violence and another by launching an investigation into the operation of certain tools that the state has to address the issue, such as the Office of the Attorney General for Women, the Police and the Institute of Forensic Science with its handling of the ‘rap kits’.

The resolution requesting the declaration of the state of emergency was approved with the vote against Thomas Rivera Schatz, of the New Progressive Party and Joanne Rodríguez Veve, from Project Dignitat. The neo-progressives Keren Riquelme and Gregorio Matías abstained. The measure on the legislative investigation was approved with the vote against William Villafañe and Rivera Schatz. Riquelme, Wanda Soto, Nitza Morán, Matías, Carmelo Ríos and Migdalia Padilla abstained.

This afternoon the Senate also approved a measure creating a new commission to be chaired by the pro-independence God of Lourdes Santiago who will serve as overseer of the Department of Education’s Special Education Program. Two measures were also approved around the 81-cent increase in the cost of kilowatt / hour of energy: one to reject the increase and order the Department of Justice to investigate any illegality executed in the process. for the increase to be approved and another to initiate a similar investigation, but in the Senate.

The PNP delegation voted against the two electricity measures.

The objections of the senators from Penedès, Carmelo Ríos, Henry Neumann and William Villafañe, revolved around the need to approve projects with substance and not to give further legislative investigations, based on the “hasty” premise that they have been committed crimes and that the language of one of the measures alludes to possible “political strategies” executed in the past four years to supposedly delay the entry into force of the increase in light.

“I’m worried this is the kind of research we’ll be doing when there’s already a conclusion,” Rios said.

“They’re talking about premeditated actions and conspiracies and discussions in darkrooms … it’s a bad start. If we’re going to do things right, we do things right,” Neumann said.

The President of the Senate, José Luis Dalmau Santiago, argued that the increase approved on December 31 by the Energy Negotiator is included in the fiscal plan approved by the last government.

Debate on gender violence

Senators Rodríguez Veve, Ana Irma Rivera Lassen, Jaume and Migdalia González embarked on their first parliamentary debate in the Senate chamber to address the two measures, with violence against women being the topic of discussion.

On the one hand, Rodríguez Veve, of Project Dignitat, objected that he wanted to focus on violence against women, stating that “widespread violence” must be addressed.

“I think it’s our duty to fight violence against women, but I also think it’s our duty to fight violence against men, against children, against young and old with the same zeal. In short, I think it’s the it is our duty to fight violence against all, “said Rodríguez Veve in reviewing a series of crimes that have taken place in recent days.

Rodriguez Veve recalled how on November 30 he asked the then-governor to declare an emergency against “widespread violence.”

“Regardless of gender or age. What we can’t allow is that some deaths are outraged more than others because we would be creating higher categories of human beings and much less can we allow the fight against violence against women to be a vehicle. to advance vehicles alien to the goal of safeguarding everyone’s lives, ”said Rodriguez Veve, who criticized that in the explanatory memorandum there is talk of forging alliances with organizations.

“It does not specify which groups and organizations it refers to. This resolution cannot be a blank check for organizations and groups with ideological proposals that hinder the implementation of measures that are truly effective in combating violence against women,” she said. .

Rivera Lassen answered

In taking her turn, Rivera Lassen insisted on the need for, as she said, “surnames” to be placed “in violence.”

“When it’s not done, it’s not recognized what violence is and the sources, its origin, are not identified,” he said. “We can’t scratch and say that all violence is equal and that there is one in particular that is killing women … just because they are women.”

Rivera Lassen recalled how, prior to the creation of Domestic Violence Act 54 in 1989, men had an open letter to rape their wives “because it was their right,” he said. “There was no defense in favor of married women, who considered themselves the property of their husbands,” she said.

“And there was no way a woman could say she had been raped by her husband because the man was said to be exercising right over her property,” Rivera Lassen said. “If violence is not given a name, it is not recognized,” he insisted.

“That’s why it’s important to give her surnames. We live in a country where just because we are women, including trans women, we are subject, just because of possible violence. Violence related to what we construct as feminine and masculine.”

Maria de Lourdes Santiago

The pro-independence senator has argued that no one can deny that, today, the gender difference gives way to wage inequality and how at some point in the last century women could not vote “because they were women”.

“Until the other days, until 1976 … a woman could be at the head of an agency, but she could not go to the bank alone without her husband’s permission because she could not be an administrator of the company of gains, ”he said.

“The same goes for the various manifestations of violence. There is violence that is expressed by those of us who are victims or potential victims by the mere fact of being a woman, because all these inequalities for decades and centuries have found their bed more perverse in the sense that some men have that their chromosomes compel them and force them to act violently. Not with their congeners, with women, “he said.

“The price is hundreds of women dead and thousands of women injured,” he insisted.

Santiago Negrón rejected the discussion as to whether there are people who are superior, as Rodríguez Veve alleged and reviewed a number of cases in which women have been murdered on the island.

“There is gender violence and it’s hard to be a woman,” she said.

Santiago said he would vote in favor of the measures, but said Legislative responsibility should go beyond a search or a petition to the governor and called on the Legislature to also legislate mechanisms to address the issue.

Migdalia González

The chair of the Women’s Affairs Commission argued that thousands of women are victims of gender-based violence a year in Puerto Rico.

It should not be a problem for this A EL to recognize that there is a problem of discrimination in women that I complete with the murder of women, “González said.” We cannot tell our daughters and granddaughters that they have to live in a violent country, ”he added.

“A legislative body made up of a majority of 14 women is a more sensitive body, empathetic to victims of gender-based violence,” she said.