MAlt on Sex Education in Puerto Rico

Middlebury students left the frigid winter temperatures of Vermont and travelled to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to participate in a women’s empowerment MAlt trip over February break. Over the course of the following week, they engaged with an organization known as Iniciativa Comunitaria, or Community Initiative (IC), and worked with women and transgender sex workers to participate in hands-on, alternative approaches seeking to aid Puerto Rico’s prominent drug abuse problem.

Trip leaders Camila Fernandez ’15 and Ryan Coates ’15 originally chose the location due to their interest in Puerto Rico’s rich cultural and political history, and then expanded the trip to focus on their other shared passion of female empowerment and women’s rights.

“Puerto Rico is interesting because it’s part of the United States and Latin America at the same time, and we wanted to see how that played out,” Coates said. “We made an effort to integrate into the Puerto Rican culture to get a better cultural context of the community we were working with.”

During the first few days of their trip, they attended training sessions and cultural competency workshops facilitated by IC, where they were able to speak to many of the volunteers and learn more about what the organization is about.

“Speaking with volunteers was fascinating because these are people from San Juan who wanted to give back to their community,” group member Jiya Pandya ’17 said. “They’re all really passionate about what they’re doing.”

With a slogan that reads “Somos un gran abrazo,” or, “we are a big hug,” IC was founded by a doctor who attended medical school in Puerto Rico and was disappointed by the current solutions to help the social injustices of the community. Through IC, alternative solutions are brought to the table: clean needle exchanges to prevent the spread of infection among drug users, outreach programs to women and transgender sex workers, food, water, and medical supplies offered to homeless populations, and child developmental programs. Some of the most important tenants of their programs are empathy, compassion, and “amor” — love — and they strive to create a happy and healthy community.

After the MAlt group finished their training, they were able to participate directly in the services IC provides. From 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday night, their last night in Puerto Rico, the group split, with the first half working with women and transgender sex workers and the second half engaging in the clean needle exchange program.

Working with the program’s head coordinator Ivana Fred, some of the MAlt trip participants followed Fred’s vehicle as she went to certain areas and neighborhoods of Puerto Rico where many sex workers congregated, giving out baggies of condoms and lubricant and speaking to women and transgender sex workers about the organization. They were surprised to find out that there had been a police raid in that same area the night before.

“Not many transgender [sex workers] were coming to the car … because they [the police] had arrested them the night before. There is a lot of police brutality against them; they cut their hair and hold them down,” Fernandez said. “It’s pretty surprising to see and hear about the direct targeting of transgender women where in a neighborhood two to three blocks away, there’s a very big drug area.”

“[The police] would come dressed as normal people and offer a price [for sex], and a lot of the women caught were put in jail and charged fines of $250 minimum. They can’t afford to pay that,” said Ellen Sartorelli ’17, another participant of the trip.

Other students travelled with IC’s program Operación Compasión, where they drove with fellow volunteers in a truck with food and medical supplies to prominent San Juan homeless communities, distributing food, water, and clean needles to prevent illness, particularly HIV, which in Puerto Rico is spread more commonly through needles than sexual contact.

“Most of what people do who volunteer is talk to the people there, see what they need. It’s really about building relationships and making them feel wanted, included, cared for,” Pandya said.

Pandya explained how she met David, a man suffering from a drug addiction and who had been on the streets for about two months. Any money he earned, however, was spent either to call his family or buy more drugs.

“He told us he knew he could save up money and travel to the drug recovery center that the organization had,” Pandya said, “and he told us that he wanted to, but he couldn’t: he didn’t have the will to do it.”

Another man Pandya encountered had a mosquito bite that he had scratched open, and because he didn’t have access to clean water, it had not healed properly. She had to hold a flashlight as three medical student volunteers peeled off his sock and washed his wound.

“We don’t think twice about those things, but for someone who doesn’t have access [to clean water], that’s a much bigger deal,” Pandya said.

When they were not working with IC, the MAlt trip was exploring Puerto Rico and the cultural community.

“We were experiencing Puerto Rico as a real Puerto Rican would,” Sartorelli said. “We weren’t limited to the organization. We learned about living in Puerto Rico.”

One of the many interesting points the group learned as they experienced life in Puerto Rico was that grocery prices were much higher because Puerto Rico only produces 13 to 15 percent of its own food while the rest is imported because of the limitations of United States trade agreements. Some locals also referred to Puerto Rico as a colony, others as a country: it was never called a territory even though the locals know it is considered part of the United States.

“It was interesting because as you’re driving through there’s Spanish on the radio, on the billboards, and then a Walmart just jumps out at you,” Sartorelli said.

“It’s the United States in some ways and then in other ways it’s not,” Coates said.

A cultural, political, and social immersion into Puerto Rico itself, the San Juan MAlt trip provided for many of its members another look at women’s empowerment as well as a chance for an interactive and collaborative service trip experience.

“I’ve always considered myself passionate about female empowerment,” Sartorelli said, “But now, after doing this, I think I want to get more involved with organizations like WomenSafe or MiddSafe in the future. It was a great opportunity to do work that people always say they’re passionate about.”