La Operación: Mass Sterilization of Puerto Rican Women (1930s-1970s)

"La operación" — the colloquial term Puerto Rican women used for tubal ligation — was so common that it became a normalized part of Puerto Rican reproductive experience. By the 1960s, Puerto Rico had the highest sterilization rate in the world.

Scale and Scope:
- By 1965, approximately 34% of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized
- In some municipalities, the rate exceeded 40%
- Between 1944 and 1960, over 200 private sterilization clinics operated in Puerto Rico
- Many women reported that sterilization was presented as the only option, or that they were sterilized without full understanding of the procedure's permanence
- The procedure was often performed immediately after childbirth, when women were vulnerable and may not have understood what was being done

Driving Forces:

1. U.S. Eugenics Movement: American policymakers explicitly linked Puerto Rico's poverty to 'overpopulation' — a classic colonial framing that blames the colonized for conditions created by colonial extraction. Eugenicists like Clarence Gamble (of Procter & Gamble) funded sterilization campaigns in Puerto Rico.

2. Economic Policy: Operation Bootstrap's industrialization model depended on reducing the labor surplus. Population control was explicitly incorporated into economic development plans — a form of biopower where the colonial state controlled reproduction to serve economic goals.

3. Pharmaceutical Testing: Puerto Rico was simultaneously used as a testing ground for the birth control pill (1955-1960). Researcher Dr. Gregory Pincus chose Puerto Rico because of 'overpopulation' concerns and the availability of a large population of poor women willing to participate in trials with minimal regulatory oversight.

4. Medical Infrastructure: U.S.-funded public health clinics made sterilization the most accessible form of 'family planning' — far more accessible than reversible contraception. The medical infrastructure was designed to facilitate sterilization, not reproductive choice.

Legal Framework:
- Law 116 of 1937 established a eugenics board that could authorize sterilization
- The law framed population control as a public health measure
- While sterilization was technically 'voluntary,' the power dynamics between colonial medical institutions and poor Puerto Rican women made genuine consent problematic

Documentary Evidence: Ana María García's 1982 documentary 'La Operación' features interviews with sterilized women, many of whom describe being pressured, misinformed, or sterilized without understanding that the procedure was permanent. Some women used the word 'operación' without knowing it meant sterilization.

Legacy:
- The sterilization program is one of the most egregious examples of colonial biopower in modern history
- It has been compared to sterilization programs targeting Black women in the American South, Native American women, and Indigenous women globally
- The trauma of 'la operación' persists in Puerto Rican families and communities
- It contributed to Puerto Rico's demographic decline, which continues to accelerate today

The mass sterilization program was not a rogue operation — it was policy, funded by U.S. institutions, executed through colonial medical infrastructure, and rationalized by the same racial and economic ideology that justifies colonialism itself.