Several people drew parallels between the intersex cases and the sterilization of Puerto Rican women in that neither group was informed very well on the surgeries. Not only was there a lack of information, but another party usually made the decision for them. In the instance of intersex children, the doctor would usually assign the gender depending on physical requirements and the husband was usually the one signing the consent forms for the sterilization.

Another parallel that came to mind was the influence of Western culture on Native American tribes with cross-gender females and the influence of Western medicine on the reproductive culture of Puerto Rico. Western culture changed tribal views of the cross-gender females from being normal to being unacceptable and it also shifted the value of work that a man and a woman did unequally. I’m not sure if I remember this correctly but I thought the documentary made and interesting point with the picture of some goddess who I think represented fertility. To show how many women had been sterilized, a picture of Puerto Rico was shown covered in pictures of the goddess. Some of the pictures were then removed to show the portion of the population that was sterilized. I think the insertion of the goddess of fertility into the documentary shows that at one time the culture valued a fertile woman. Now due to influences and propaganda from the United States, the Puerto Rican society has been taught to equate a small family to progress even though the attempt at population control has not improved the standard of living greatly.

Before watching La Operacion, I was only aware that China and India were the two main countries that suffered the most from population growth. So I would never have thought that population growth was such an issue in Puerto Rico. After watching the movie it made me wonder how China’s population controls relate to Puerto Rico’s attempts to control its population. One well known control method in China is the one child only policy which was started in 1979. The Chinese government often gave special benefits to families who agreed to have only one child. Families who had more than one had a portion of their income taxed or faced losing their jobs. Unplanned pregnancies or pregnancies without proper authorization had to be aborted. I don’t think that the documentary mentioned that there were any laws in Puerto Rico that said families could only have a certain number of children but only that smaller families would mean more economic prosperity. Like in Puerto Rico, sterilization is also the most prevalent form of contraceptive in China according to the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey performed by the Family Planning Commission in 2001. Of the 200,000 people surveyed, 46% had been sterilized and of that percentage 38.1% were women and 7.9% were men. I think this statistic is interesting in that the low number of men sterilized perhaps indicates that China also has a myth about procedure causing a loss of “energy.” I’m curious if there are any other reasons for why men are so against being sterilized.