Ariel Castro Is Not A Good Representation Of Puerto Rico, Says Governor; Alejandro García Padilla Calls Connection 'Offensive'

Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla has called the idea that Puerto Rico might be judged by the actions of accused Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro "offensive", reported El Nuevo Dia.

"In the same way that the United States isn't the shootouts and killings that happen so frequently in the schools. In the same way that we can't say that the United States is Timothy McVeigh or Jim Jones, the one who did the massacre in Guyana. In the same way that one can't say that the Middle East is Osama Bin Laden or in the same way that one can't use so many negative examples of so many countries to define a country, Puerto Rico is not that person's atrocity."

"Puerto Rico is not the shamelessness, the mental insanity of that person and for anyone to even try to insinuate that is offensive because no one can say that Mexico is the new drug cartels or Colombia is the Bogotá or Medellin or Cali cartel. Colombia, Mexico and the United States are more than that, and Puerto Rico is not and cannot be represented by this man."

According to official sources, an average of 20,000 domestic violence incidents are reported annually in Puerto Rico, along with about 3,000 incidents of sexual violence. In the case of the latter, official sources estimate that only about 15 percent of rapes end up being reported. Human Rights Watch calls violence at the hands of domestic partners and families a "serious problem for Puerto Rican women and girls."

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence says 36 percent of all female homicides in Puerto Rico were motivated by domestic violence and points to poverty on the islands as an exacerbating factor, saying "because poverty can make it difficult to escape domestic violence or heal from its effects, this high rate of poverty creates a real barrier to ending domestic violence in Puerto Rico".

Forty-five percent of the population of Puerto Rico lives below the poverty line.

But Human Rights Watch calls Puerto Rican women "far from disempowered." Women there won the right to the vote in 1935, before any other nation or territory of Latin America and the Caribbean except for Ecuador. Likewise, in the educational sphere, women have long been extraordinarily well-represented, with 160 college graduates to every 100 male college grads.