This collection confronts gendered violence whose extreme manifestation is femicide. Our location is Puerto Rico. Our contributors are active members of the Puerto Rican intellectual and activist community: performers, musicians, dancers, professors, theoreticians, activists. The essays are a combination of historical and theoretical perspectives, accounts of activist resistance and examples of artistic protest. This introductory essay aims to lay out some of the contours of the problem as a historical, social, literary and gender politics phenomenon, with Puerto Rico in focus.