Fogonazo: Menopause as Part of Reproductive Justice

By Aurinés Torres Sánchez, EdD, MPHE
Grassroots Educator | Aula Comunitaria PR

The Fogonazo Project emerged out of an urgent, and deeply overlooked need: to talk about menopause through a feminist, intersectional lens grounded in the lived realities of people in Puerto Rico. Between January and June 2025, with support from the Fundación de Mujeres en Puerto Rico, we began developing this initiative so that people navigating menopausal transitions could access educational support and decolonial tools to move through this stage of life with dignity and well-being.

At Aula Comunitaria PR, we understand menopause not as an isolated medical issue, but as part of the lifelong continuum of sexual and reproductive rights. Yet historically, it has been treated as a minor topic—silenced, pathologized, and often co-opted by profit-driven approaches that reproduce anti-Black racism, classism, ageism, ableism, and transphobia. Fogonazo emerged as a collective response to that absence.

What We Set Out to Do, and What We Achieved

With the Foundation’s support, we focused on two main initiatives. The first was to reproduce and distribute the educational tool “Fogonazo: A Game for Dialogue and Learning About Menopause,” designed for community organizations and collectives working with diverse menstruating people. By the end of June 2025, we had completed 25 copies of the game and made significant progress on an additional 50 sets that remain in production. More than 15 organizations have already expressed interest in receiving the tool along with the accompanying orientation.

The second initiative was to design and facilitate educational cycles on menopause from an intersectional feminist perspective. This marked the first menopause curriculum developed at Aula Comunitaria PR, and one of the most challenging. There is little to no existing material on menopause through a decolonial lens, which meant the process required extensive research, creativity, and collective reflection across local, regional, and international contexts.

The first educational cycle began in June 2025 in Adjuntas, bringing together menstruating people connected to community organizations in rural, mountainous areas. Sessions were rooted in popular education practices, centering dialogue, emotional and intellectual reflection, and collective visioning about how we want to live this stage of life.

Lessons Along the Way

One of our most important lessons has been recognizing that supporting people through menopause in today’s Puerto Rican context requires slower, more humane rhythms and genuine practices of collective care. Both facilitators and participants are navigating overlapping crises—geopolitical, social, and personal—that are felt in the body.

We have had to adjust schedules, create more space to name how we are feeling, and be intentional about sustaining one another with gentleness. Rather than weakening the process, these adjustments have strengthened it, reaffirming that care is not an add-on to the work—it is the work.

We also learned that while many organizations still do not view menopause as a priority, there is growing openness when it is framed for what it truly is: an issue of health, dignity, and justice, beyond the narrow cultural focus on fertility.

Looking Ahead

Fogonazo has been a deeply collective and creative process. What is taking shape goes beyond a single educational project—it represents an effort to expand the language and framework of sexual and reproductive rights in Puerto Rico by recognizing menopause as a legitimate territory of support, knowledge, and autonomy.

In the coming months, we will continue strengthening partnerships with community organizations, expanding access to the Fogonazo tool, and evaluating the educational cycles to further refine the curriculum. The times we are living in are not easy, but we also know that sustaining spaces like this is a concrete way to resist, care for one another, and build transformation.

Supporting projects like Fogonazo means investing in truly comprehensive reproductive justice—one that accompanies menstruating people at every stage of life with dignity, knowledge, and collective care.