Ana Maria Garcia made La Operacion (Latin American Film Project, 1982) in Puerto Rico. She was one of the first women of color to work in independent documentary film.

Ana María is a Cuban-Puerto Rican director. García holds a PhD in Education from Harvard University, where she realized an ethnographic study on the first Montessori school in Puerto Rico in the Juan Domingo neighborhood of Guaynabo. She is best known for her documentary La Operacion (1982) which looks at the US-imposed forced sterilization policies on Puerto Rican women, and Cocolos y Rockeros (1992), a study on rock and salsa subcultures in Puerto Rico. She lives in Puerto Rico, where teaches and works in Universidad del Sagrado Corazón and Universidad de Puerto Rico.