BY DORIS PIZARRO
The following is an excerpt from "The U.S. Militarization of Puerto Rico," published in the collection One People, One Destiny: The Caribbean and Central America Today. The presentation below was made to the February 1986 meeting of the Anti-Imperialist Organizations of the Caribbean and Central America held in Managua, Nicaragua. Doris Pizarro was at that time the deputy general secretary of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. The book One People, One Destiny is copyright (c) 1988 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

The military use of Puerto Rico for the achievement of U.S. objectives in the Caribbean region was always one of the main reasons motivating the Spanish-American-Cuban war....

Above all, the aim was to assure the United States of a territory that could be turned into a great military base where it could do as it pleased, without the interference of any government nor the application of any authority other than its own.

On March 2, 1917, the U.S. Congress approved a law called the Jones Act, imposing U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans. Leaving aside the dramatic implications that such an imposition has on a people struggling to defend its nationality and independence, the Jones Act paved the way for the use of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans for military purposes.

This unilateral and foreign law enables us to determine the type of relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States that has prevailed up to the present day. It is therefore worth bearing in mind that the problem of militarism and militarization in our case refers to the extension of the colonial power's military apparatus into the colony and its impact on the colonial society without the mediation of local groups....

A few days after imposing U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans, the United States began its participation in World War I. This was the first time that Puerto Rican youth were recruited to go to the battlefield thousands of kilometers from their homeland to defend the interests of U.S. imperialism. This was the beginning of the long list of Puerto Ricans who were killed, wounded, or incapacitated while serving as cannon fodder for the colonial power.

The same thing happened in World War II, in the U.S. aggression against Korea (where more than 700 Puerto Ricans were killed), and in Vietnam where, according to the Pentagon's figures, more than 1,300 Puerto Ricans were killed and many thousands more were wounded.

All told, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have served in the U.S. armed forces since 1917. At present more than 10,000 Puerto Ricans are serving in that country's armed forces.

U.S. military since 1959
U.S. military installations in Puerto Rico had been used previously as a base of support in the bloody coup financed by the CIA in Guatemala in 1954. After the revolutionary victory in Cuba, however, our Caribbean island-nation's role as military policeman grew.

The 1962 economic blockade of Cuba was coordinated from Puerto Rico. Many of the planes that carried thousands of U.S. marines in the April 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic took off from military and civilian airports on Puerto Rican territory.

Dozens of ships and other naval forces at U.S. bases in Puerto Rico were placed on a state of alert during the people's uprising in Trinidad in 1970.(1)

Even more striking was the role U.S. imperialism assigned Puerto Rico during the cowardly attack on Grenada in October 1983, to which we will return later.

Equally important is the use of our young people and our territory in the U.S. threats of military escalation against Nicaragua and Central America.

In recent years Puerto Rico has been turned into an almost exclusive domain of the U.S. Navy. After the closing of the Ramey Fields strategic bomber base, the air force's activities have been reduced to providing support to units of the so- called Puerto Rican Air National Guard and to the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program in schools and universities.

The U.S. Army maintains a base in San Juan - Fort Buchanan - although there is no longer a large garrison there. The main activities of the regular army are:

1. Recruiting Puerto Ricans to serve outside the island (more than 10, 000);

2. Organizing units of the reserves (more than 4,000 troops);

3. Supporting the so-called Puerto Rican National Guard (12,400 troops in 1980);

4. Coordinating the Reserve Officers Training Corps program in schools and universities;

5. Intelligence activities;

6. Various services for veterans and their families.

The U.S. Navy has its most important Caribbean naval base in Puerto Rico -Roosevelt Roads Naval Station - which is one of the largest in the world. This base covers an area of 37,000 acres, with 22,000 acres on the island of Vieques, more than two-thirds of which has been occupied by the military. Roosevelt Roads is the center of a complex of installations in the mountain region of Luquillo, Vieques, St. Croix (Virgin Islands), and in the waters east, northeast, and southeast of Puerto Rico.

Roosevelt Roads is also the headquarters of the Caribbean Naval Command, which is responsible for the naval forces stationed at Guantánamo, Cuba, and in Panama. Also located at this large naval base is the Antilles Defense Command, which would be put in charge of all U.S. military forces in the event of an emergency in the Caribbean. Located there as well is the South Atlantic Command, which coordinates U.S. naval activities with the countries of the Latin American Southern Cone and with South Africa.

Also located in this complex is the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range, of which Vieques is a part, where they experiment with new weapons and carry out naval maneuvers and shelling practice with the participation of forces from NATO and Latin American countries. Finally, the Underwater Range, an installation utilizing the most advanced technology, is the main practice ground in the Atlantic for submarine warfare.

In addition to the Roosevelt Roads complex in the east, the fleet has the Sabana Seca Communications Center near San Juan, an installation that carries out electronic espionage, There are also various communications centers to the west and south. The former Ramey base is now under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard and could be activated by the navy any time it deemed it necessary to its interests.

The so-called Puerto Rican National Guard is in fact a branch of the U.S. armed forces in our country. It is made up of more than 12,000 troops, the majority of them Puerto Rican. In the past the National Guard has been used as an instrument of repression against workers on strike and against the patriotic movement, with the barely disguised aim of provoking a fratricidal struggle in which Puerto Ricans confront Puerto Ricans....

U.S. invasion of Grenada
In mid-1981 the United States staged the Ocean Venture '81 military maneuvers, considered the largest in the Caribbean since World War II. Part of these maneuvers were held on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques which, as we have already stated, is occupied by the Yankee navy.

In a speech by Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop that year, he pointed out that the imaginary name given to the island invaded in Ocean Venture '81, "Amber and the Amberines," was a clear reference to Grenada and the Grenadines. In 1982 and 1983, Ocean Venture maneuvers were repeated, with aims similar to the earlier one.

Months before the invasion, maneuvers called Universal Trek '83 were held on the island of Vieques. Their aim was to create an atmosphere as close as possible to reality and to work out the final details of the operation. The maneuver consisted of the invasion of a Caribbean island by sea, air, and land, and the capture of an airport in the face of enemy ambush....

Puerto Rico served as a staging ground for at least half the invading troops....

In addition, an undetermined number of U.S. soldiers of Puerto Rican origin took part in the Grenada invasion.

1. For two months in early 1970. Trinidad was shaken by a massive upsurge. While beginning under the slogan of "Black Power," the upsurge increasingly drew in workers of Indian origin. In response to the growing movement, the government of Trinidad declared a state of emergency while U.S. warships sat offshore.  
 
 
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