BY RON RICHARDS
GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico - Several hundred people gathered here December 22 at the front gate of Fort Buchanan to protest the proposed expansion of the U.S. military presence in this colony. Fort Buchanan is the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Puerto Rico.

The Hostos National Congress, a coalition of groups and individuals who support independence for Puerto Rico, called the protest in response to two recent announcements. The first is that the Pentagon is considering transferring the U.S. Army South - the army component of the U.S. Southern Command - from Panama to here. The second is that after a year of inaction the Navy is moving forward on plans to build a giant radar system in Puerto Rico. The rally also commemorated the 101st anniversary of the Puerto Rican flag.

After years of opposition to the U.S. military presence in their country, the people of Panama forced Washington to sign the Panama Canal Treaty, which requires that the U.S. bases in that country be closed by June 1997. The Southern Command, the high-level officers who plan U.S. military interventions in Latin America, will be moving to Miami. There was competition between governments in Puerto Rico, Florida, and other areas over who could offer the Southern Command more concessions to influence the Pentagon's decision.

The current debate is over the location of the Army South, and the Pentagon is once again considering a number of sites in Puerto Rico and the southeastern United States.

The Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar is planned to track aircraft throughout the region. The military claims that its sole function will be to track drug smuggling ships and planes. The current proposal is to locate the radar transmitter on the island municipality of Vieques and the receiver on Puerto Rico in the town of Juana Díaz. Vieques, two-thirds of which is occupied by the U.S. Navy, is located off the east coast of Puerto Rico. Both sites are on existing U.S. military bases. A previous plan to put the receiver on farmland in Lajas was rejected after protests over the impact on agriculture and the environment.

Speakers at the December 22 rally also drew attention to the campaign both here and in the United States to free 15 Puerto Rican political prisoners held in U.S. jails.

The protesters ranged in age from university students to elderly and came from across Puerto Rico.

Roberto Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques said that the next protest around the radar will be held January 12 in Vieques. The following day is a holiday in honor of Eugenio Maria de Hostos, a nineteenth-century fighter against Spanish colonialism.

Ron Richards is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  
 
 
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