Keep the Bases Closed! Puerto Rico Stands Against U.S. Militarism
Juventud Unida por la Independencia denounces the increased militarization of Puerto Rico as a staging area for the United States' war machine in the region. On September 5, 2025, the Trump administration sent 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico as the United States ramps up its aggression towards Venezuela. In the same week, the United States Marines commenced military exercises off the coast of the Southeastern Part of the Big Island in Arroyo. Media and government officials are now postulating the reopening of various military bases in Puerto Rico. Following these actions, Trump signed an executive order that renamed the Department of Defense as the Department of War, signifying his appetite for military force.
The first pawn in the war he wishes to commence is Puerto Rico.
Just as Roosevelt practiced the “Big Stick Policy” to justify intervention and aggression in Latin America and the Caribbean in the early 1900s, Trump seeks to exercise imperialist policies by implementing police-based agendas in its colonies. We see evidence of this new-age U.S. imperialism through the greater fascist push of the Trump administration as he escalates ICE raids and National Guard deployments across communities of colonized people living in the U.S.
Both in Puerto Rico’s history of colonization under Spain and the United States, it has served as a military outpost. Over the course of U.S. colonization in Puerto Rico in the 20th century, the United States established 25 military installations in Puerto Rico, ranging from small troop bases to large legions and land dedicated to military purposes. The largest U.S. military projects in Puerto Rico have been Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, the Atlantic Fleet Training Facility in Vieques, Fort Buchanan in Guaynabo, and the U.S. Ramey Air Force Base in Aguadilla. All of these, except for Fort Buchanan, have been closed as official bases but still host some military, coast, or national guard activity. Jennifer Gonzalez has expressed support for the increase in military presence and has even alluded to the reuse of former military bases.
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF PAST AND PRESENT U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN PUERTO RICO
Yet the struggles to close many of these bases, including in Culebra, took major sacrifices. The road to those closures is paved with the blood, sweat, suffering, and deaths of Puerto Ricans who gave everything for a better future for their people and their children. While many may be familiar with the struggle to oust the Naval base in Vieques, fewer realize that these protests later provoked the closure of Roosevelt Roads. These two bases worked hand in hand, as Roosevelt Roads could not continue without Vieques.
U.S. MILITARY MAKES PUERTO RICO AN AGGRESSOR IN LATAM AND THE CARIBBEAN
These bases were used to terrorize our Latin American and Caribbean siblings as well as our own people. From Guatemala to the Dominican Republic to Panama, Puerto Rico has been used as a launching pad for destabilization and plunder for the colonizer. For the Puerto Rican people to rise up and close them was not only a service to themselves but to the entire world.
THE U.S. MILITARY DOES NOT SERVE PUERTO RICO’S INTERESTS
Wherever U.S. bases exist in the world, they bring devastation to the surrounding communities. Many believe that reopening the bases in Puerto Rico would bring the much-needed economic development and relief to the people. Yet all we need to do is look at our own history to know that this is not true. U.S. military bases bring death, sexual violence, and displacement.
The United States only sees Puerto Rico as a port rich with potential for military advantage. The answer to Puerto Rico’s economic crisis is not to lean more on the United States but rather to tear away from it and forge a new path to sovereignty and dignity.
ONLY PUERTO RICANS CAN DEFEND PUERTO RICO
As Puerto Rican youth, we deserve the ability to build a society that thrives on peace and liberation rather than war and destruction. We deserve not to have to depend on joining the military or its many programs to build a good quality of life for ourselves. We deserve to have an education that is not geared toward brainwashing us as a loyal army for the U.S. but that teaches us our true history so that we can build a better future.
