By Beth Geglia, Truthout

 

When Sonia Santiago Hernández learned in 2003 that one of her four sons would be deployed to Iraq by the U.S. military, she made a lifelong commitment: to help Puerto Rican youth stay out of the U.S. military machine. Over 20 years later, her organization Madres Contra la Guerra (Mothers Against War) continues to educate youth about alternatives to military service and to fight the many manifestations of U.S. militarism on the island. Victories led by coalitions of fishers, community members, and pro-independence activists like Rubén Berríos Martínez in the early 2000s managed to reduce the military’s footprint and environmental impacts in Puerto Rico. But now the Trump administration’s attacks in the Caribbean and regime change efforts in Venezuela and Cuba are fueling the largest military buildup in the region in decades and rolling back some of those victories.

 

One base in particular, Roosevelt Roads, has caught the attention of peace activists. Once one of the largest naval bases in the world, Roosevelt Roads was first commissioned in 1943 after Franklin D. Roosevelt first conceived of the idea in 1919. The site spanned roughly 8,600 acres of expropriated land between the municipalities of Ceiba and Naguabo, and operated in conjunction with the Camp Garcia military base on the nearby island of Vieques. The base provided roughly 194,000 square miles of ocean territory for training and operations and served as a strategic point of U.S. control over Latin America until it was shuttered officially in 2004 following anti-base activism on Vieques.

 

I lived through the era of Vietnam. The only way for this to end is for the people in the U.S. to get out to the streets to stop it. We call on the mothers in the U.S. to take to the streets. We can’t normalize violence just because it happens in other countries.”
Sonia Santiago Hernández

 

In November 2025, the Trump administration launched Operation Southern Spear, a military and surveillance campaign featuring an elite joint force team deployed in the Caribbean to supposedly counter “narco-terrorist” operations. The Department of Defense declared itself unwavering in its commitment to crush illicit activity in the Western Hemisphere.

 

The same month, Roosevelt Roads was reactivated. According to a Reuters visual investigation, F-35 fighter jets, Marine Corp helicopters, refueling tankers, and heavy transport aircraft began using the base’s 11,000-foot runway. The military also began building out facilities in civilian airports. According to the Department of Defense itself:

 

“Leveraging its expertise, NAVFAC (Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command) Southeast fast-tracked a nearly $2.5 million contract to secure mission-essential leases for hangars, piers and a logistics laydown area at the site of the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. Follow-on leasing actions are projected to nearly double the Navy’s campaign footprint in the region.”

 

News of the reactivation came not through official sources but through the grapevine. Residents in Ceiba contacted Madres Contra la Guerra to report activity on the base. Neighbors felt their houses shake in the middle of the night. In November 2025, the organization heard that the use of air space between Roosevelt Roads, the international airport, and Vieques had been prohibited and wondered what the reason was. Fears that officials were re-arming the base to attack Venezuela were confirmed when, on January 3, 2026, the Pentagon launched Operation Absolute Resolve, invading Caracas and ousting President Nicolás Maduro.

 

Since then, militarization has only expanded as U.S. military threats escalate. On April 21, 2026, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the establishment of the SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command to confront supposed narco-terrorist and cartel networks by integrating artificial intelligence into its war technology. According to SOUTHCOM’s press release, “the new command will be dedicated to employing autonomous, semi-autonomous, and unmanned platforms and systems to counter threats and challenges across domains, linking tactical missions to long-term strategic effects.” SOUTHCOM has also carried out, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), maritime interdiction operations aimed at controlling all oil leaving Venezuela.

 

Since September 2025, Joint Task Force Southern Spear has carried out at least 63 strikes against boats in Caribbean waters, executing a total of 221 people accused of drug trafficking without any presentation of evidence. Top military planners have examined options for airstrikes against Cuba, as Washington’s sanctions and blockade plunge Cuba into an acute energy and food crisis.

 

Hernández says Puerto Rico should not be the launching pad for aggression against fellow Latin American nations. “It is so shameful that they left from here to invade Venezuela,” she says, lamenting other invasions launched from bases on Puerto Rican territory. “Our message is of peace, civil disobedience, and nonviolence.”

 

Antiwar Activism and Puerto Rican Youth

 

Hernández attended university in Puerto Rico at the start of the Vietnam War and became involved in antiwar organizing and draft resistance through conscientious objection. She formed part of the Draft Resistance Committee and participated in a hunger strike with 37 other Puerto Ricans for 26 days. When she went on to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Los Angeles, she deepened her involvement in antiwar activism, but never lost sight of Puerto Rican youth facing military recruitment.

 

In 1917, the Jones-Shafroth Act imposed U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans without democratic process and compulsory military service began almost immediately. Roughly 236,000 Puerto Ricans registered for the draft during World War I and roughly 20,000 were drafted in the first two years. While there has always been draft resistance, Hernández explains, it was only accessible to upper-class Puerto Ricans, as draft resistors were denied educational opportunities and jobs. In 1973, military service became voluntary but affected the poor disproportionately.

 

Since its early years, Madres Contra la Guerra has campaigned against the 1996 Solomon Amendment, formally 10 U.S.C. § 983, a federal law that allows the U.S. government to condition funding for higher education on compliance with ROTC recruitment. Madres Contra la Guerra continues to educate high school and university-age youth about their options regarding military service before they sign a military contract, and to support military personnel who file as conscientious objectors. The organization has called public attention to the psychological and health impacts of the military and works to hold the government responsible for shortages in access to health care and other services for returned servicemembers.

 

Beyond Roosevelt Roads, Madres Contra la Guerra organizes protests against the Fort Buchanan base in Guaynabo, and against U.S. military aggression in the Middle East, including attacks on Gaza.

 

Base Rehabilitation and Polarization

 

As far as the Roosevelt Roads base goes, Hernández says that Ceiba residents are polarized. While antiwar groups protest monthly outside the base, some believe that the reactivation of the military base could provide an economic boost. But people also don’t want their communities to be contaminated, Hernández explains, and the high cancer rates in Vieques serve as a stark warning. As The Guardian reports, “Experts suggest that the main cause of the surge may be contamination of the soil and water with carcinogenic metals in part of the island that was occupied by the US military until 2003. From the 1940s until 2001, the US navy practised bombing and shelling techniques in Vieques, expanding its control to more than 70% of the island.” Puerto Rico’s Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón has defended the revamping of U.S. military activities. Ceiba’s municipal office did not reply to a request for comment for this article.

 

After the base was closed in 2004, Roosevelt Road’s land was returned to the government, but big promises of investment and redevelopment fell short. Hernández says that not enough has been done to clean the site of dangerous materials and munitions residues. And conversations about local development are focused on foreign investments. Governors are looking for big capital gains and turning to models like the controversial Esencia foreign resort project spanning 2,000 acres in western Puerto Rico, another current target of anti-colonial resistance. Other rumors have Hernández worried that DHS could build an immigration jail on Roosevelt Roads. “They do whatever they feel like,” she said. “The people of Ceiba should decide how the land should be used. Those are not Roosevelt’s Roads. He’s not the owner.”

 

Hernández’s final words are a message to U.S. citizens: “I lived through the era of Vietnam. The only way for this to end is for the people in the U.S. to get out to the streets to stop it. We call on the mothers in the U.S. to take to the streets. We can’t normalize violence just because it happens in other countries.”

 

Beth Geglia is an anthropologist and documentarian focused on urban political economy, land politics, and tech-futurist territorial movements. She holds a Ph.D. from American University and is based in Washington, D.C. and Barcelona. This article is republished from Truthout under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).