On this Veteran’s Day we thank our Puerto Rican Veterans for their service, and also thank the Vets from around the United States who have volunteered to head to Puerto Rico and help their fellow citizens on the island. Many are still there, providing aid and assistance as the disaster continues.
Far too many Americans on the mainland still don’t realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, nor do they know the long history of Puerto Rican military service to this nation.
In October of 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense, posted this history: Puerto Ricans Represented Throughout U.S. Military History
As citizens of the United States, Puerto Ricans have participated in every major United States military engagement from World War I onward, with the soldiers of Puerto Rico’s 65th Infantry Regiment distinguishing themselves in combat during the Korean War.
The article covers Puerto Rican military service in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and in the Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
A more sobering examination of that history, is presented in, “The Puerto Rican Experience in the U.S. Military: A Century of Unheralded Service.”
Puerto Ricans have also joined the U.S. military because of the island’s tradition as a military colony. This was certainly the case under Spain and to a lesser degree it continued to be under American rule. Under U.S. rule Puerto Ricans created a new tradition of service and it is not rare to find families with three or four generations of service.
The Puerto Ricans’ service, however, has not always been appreciated. Instead, initially Puerto Ricans served in segregated, colonial units. Their service was limited to support troops and both Puerto Rican units and individuals serving in black or white units faced discrimination. In short, the service of hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans was ignored at best and misconstrued at worst.
For over a century their service and what it meant for the United States and for Puerto Ricans and Latinos/as, were ignored or unheralded. Still, they soldiered on, many times fighting on two fronts--against enemy combatants and against racial prejudice.
One Puerto Rican veteran with many years of service in multiple wars is Fernando Rodriguez-Borges profiled here:
Fernando Rodriguez-Borges entered the U.S. Army as part of the 65th Infantry Regiment’s “Borinqueneers,” a predominantly Puerto Rican regiment, and served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He shares his story as a Puerto Rican native, proud and eager to be a solider of the United States and defend freedom.
In 2013 a monument was dedicated in Boston to Puerto Rican Vets.
Boston unveils monument to Puerto Rican veterans
With the slight tug of a tarp Tuesday afternoon, Boston’s current mayor and its future leader unveiled the city’s new Puerto Rican veterans monument in the South End, a first-of-its kind memorial that has been years in the making.
The crowd of more than 100 people, including many veterans, broke into cheers in both English and Spanish as the monument, located at the corner of Washington and West Dedham streets, was revealed and adorned with a floral wreath fashioned in the style of the Puerto Rican flag.
The monument, the first public memorial in the nation honoring Puerto Rican veterans, depicts two soldiers, one male and one female, and includes an inscription that reads: “La libertad no es gratis,” or “Freedom is not free.”
The monument, the first public memorial in the nation honoring Puerto Rican veterans, depicts two soldiers, one male and one female, and includes an inscription that reads: “La libertad no es gratis,” or “Freedom is not free.”
Puerto Rican Medal of Honor Recipients
On March 18, 2014, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to Félix Conde Falcón, Juan Negrón, Demensio Rivera and Miguel Vera. The total of Puerto Rican soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor increased to a total of nine
Despite the long history of service to their nation, the plight of vets on the island post Irma and Maria, has been grim.
75,000 Army veterans live in Puerto Rico. Many struggle in shelters after hurricane Maria
There are somewhere around 75,000 U.S. Army veterans living in Puerto Rico. Most served during the Vietnam War. After Hurricane Maria, many are now living in shelters. Thousands of people, not just veterans, have been displaced by the storm, and the shelters are packed.
At the school, a supervisor answers: Yes, there's a veteran here.
The VA team finds 70-year-old Luis Torres lying in bed. His dress shirt is wide open and his baseball cap is flipped backward. His bed is surrounded by piles of clothing and some bags of food.
The Air Force veteran was honorably discharged; he has his military ID, but the other paperwork was lost in the storm. “My house ... it disappeared,” he says, breaking down in tears.
His teenage son, Andrew Torres, who is also staying here, pulls out his phone to show us pictures of what's left of their house. It’s like the roof and the walls were just plucked out. On the second floor, a toilet stands alone in the open.
Janine Smalley takes Luis Torres's vitals. His blood pressure is 130 over 80, so that’s "perfect," she says, asking, "Do you take any meds?" Smalley is the VA team’s registered nurse and Disaster Emergency Medical Personnel trained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She’s here from Cleveland, Ohio. She volunteered to come help. She says when she saw what was happening in Puerto Rico, she asked to be sent here.
Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) has brought up this issue:
For the second day in a row, Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) spoke on the House floor about Puerto Rico, today responding to Tweets this morning from the President suggesting it was time for FEMA and the U.S. military to pull out of Puerto Rico’s recovery effort. Rep. Gutiérrez responded to the President with a question and an answer:
How long do we have to stay, Mr. President? Until every Puerto Rican name is taken off of the Vietnam Memorial or erased from the records of Korea, Afghanistan or Iraq. We stay as long as it takes.
Last Memorial Day, Dr. Harry Franqui-Rivera wrote:
Congress and the White House get away with ignoring Puerto Rico’s plight hiding behind the public’s ignorance of the island’s political status as a territory of the United States and by ignoring the contribution of hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who have served and continue to serve in the United States Armed Forces.
Making Puerto Rico economically viable and supporting the island’s decolonization is what the American nation, Congress and the White House owe to all Puerto Ricans, and in particular, to the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican veterans and the tens of thousands currently serving.
As has been pointed out — Puerto Rican Vets are located on both the island and mainland. One is even in space —Joseph M. Acaba. Born in California in 1967, his parents are from from Hatillo, Puerto Rico. Before becoming an Astronaut, Acaba was a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps Reserves where he served for six years.
Astronaut Sends Prayers to Puerto Rico from Space
"No Puerto Rican can travel without their Puerto Rican flag, so I have my share of those," Acaba told the Associated Press during an in-flight interview on Sept. 20. "Pretty soon, the space station's going to start looking like Puerto Rico with all the flags, so sorry, gentlemen," he said to his Expedition 53 crewmates, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and the European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli.
Acaba wasn't born in Puerto Rico but rather Inglewood, California. However, his parents are from Puerto Rico. "I do still have a lot of family there," Acaba said. "I hope everyone's doing well and that you take care of yourselves."
Just three weeks before Acaba blasted off to the International Space Station, he had to deal with another catastrophic storm. When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, his home was flooded along with thousands of other homes in the area.
One of the Vets I follow on twitter who has been bringing food and supplies to the island is Dr.Antonio Paris, “Planetary Scientist, Astrophysics Professor, Combat Veteran with Bronze Star Medal, and Proud American from Puerto Rico.”
He has headed into rural areas of the island to deliver food and needed supplies
There are many other Vets who have also headed to PR to do whatever they can to help.
Meet The Veterans Self-Deploying To Puerto Rico To Provide Aid
Chris Agron never deployed to a war zone during his stint in the Army. After four years in South Korea and a year with the 5th Ranger Training Battalion at Fort Benning, Georgia, the 24-year-old combat medic specialist separated in 2017 to take up a “really sweet gig” as a youth minister at a parish in Antelope, California. “My contract literally just ended this August,” Agron told Task & Purpose. “I never saw combat.”
That was until Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Sept. 20. Local officials described the resulting damage as “apocalyptic,” and conditions on the ground have changed little in the intervening months: roughly 77 percent of the island still doesn’t have electricity, and estimates suggest that nearly 1 in 3 residents lack access to clean water, leaving desperate Puerto Ricans turning to contaminated sources like Superfund hazardous waste sites.
The federal government, critics claim, isn’t moving fast enough in its emergency response. The $36.5 billion emergency aid package that passed the House on Oct. 12 is currently under consideration in the Senate. President Donald Trump asserted that the U.S. military “shouldn’t have to be” distributing food and water to ravaged American territory — but that’s what it’s doing, and the Department of Defense is having trouble marshalling resources like clean water and purification equipment for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, despite a rapid and effective response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma on the U.S. mainland in the weeks before Maria hit.
Agron, also an Army brat, grew up in Puerto Rico before his family PCSed to California; he still has blood relations on the island, including cousins with young children. And after reading news reports describing the meager water supplies trickling in from large aid organizations, he came up with his own mission: to bring reliable, reusable filtration systems to the parched communities on the west side of Puerto Rico.
“It just feels like common sense: Bottled water is finite, hard to deliver, and expendable,” Agron told Task & Purpose. “For one family, an efficient filter will give them 100,000 gallons. It rains every single day in Puerto Rico. I’ve lived there long enough to know that — and you can have enough water to filter just by catching the rain.”
These Vets, dubbed the “Anasco Expendables” brought tears to my eyes.
War veterans deploy themselves to help Puerto Rico relief
Mayaguez, Puerto Rico (CNN)The cavalry is here, at an abandoned airport in the far west of Puerto Rico.Not a traditional military unit, but a bunch of guys who call themselves the Warfighter Disaster Response Team.
They're veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when they see a need, they just go. Red tape frustrates them, especially when people are hurting and they can help, so they deploy themselves -- for free.
They've made an abandoned airport in Mayaguez their base, bedding down here and using it to collect aid and work out how to get it to remote communities.
Eric Carlson, one of the volunteer first responders, gauges the impact they have had so far.
"I think we're up to 30,000 meals, 35,000 meals," he says. "And that just with the small trucks we have and by hook and by crook getting supplies."
Collecting food, water and medical resources, and getting them out to people is still a tall order in this remote part of the island so devastated by Hurricane Maria four weeks ago.
Boots on the Ground
In this series we show on the ground footage of some of the relief efforts that took place in Puerto Rico. A couple of our Sigma 3 leaders were honored to work with Warfighter DRT (Disaster Response Team) to provide aid to this beautiful country.
The Warfighter Disaster Response Team is helping - not just people, but animals too:
On this Veterans Day — and every day, keep our Vets in your hearts and honor their continuing service.
Thank you!
How you can help Puerto Rico:
Contact your elected officials. Demand that your news outlets do more coverage. Donate to organizations who are helping.