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This article is lightly edited from its original format, “In the Line of Fire: Occupied Puerto Rico and the U.S. War on Venezuela,” published by the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective in The Pen is My Machete, Vol. 1, Issue 3. In recent weeks, Puerto Rico has once again become a forward operating base for imperialist war games in the Caribbean. Off the southern coast, U.S. Navy sailors and Marines practice amphibious landings while a fleet of F-35 fighter jets, P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, and MQ-9 reaper drones are deployed to one or more U.S. military installations occupying more than 78,000 acres […]

Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898, used as a launching pad for imperialist wars in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the rest of the world. The US Department of Defense has eleven unified Combatant Commands, one of which, US Southern Command (or SOUTHCOM, headquartered in Miami, Florida) oversees US military operations in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. The SOUTHCOM Naval Forces station was previously located in Puerto Rico, which allowed for the US to move throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean, and defend the US-occupied Panama Canal. SOUTHCOM’s primary […]