As the U.S. Military Expands in Puerto Rico, Enlistment Keeps Falling on the Island

The promise of socioeconomic mobility through enlistment is being eclipsed by
harassment, discrimination, language barriers and the prospect of looming armed conflicts.

By Víctor Rodríguez Velázquez Víctor Rodríguez Velázquez , José M. Encarnación Martínez José M. Encarnación Martínez  and Gabriela Carrasquillo | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo Gabriela Carrasquillo | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo

As the Government of Puerto Rico applauds federal investments in military infrastructure — and as troops expand their footprint at airports and on reclaimed military land — fewer and fewer Puerto Ricans are enlisting in the main branches of the U.S. armed forces on the island, a Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) investigation found after analyzing a decade of recruiting data from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Puerto Rico National Guard.

The total number of people recruited across all branches in Puerto Rico fell 11% between 2021 and 2025. During that same period, the population ages 18 to 44 — the age group most frequently recruited on the island — declined by about 2%, according to Census estimates. Over the past five years, the CPI found, women accounted for 36% of recruits.

The steepest decline in Puerto Rico during that period came in the Army, where recruiting dropped 30%. Recruiting also fell in the Navy by 15% and in the Puerto Rico National Guard by 8%.

The Air Force and the Marine Corps were the only branches that reported increases in that same age range — 26% and 6%, respectively. Still, those gains amounted to just 58 additional recruits in the Air Force and nine more in the Marine Corps.

The CPI found that 60% of the people recruited by the Air Force and the Puerto Rico National Guard over the past decade came from municipalities where at least 40% of young adults live below the poverty line. That measure approximates how many people earn less than what they need to secure resources considered essential for survival.

The decline in Puerto Rican enlistments in the U.S. armed forces contrasts with the growing military presence across the archipelago. The island’s use as a military hub — including its strategic role as a staging ground for an operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — began in July 2024, when the Puerto Rico Ports Authority signed a contract with the Air Force to use the airport at the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba. That buildup led to the announcement of $325.9 million in military construction funds, publicly celebrated by Gov. Jennifer González Colón. According to the Puerto Rico Planning Board, the strategy would inject more than $898.4 million into the local economy over the long term through construction, administrative and service jobs, as well as tax withholdings and excise revenues for the municipalities where the main military bases are located.

But the long-standing image of the military uniform as a passport to economic success has dimmed, six people who served in different branches told the CPI. They said promises of upward mobility did not always materialize and, in some cases, were overshadowed by discrimination, sexual harassment and professional limitations linked to not being fluent in English.

Those voices are echoed by public school counselors, who describe young people’s immediate need to earn money — and say they don’t see the military as a fast track. Military-trend experts also warn that years of exposure to war, and the fear of carrying physical injuries and psychological trauma after leaving the service, have eroded the appeal of an institution that for decades was marketed to Puerto Rican youth as a major route to economic advancement.

“Lots of people think the military is ‘where the money is.’ Lie, lie and lie,” said Nagelys Viera Viera, 23, an Army veteran — though she acknowledged that in her case, she enlisted in search of financial independence.

She joined the Army at 17, right out of high school. Although she grew up in a family where the military was part of the landscape — her mother, Carmen Viera, is a Navy veteran, and several cousins served in other branches — the Army was never a personal aspiration.

“I never liked it,” she said.

But she hadn’t completed the paperwork in time to start college, and she couldn’t find a job that appealed to her. Bored and increasingly desperate, she took the military aptitude test and enlisted. She was assigned to a unit responsible for supplying the battalion’s inventory — work that meant lifting heavy equipment and climbing in and out of distribution trucks. After training and once she began her duties, she suffered a back injury that left her disabled.

Now a law student at Inter American University of Puerto Rico, she has noticed that in communities where access to opportunity is limited, the military is often seen as shorthand for automatic social mobility.

“When you hear that so-and-so enlisted, you think, ‘Well, they’re going to do well,’” she said. But the reality, she warned, is more complicated.

For historian José “Che” Paralitici, a specialist in conscription in Puerto Rico and in the island’s militarism, the trauma left by the Iraq War in the early 21st century — where more than 12,000 Puerto Ricans were deployed, and whose emotional toll still lingers among veterans and their families — may help explain the drop in recruiting.

“The experience of Iraq was devastating. The consequences are still being felt — emotional problems, in addition to the wounded and the deaths,” he said.

He added that the current geopolitical climate under President Donald Trump — marked by threats of conflict in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and even Greenland — fuels the perception that service members are more likely to be sent into war zones. For many Puerto Ricans, he said, that raises the fear of losing their lives if they join the armed forces.

According to Carlos Severino, a professor and geopolitics expert, there are currently 59 active conflicts worldwide in which the United States may be involved, directly or indirectly — about 25% more than existed two decades ago.

In the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran in late February, six American troops and 787 civilians — including 180 children — were killed on the first day, according to Iranian authorities. After the deaths, Trump said that “the lives of brave American heroes can be lost … That often happens in war,” framing the intervention as an action “for the future,” not “for right now.”

What Money Can’t Buy

Veteran Wilfredo Corps Carmona does not describe his decision to join the U.S. armed forces in the late 1990s in the language of American patriotism, nor does he want to present himself as a war hero. His story begins in his youth, when the uncertainty of that stage of life collided with the responsibility of becoming a father.

“I became the father of my son Fernando,” he said.

At the time, he was a college student in the social work program at the University of Puerto Rico in Humacao. “The need to maybe get better things, a better future for my son — that’s what made me join,” he explained. For him, enlistment was not an escape but a deliberate choice in a life he felt offered limited options. “Puerto Rico wasn’t going to give me the chance to earn a decent salary,” he added.

He entered through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC — a university program that combines military training with traditional coursework and offers benefits such as scholarships and other assistance to cover tuition, housing and meals. He was just over 20 when he made the decision.

“I was a kid,” he said, looking back.

Military life, however, quickly confronted him with discipline and physical training — and with questions tied to Puerto Rican identity. The environment pushed him to demand more of himself, he said.

“Every time someone said something that bothered me, I demanded more of myself as a Puerto Rican, as a soldier,” he recalled.

Language was another hurdle. “My English wasn’t that polished,” he said. “I learned it in Alabama.” He had to retrain his ear, his mind and his body. “I did a lot of pushups, a lot of pullups,” he said.

Despite those clashes, Corps describes the Army as a school of character and honor. “They’re indoctrinating you to be a soldier,” he said, while insisting it was one of the most formative periods of his life. It was also, he added, a “sacrifice” — one he made to give his children a better quality of life financially.

His service included missions that do not fit the traditional image of combat. He spoke of “humanitarian” work in countries including Guatemala and El Salvador, emphasizing that “it wasn’t all war.” Much later, that trajectory led to his first formal combat deployment.

“My first combat was in 2013 to 2014 — Iraq,” he said.

He was assigned to mentor Iraqi military police, a role he described as complex and sensitive. “People think we train to kill,” he said.

The episode that defined his combat experience took place in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. The city lies near Fallujah, one of the primary targets of the Iraq War and long considered a stronghold of Iraqi resistance.

Corps goes back to a suicide attack: an infiltration carried out with fake Iraqi army uniforms, the blast, the bodies — and the grim work that followed, collecting pieces of human flesh so the dead could be identified.

“No one trained me to watch someone blow themselves up and die,” he said. “They didn’t teach me that.”

Since then, he said, the images return — bombs, explosions, gunfire. “Those birds keep flying around in my head,” he added, using a phrase he reaches for to describe the way the memories circle back. “When I go to a restaurant, I have to sit facing the door,” he said. “Otherwise, I can’t relax.”

The episode brought him military recognition, including a Bronze Star, awarded for heroism, merit and exceptionally meritorious service in a combat zone. But Corps speaks about the honors with ambivalence.

“To me, it doesn’t mean that much,” he said. “People died. Three fathers didn’t make it back home.”

If combat left deep scars, family life ultimately reshaped his relationship with the service. During an assignment in Asia, while he was thousands of miles away, the mother of his oldest son faced a terminal illness. Corps described that period as one of the most devastating of his life.

“It’s brutal to see your child — and to watch his mother die on a screen, on Skype — and not be able to be there,” he said. “A part of me died a little in that moment. The Army mattered a little less.”

When he talks about returning to civilian life after years in uniform, Corps does not hide his dissatisfaction.

“The Army didn’t prepare me to live in a society that’s sometimes unfair,” he said, describing how hard it was to readjust.

He also voiced frustration with Puerto Rico’s systems for serving veterans: fragmented medical care, and a response he sees as more pharmaceutical than preventive. “Sometimes they give you medications whose side effects include suicide,” he said. “I think about suicide, but I’ve focused on God.”

His deepest regret, Corps said, is tied to fatherhood.

“There’s no money in the world that can pay me back for the birthdays I missed,” he said. He insists many of his decisions were made to secure a better future — even if he now carries quiet guilt. “My sacrifices weren’t made on a whim. They were made from love.”

For the veteran, honor remains a personal compass. “To be honorable, I don’t need a uniform,” he said. “The Army reinforced values I had already learned at home.”

Recruiting moves from the classroom to the algorithm

For years, public schools were prime terrain for military recruitment. Today, the landscape has shifted: college fairs, recruiting centers and social media campaigns have taken on a more prominent role — new fronts for persuading young people to enlist.

But neither the transformation of recruiting strategies nor the increased military presence on the island has succeeded in boosting interest among Puerto Rican youth.

According to Dr. Julio Cruz Rodríguez, president of the Puerto Rico Alliance of Professional Counselors, the military is the path that draws the fewest students, based on his experience working since 2021 with teenagers transitioning to college.

“Drawing on my experience at student camps at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, the military track ranks lowest,” he said. “We’re talking about a camp that brings together students from public and private schools — students from across the island, including Vieques and Culebra. They come to the western region during the camp because we focus specifically on counseling, giving students a weeklong, intensive experience in the fields they’re interested in. Interest in the military is minimal among participants. They lean more toward engineering, health sciences, animal science and communications. In technical programs, their attention is concentrated on cosmetology, as well as electronics and technology,” he added.

School counselor Ivonne Román Brignoni said when she discusses college and career options with upperclassmen, few of them focus on a military path.

“I could tell you that maybe each year we have one person who’s interested in a branch of the military, or who says they’re interested in that area, but not that they necessarily stick with it,” she said.

“I’ve been working for six years in my school community in Cataño, and I can tell you about exactly two students who completed the entire process and are in the military,” she said. “That’s very few.”

Román contrasted that with other academic and career routes that, in her experience, capture most students’ attention. “There are always students who aspire to go to college, but for the most part what they’re looking for right now are short programs or technical studies,” she said. At her school, most students would be the first generation in their families with a real chance to complete a college degree, Román said. In Cataño, 53% of residents younger than 18 lived below the poverty level from 2020 to 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

An immediate need for work is part of what pushes young people toward shorter programs, she said. Some students at her school already hold jobs — including overnight shifts at fast-food restaurants in the San Juan metropolitan area and other eateries.

“They want to start working quickly,” she said.

That early contact with paid work shapes later decisions. “They’re already used to earning an income,” she said, which — in her view — makes it harder to choose paths that require giving up wages for a time to begin training.

“And it’s hard for them to make that choice,” she said — whether it’s college or the military.

Noé lives in Toa Alta and asked that his last name not be published. He graduated from high school in 2020. He finished his final semester in front of a screen, making major life decisions amid the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the middle of economic and academic uncertainty, he set his sights on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.

The ROTC operates at 1,000 universities and postsecondary colleges in the United States and its territories as “a mechanism to develop future leaders” for the active-duty Army, the Army Reserve and the Puerto Rico National Guard.

It is a voluntary program that combines academic coursework with military training, intensive English instruction, physical conditioning and one-on-one advising. It also offers financial assistance, including $420 a month for 10 months a year, $1,200 a year for books and full merit-based scholarships.

“Money is what moves you. Yes — money,” Noé said. “We’re talking mostly about people of color and people living in poverty” who join the armed forces.

“Puerto Rico has a smaller population,” historian Paralitici said. “But the people who do enlist join out of economic need, not patriotism. … Some voluntarily go into the National Guard because it gives them ‘more security.’”

In Noé’s family, the military wasn’t an abstract concept. Some uncles and grandparents enlisted. His parents tried to join, too, but didn’t make it in. He grew up hearing about benefits, opportunity and stability. And because he studies psychology, he saw that as another advantage: He believed that “within the armed forces, psychology is one of those areas they’re always looking for,” given the trauma combat can leave on people who serve in war zones.

Noé first learned about the ROTC at a college fair during his senior year of high school.

“I got information — they’re always there at fairs,” he said. “They’re also in schools, mostly public schools.”

Between January 2025 and February 2026, Army and ROTC recruiters took part in at least 21 public events, according to their social media accounts. Eight of those activities were college and job fairs aimed at high school students, while three others took place at Inter American University of Puerto Rico and Ana G. Méndez University.

At events like these, recruiters set up information tables, hand out brochures and talk with students who, just months from graduation, face decisions that will shape their academic and professional paths.

The Puerto Rico National Guard said campus visits and orientation activities are more common at public schools because the island has fewer private institutions.

Still, the military said, even when more public schools participate in fairs, “that doesn’t mean their students are the ones most likely to seek guidance.”

“Some stop and we talk with them, and others walk right past,” a spokesperson said.

“When you’re in 12th grade, you’re not necessarily sure what you want,” Noé said. “You see these people in uniform — it’s like having a presence that inspires you.”

He describes the outreach as a carefully orchestrated strategy.

“They present themselves as people who care about your well-being,” Noé said. They talk about honor and respect — and about “looking out for the person next to you.”

“This is a community,” Noé remembered thinking when he first encountered the program — “literally people who care about me, who push me to reach goals.”

That sense of belonging also drew in Manuel, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym. He completed the ROTC program at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, in 2023. After earning his bachelor’s degree at Inter American University of Puerto Rico, he joined the Puerto Rico National Guard.

“The ROTC is like an athletic club, and I wanted to belong to a club,” he said, adding that his first encounters with military recruiting and messaging came through social media.

Interest vs. enlistment

Ángel Cartagena is a U.S. Air Force veteran and the founder of a private project that counsels and prepares applicants for the armed forces.

He said most of the people who come to him are young adults between 18 and 25, though he also works with people older than 30 who are mainly seeking better economic conditions. He uses social media and digital content — including a YouTube channel — to explain how the armed forces work. His project also serves as a bridge to recruiters and offers prep courses for required exams.

He said people who are interested should ideally go first to a recruiting office for a prequalification screening before spending money on private courses.

“Once they complete that stage, those who decide to continue get academic support and general guidance until they’re ready to enter the formal process,” he said. “This is a funnel. A lot of people can come in, but most won’t necessarily make it through,” he added.

Cartagena began his own military career in 2016 while studying accounting at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamón. He had not initially been interested in joining. But after seeing friends enlist and gain economic stability, he began to explore his options. He considered the Army but entered the Air Force instead, serving six years on active duty and then two more in the Puerto Rico National Guard.

He described those seeking his guidance as people looking for a life change — economic stability and opportunities they do not find in Puerto Rico. Many arrive without a clear preference for a particular branch; others, like reservists, see the military as a way to supplement their income.

Cartagena said English proficiency is the strongest filter in the recruiting process. He receives more than 100 messages a day and works with about 60 people in monthly courses, he said, but not everyone completes the process.

Disillusionment after sexual harassment and discrimination

One of Nagelys’ biggest disappointments in the Army — and later in the ROTC — was the sexual harassment she said she endured and that, even after she reported it, nothing was done.

“Any woman who’s been in the military will tell you that at some point she’s been harassed,” she said.

Judith Conde Pacheco, a professor of agricultural education and a co-founder of the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses (Vieques Women’s Alliance), said that even as the number of women in the military has grown, it has not eliminated dynamics of violence.

“They’re still excluded, harassed, and stalked. They’re still victims of violence,” said Conde, who has studied how military practices affect women’s lives in Vieques.

In her view, women continue to be treated as second-class citizens within the ranks and forced to work twice as hard to stay and to advance.

Reports of sexual assault by service members across the main branches of the U.S. military rose 26% between 2015 and 2024, according to the Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, submitted to Congress in May 2025.

The report says 75% of the complaints recorded in fiscal 2024 were filed by women, most of them ages 20 to 24 (42%).

“It’s important to remember that decades ago there was no space for women in the military,” Conde said. “That space has opened. That doesn’t mean they’re treated under the same conditions within the military context, even though it’s presented as an opportunity for them to participate. It’s harder for them to take on leadership roles, and they end up having to make a greater effort and work more.”

Noé, for his part, recalled that after completing his first year in the ROTC, he attended a summer camp in Kentucky that operates as a condensed version of basic training for people who join the Army directly.

Cadets from Puerto Rico and the United States train side by side. But Puerto Ricans, he said, were banned from speaking Spanish among themselves — something Noé described as “discriminatory.” He also said he heard racist remarks from U.S. cadets who gave Puerto Ricans nicknames that Noé does not want to repeat today.

While in camp, he was injured during military exercises and dislocated a knee.

“It hurt a lot, and nobody helped me with anything to check my knee,” he said. “This knee still acts up sometimes, and it’s like, ‘Wow — I didn’t even make it into the Army, and I ended up with lasting aches,’” he said.

The ROTC did not respond to CPI’s request for an interview.

Who is the remilitarization for?

As the federal government moves to strengthen military infrastructure in Puerto Rico — allocating $325.9 million in funding through the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA — data analyzed by the CPI suggests that fewer and fewer Puerto Ricans would use those renovated facilities, given the sustained decline in recruiting over the past five years.

According to Héctor Morales, president of the Puerto Rico Planning Board, the newly allocated funds are aimed at strengthening and modernizing sites such as Fort Buchanan in Guaynabo, Ramey Base in Aguadilla, Camp Santiago in Salinas, and the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba — land transferred to the Government of Puerto Rico after the U.S. Navy’s departure in 2004.

Access to the base in Ceiba doesn’t begin at the main gate. It starts a few yards earlier, in the parking lot directly across from it, on the right side of the road.

A military tent sits there, with personnel inside and out. They are uniformed officers. At first glance, it looks like an inspection checkpoint. But no one stops anyone — unless they head toward the tent. A sign posted along the roadside identifies the area as a registration point for government contractors.

At a news conference, Morales said the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station is undergoing a transformation. The official language speaks of a “reactivation of strategic activities” and key infrastructure projects that promise to reshape the economy of eastern Puerto Rico.

But for Conde, of the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses (Vieques Women’s Alliance), such projections should be treated with caution. After years of studying claims about the supposed economic benefits of military bases, she said the historical record does not support those promises.

“Military bases are like bubbles,” she said. “They’re spaces designed for the military.”

In her view, many services inside these installations are run by private contractors, and the money “comes in one side and goes out the other,” without meaningfully integrating into the local economy.

Conde pointed to Vieques as an example: Only about 35 Vieques residents worked at the base, she said, in a population of roughly 8,000 at the time the Navy operated there for decades.

“It’s not true that there was economic development because of the presence of a military base,” she said. What existed, she argued, was “a small city created for the military and their families,” whose economic activity did not necessarily benefit the surrounding communities.

For Roosevelt Roads, Morales said, roughly $79 million in federal funds has been allocated, along with another $2.5 million approved by the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico to rehabilitate and upgrade the electrical grid, and to complete the reconstruction of the potable water and sewer systems. The Planning Board projected that the funding would have a direct and indirect economic impact of $145.7 million, and that nearly 968 jobs would be created there in 2026, mainly in construction.

The base’s main gate still looks much as it has for years: private security, no strict access protocol. Vehicles aren’t stopped. No identification is required. You drive onto the base as if it were an open entrance.

That lack of coordination between the new tent and the official guard booth at the gate may be the most telling detail about Roosevelt Roads right now: a place that still hasn’t settled on what, exactly, it is becoming.

For historian Paralitici, the most immediate beneficiaries of the funds slated for investment there will be construction firms that secure government contracts.

“Unfortunately, the governments led by the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party — both of which had those public lands at their disposal — didn’t know what to do with those vast tracts after the Navy left in 2004, even though the property included hospitals, schools and housing,” he said. “That administrative posture, under both the NPP and the PPD, is what has led to Ceiba being remilitarized now.”

On the way to the Roosevelt Roads airport, the atmosphere tightens, little by little. Along the road leading to the facilities, there is now a clearly defined checkpoint. Here, vehicles are stopped. Two military officers motion drivers to pull over. The initial exchange is in English. Neither speaks Spanish. Then they call over a third officer to explain the protocol in the language of the place where he is standing.

The message is blunt: no filming and no photos are allowed near the airport. Patrols are constant, the officer said. If someone is seen recording or photographing the area, they will intervene. It isn’t a suggestion. It isn’t a preventive warning. It’s an active rule — in force and enforced. And yet there are no clearly marked vehicles. It all unfolds with little fanfare.

The scene matches what the CPI has documented since last year: the gradual reactivation of Roosevelt Roads as a strategic site — operational agreements, military movements, exercises and restrictions.

And still, commercial flights continue from that airport. Operations haven’t been shut down. Inside, staff describe a routine that shifts seasonally with visitor traffic — familiar procedures, operations that look much like they always have. On paper, nothing out of the ordinary.

In practice, the place feels different. The airport is nearly empty. Few civilians. Barely any movement. Footsteps echo down the corridors. There’s a sense of waiting — time suspended — as if the place were holding its breath.

In mid-February, representatives from the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command presented a summary in Ceiba of the environmental work carried out by the U.S. Navy on land at the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, during a public meeting held at the Club Cívico La Seyba.

Less than 10 people attended, and neither the municipal government nor agencies of the Government of Puerto Rico were represented. Officials said the Navy’s environmental mission is focused on addressing legacy contamination and that cleanup programs operate on their own timeline, separate from the island’s increased military presence.

From the car, driving through the parking lot, the military presence becomes impossible to ignore. Aircraft parked on the ground and flying overhead. Officers walking through the area. Constant patrols in SUVs — most of them Kia vehicles. They appear again and again: pulling in, pulling out, parking, moving on. That is the landscape.

In eastern Puerto Rico, activity at local businesses is becoming more noticeable — at gyms, food stands and small restaurants. Service members dressed in civilian clothes move around in groups. They stand out not because of what they’re wearing, but because they’re almost always together — arriving together, eating together, leaving together. Outside, Kia SUVs are parked nearby. The pattern repeats — in Ceiba, in Fajardo, in Luquillo.

Gov.   González Colón’s administration estimates that, as part of the reactivation process, about 203 jobs held by Puerto Ricans would be created by mid-2026, largely tied to services in shops and tourism businesses in and around the base area.

This story is possible through a collaboration between the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo and Open Campus.

This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.

Read the Spanish version at www.periodismoinvestigativo.com