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PUERTO RICO’S MOTHERS AGAINST WAR TURN TO REVOLUTIONARY LOVE  
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Andrea Contreras
January 19, 2026
The Nation
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_ Formed to oppose the Iraq War, Madres Contra La Guerra have now
spent decades trying to end Puerto Rico’s role at the center of the
US war machine in Latin America. _

A protester with Madres Contra La Guerra protests the Roosevelt Roads
Naval Station in Puerto Rico on December 13.., Madres Contra La Guerra


 

In a blurry black-and-white Polaroid from 1971, Sonia Santiago
Hernández reenacts an image of the Madonna and Child. Only 21 years
old, she wears a miniskirt and sandals, and oversize sunglasses sit
perched on her forehead. She stands in contrapposto outside the
University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras in San Juan, gazing serenely at
her newborn son Gabriel. Since his birth, Gabriel had been her
companion at every Vietnam War protest that she attended, shuffling
between student comrades who took turns holding him. In the months
before her pregnancy, Santiago had been on hunger strike for 26 days.

On a colonized island where one-third of all Puerto Rican women had
been forcefully sterilized from the 1930s to the ’70s, holding the
baby for a photo felt like an act of resistance. Gabriel was raised in
a house plastered with peace-sign magnets, pins, posters, and
stickers—his playpen devoid of toy guns or weapons. 

“Maternity is life,” Santiago told me. “War is death. We fight
for peace.”

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, and Puerto Rico became
overrun with military recruiters. Lurking in malls, colleges, and
other youth haunts, they promised financial benefits and opportunity
for those who enlisted. More than 38,000 Boricua youth were
deployed—including Gabriel.

Santiago’s grief and devastation at her son’s involvement in US
war led her to found Madres Contra La Guerra, or Mothers Against War,
in May 2003. When the United States attacked Venezuela and abducted
Nicolás Maduro on January 3, killing 80 people in the process,
Santiago saw Iraq’s history repeating itself. She found herself
ridden by the same indignation. “Once again, they are trying to
justify their aggression under the rhetoric of narcotrafficking,
falsely attributing the origin of drugs in the region to Venezuela,”
Santiago said in a Madres’ press release, recalling the threat of
weapons of mass destruction that convinced her son to enlist in Iraq.
“This is a fabricated narrative designed to cover up a war of
plunder.”

After waking up to the news in Caracas, Madres coordinated a protest
with the Venezuelan Solidarity Network outside of the federal building
in San Juan. Their message, beyond an end to the escalation, was
directed at Puerto Rican youth soldiers: Don’t become accomplices to
the war on Venezuela.

The attacks of January 3 did not surprise Santiago and other Puerto
Ricans, who over the last several months had seen military training
exercises take over their public beaches. Since the United States sank
the first Venezuelan ship
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in early September, the supposedly dormant Roosevelt Roads naval base
in Ceiba came back to life. The last few months brought the largest
military ramp up in the Caribbean since the 1994 invasion of Haiti.
Ceibeños often hear the deafening noise of the fighter jets. Their
silverware trembles and their lamps shake as F-35s, V-22 Ospreys, and
UH-60 Black Hawks roar overhead. Some 15,000 US soldiers have been
garrisoned at the base.

Long before the US started its war games with Venezuela, Puerto Rico
had operated as the linchpin of the US invasions in the region. In
1954, US militia invaded Guatemala from the Ramey Base in Aguadilla
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against President Jacobo Arbenz, whose agrarian reform threatened the
profits of the United Fruit Company. In 1965, US troops trained in
Roosevelt Roads were sent to the Dominican Republic following the
overthrow of Juan Bosch. In 1983, Puerto Rico served as a staging
ground for the US invasion of Grenada, and again for the 1989 invasion
of Panama. Maduro’s first stop on his way out of Venezuela was
through Aguadilla
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In the now-viral image of Maduro in a gray Nike Tech jumpsuit, he
clutches a Nikini water bottle, a brand sold in Puerto Rico.

Santiago notes that the invasions that preceded the attacks on
Venezuela were also a reflection—not of “manifest destiny” but
of US economic and geopolitical interests. “They are using this
invasion to guarantee forced access to their resources, the oil and
natural resources that belong to the Venezuelan people.” Venezuela
has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, which will now trade
exclusively
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with the United States.

What began as an anti-recruitment group advocating for conscientious
objection to the Iraq War became an organization devoted to peaceful
civil disobedience. Since its inception, the group’s protests have
shut down the entry points of prominent recruitment centers and
military bases. Madres’ coalition of 200 families formed part of a
broad anti-military resistance in Puerto Rico, which, in addition to
protesting the Iraq War, was trying to push the US military out of
Vieques.

Sonia Santiago.(Madres Contra La Guerra)

Vieques is a tiny appendage off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico that
housed the Vieques Naval Training Range, the construction of which
displaced 10,000
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Viequenses. The US military used the base to perform countless
experiments with toxic weapons, including agent orange, napalm, white
phosphorus, and heavy metals. In 1999, a bombing accident killed a
local security guard, David Sanes Rodriguez. That year, activist and
Independence Party president Rubén Berríos began a year-long civil
sit-in at the navy’s high-impact zone, sparking a wave of fierce
opposition. A few years later, Vieques closed; along with it, the
Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, once one of the largest bases in the
world.

The media often uses the word “remilitarization” to describe the
situation in Puerto Rico.Santiago rejects that characterization.
“It’s not ‘remilitarization’; it’s reactivation,” she
said. “They’re doing the same thing they always did. They were
just passive for a while. But they never left.”

The “passive” period that Santiago mentions was filled with broken
promises. When the military shuttered Vieques, it promised a cleanup,
but thousands of acres remain contaminated.
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Cancer rates are 30 percent higher in Vieques than on the rest of the
island. Fort Allen, Camp Santiago, and Fort Buchanan never closed. Nor
did the Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Carolina, where Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth spouted made-up propaganda
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about a fictional Venezuelan drug cartel.

Immediately following the January 3 attacks on Venezuela, the US
military held “Army of the Caribbean Week ’26” at Fort Buchanan.
It is the first event of its kind, and it involved deploying thousands
of troops and beefing up military equipment for a week of training in
a “commitment to duty and readiness in the Caribbean.” Press
releases about Army Week are vague, intentionally distanced from
Venezuela, but Trump warned that he could target Colombia, Cuba, and
Mexico next. If that happens, it’s more than likely that Puerto Rico
will again be the staging ground.

 
The strikes on Venezuelan ships came from Roosevelt Roads, and it led
Madres Contra La Guerra to block the entry to the base for the first
time in 20 years. Now 67, Santiago leads a group of mothers, elders,
and youth in a bus en route to Ceiba. She wears red lipstick and a
black peace-sign T-shirt that reads, “War is the Antithesis of
Life.” Over the clamor of helicopters, the Madres chant, “_Basta
ya, basta ya, No a guerra criminal_”—“Stop it now, Stop it now,
No to criminal wars”—to the percussive rhythms of bomba
(ironically and unrelatedly, Spanish for “bomb”). Accompanying the
protesters is a group of drummers, Tambores Por Palestina.

A central tenet of the Madres’ philosophy is solidarity with other
colonized countries and mothers. It began with Iraq and has now
extended toPalestine and Venezuela. Every Tuesday since October 2023,
Madres can be found wearing keffiyehs outside the Israeli consulate in
San Juan leading the islands’ most prominent anti-genocide protests
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Their visibility has earned Madres multiple visits from the FBI. Yet
they remain unflinchingly vocal about the shared colonial struggle of
Palestine and Puerto Rico, swinging both flags in communion.

Similarly, Madres often refer to Venezuela as a “sister country.”
“We understand that Venezuela, like every Latin American country, is
being accosted by US imperialist interests,” Santiago said. “But
beyond that, there’s an enormous cultural and linguistic affinity
between us, a shared history of liberation struggles.” Santiago
references Simón Bolívar in Venezuela and Ramón Emeterio Betances
in Puerto Rico, whose cries for independence reverberate through
present decolonial movements across the island.

A significant element of Madres activism is fighting for restitution
for the 1898 Treaty of Paris
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handed over Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, and Guam to the
United States after the Spanish-American War and made them de facto
military colonies. Santiago sees the treaty as the origins of Puerto
Rico as a colonial war laboratory. “It’s important to emphasize
it, denounce it, and demand reparations. They need to return those
lands on a national level,” Santiago said. “Those aren’t
Roosevelt’s roads, those are the roads of my people, the Ceibeños.
They steal land and then name it after themselves. It’s not
right.”

Santiago still speaks of motherhood with reverence and affection. She
claims it is the undercurrent of her solidarity and her struggle for
peace. “When you create life, you’re not thinking that you will
raise them to kill or be killed,” she said, evoking her son Gabriel,
now a veteran who struggles with PTSD. “That thread of maternity can
be extrapolated not only onto your child, but for all of humanity.”

Her words echo the sentiments of “militant mother” movements
across Latin America—Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
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Argentina and Madres Buscadoras in Mexico. Santiago and some of her
peers have travelled to Argentina. They’ve broken bread with mothers
in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador and accompanied them in their
grief and sense of political possibility. Santiago maintains that the
maternity knows no border.

There’s anger, frustration, and indignation embedded in mothers’
movements like Madres Contra la Guerra. Yet Santiago stressed
revolutionary kindness above all. “Maternity is derived from
tenderness and love. Solidarity is tenderness between communities,”
she explained, recalling Venezuela, Palestine, and her own children.
“It’s really simple. It’s philosophical, yes, but it’s
actually the simplest feeling there is.”

_ANDREA CONTRERAS is New York City-based journalist._

_Copyright c 2025 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
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Distributed by__ PARS International Corp_
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* Puerto Rico
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* Forced sterilization
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* U.S. military bases
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* Vieques
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* Solidarity
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* colonialism
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* Women
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