Puerto Rican women in the military
This is a brief account of some the Puerto Rican women who have participated in military actions as members of either a political revolutionary movement or of the Armed Forces of the United States.
[2] During the 20th century, some of the women in the island became active as union organizers, such as Luisa Capetillo[3] and involved in politics, as was the case of Felisa Rincón de Gautier.
Joining forces with the Venezuelan government, under the leadership of Simon Bolivar, Barbudo organized an insurrection against the Spaniards in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico witnessed other slave revolts and calls for independence from Spain, but none compared to what became known as El Grito de Lares.
This was organized by a group of prominent Puerto Ricans led by Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis.
One of the first civilian doctors contracted by the Army was a Puerto Rican woman, who despite the fact that she was not an active member of the military, contributed with her professional skills to the war effort.
After writing a letter to the Army Surgeon General in Washington, D.C. explaining her intentions, she received a telegram ordering her to report to Camp Las Casas at Santurce, Puerto Rico.
Piñero and four male colleagues received orders to open a 400-bed hospital in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to care for the patients who had been infected with influenza, known also as "the Spanish flu".
[14] The Spanish flu had swept through Army camps and training posts around the world, infecting one quarter of all soldiers and killing more than 55,000 American troops.
[16] Among them was PFC Carmen García Rosado, who in 2006, authored and published a book titled Las WACS: Participacion de la Mujer Boricua en la Segunda Guerra Mundial (The WACs: Participation of Puerto Rican Women in the Second World War), the first book to document the experiences of the first 200 Puerto Rican women who participated in said conflict.
[17] According to García Rosado, one of the principal hardships endured by Puerto Rican military women was racial discrimination, which was rampant throughout the U.S. at the time.
She arrived in Northern Africa on January 27, 1943, and rendered overseas duties in Algiers within General Dwight D. Eisenhower's theatre headquarters.
[18] Second Lieutenant Carmen Lozano Dumler (1921 - 2015) who was born in San Juan, was one of the first Puerto Rican women to become a United States Army officer.
In 1945, Lozano Dumler was assigned to the 359th Station Hospital of Ft. Read, Trinidad and Tobago, British West Indies, where she attended wounded soldiers who had returned from Normandy, France.
Served in the United States Army as Head Nurse of the Orthopedic Department at Fort Brooke in San Juan with the rank of Second Lieutenant.
Rios Versace wrote and edited for newspapers in Guam, Germany, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, and the publications Star & Stripes and Gannett.
About 100 were wounded and nineteen were killed, among the dead was one woman Maria Hernandez del Rosario and a seven-year-old child, Georgina Maldonado.
Dr. Olga Viscal Garriga, a student leader and spokesperson of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party's branch in Río Piedras, was also falsely accused.
In 1979, under international pressure, President Jimmy Carter pardoned Lolita Lebrón and two members of her group, Irving Flores and Rafael Cancel Miranda.
With the outbreak of the Korean War, Rose surprised her family by announcing that she was leaving college to join the United States Marine Corps.
[13] Lieutenant Nilda Carrulas Cedero Fuertes, born in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1953, serving on active duty until 1964.
She is the first woman and first Hispanic (Puerto Rican father and Spanish mother) West Point graduate to serve as an academic department head.
Sáenz Ryan has been instrumental in raising awareness of the inequity and impracticality of the Combat Exclusion Policy, which restricts women's roles and opportunities in the military regardless of talent or ability.
Kimmich was assigned as the Chief of Orthopedics at the Navy Medical Center in Bethesda and reorganized their Reservist Department during Operation Desert Storm.
They were: SPC Frances M. Vega (September 2, 1983 – November 2, 2003) was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from Antilles High School.
[46] Vega was deployed to Iraq in what is known as the War on Terrorism,[47][48][49] and became the first female soldier of Puerto Rican descent to die in a combat zone[50] when on November 2, 2003, a surface-to-air missile was fired by insurgents in Al Fallujah and hit the U.S. transport helicopter (Chinook) she was in.
[55] One of the main gates at the Fort Buchanan military installation is also named in her honor,[56] with a plaque that includes, "Specialist Frances M. Vega epitomizes the character and patriotism of the countless American Soldiers who have answered the call to defend freedom.
[60] SPC Robles volunteered for the 43rd Area Support Group, which rode in convoys to secure dangerous roadways for the delivery of fuel.
[64] SPC Aleina Ramirez Gonzalez[50] (1972 – April 15, 2005) born in the town of Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, died in Tikrit, Iraq, when a mortar struck her forward operating base.
This monument was unveiled by Puerto Rico Senate President Kenneth McClintock and PR National Guard Adjutant General Col. David Carrión on Memorial Day, 2007.
