Raúl G. Villaronga (April 1, 1938 – March 20, 2021) was a United States Army officer who was the first Puerto Rican mayor of a Texas city.

[1] Raúl G. Villaronga was born on April 1, 1938, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, His parents were Raul Gil Villaronga Pasarell, an accountant with the Puerto Rico Iron Works who once served in the United States Army, and Maria Monserrate Martinez Perez, a school teacher and a housewife.

After a few years, his family returned to Puerto Rico, and he was enrolled in the public school system of Ponce.

[2] During his high school years, he joined the Civil Air Patrol and was a member of the national champion Ponce Drill Team.

On October 3, 1961, Villaronga was promoted to first lieutenant and underwent intense combat training during the Berlin Crisis.

[3] From 1963 to 1965, Villaronga was assigned to the 8th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, where he served in several classified counterinsurgency missions which included an assignment in 1965 of commander of Detachment XX, 8th Special Forces Group, in Central and South America, in which he conducted training for American and Latin American soldiers in basic, jumpmaster, rigger, and pathfinder courses.

[4] During his stay in the Canal Zone, Villaronga continued his military preparation by studying Portuguese at the Defense Language Institute and jungle warfare operations.

Unable to get a full-time position as a professor because he lacked a master's degree in education, he decided to work as a consultant for the Department of Defense and later for Brown & Root Services Corporation in Houston.

Villaronga applied and was hired by the Texas Attorney General's Office in Austin, and served with the Child Support Enforcement Division.

Villaronga, the first Puerto Rican to be elected mayor of a Texas city was sworn in office June 20, 1992.

Along with the council members, he was responsible for soliciting citizen views in forming these policies and interpreting them for the public.

He was also a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

[8] On December 3, 2007, Villaronga, chairman of LULAC's Killeen Foundation, helped organize an event that honored both the "Borinqueneers" (the 65th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army, composed almost entirely of Puerto Ricans who fought in the Korean War) and Puerto Rico Senate President Kenneth McClintock.