U.S. Militarism Map

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Map of U.S. Militarization in Our Americas

The guide found below is available as a PDF here.

U.S. militarization links global repression and continued state violence to the imperialist agenda of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination. By connecting our local struggle to the global struggle, we are unified against a common enemy with a vision to demilitarize the region and make Our Americas a Zone of Peace.

Engaging with this tool to make the connections of existing militarization in the Global North and the Global South can deepen understanding of the repressive forces of militarism in Our Americas, visually affirming the need for popular struggle and continued solidarity to collectively resist the massive occupation and violent impacts of U.S. imperialist forces.

To use the map as an organizing tool, consider:

  • The map as an educational resource for yourself and for your neighborhood -
    • Use the map to see what militarized entities are present in your area and to research more on connected struggles.
    • Engage in collective learning and research regarding militarization and imperialism.
    • Learn more about local and regional organizations that are organizing around the demand for demilitarization.
  • The map as a basis for local organizing -
    • Collectively strategize how and where to organize and agitate.
  • The map as a tool for continued learning and solidarity -
    • Produce propaganda relevant to your organizing goals and share with us to build upon our collective resources.
    • Share or create resources and share with us to add information to the map.
    • Request additions to the map, such as an additional “case study.”

To use the map functionally:

  • Layers: In the upper right corner of the map, hover over the “layers” icon to show the map layers. Check or uncheck layers that you’d like to view.
  • Full Screen: In the upper left corner of the map, click the “corners” icon to make the map full screen on your device. Press Esc or Exit to then return to the website.
  • Zoom In/Out: In the upper left corner of the map, click the “+” icon to zoom in and the “-” icon to zoom out.
  • Specific Entities: Click on any map icon to see information specific to that militarized entity such as name, acreage, budget, and/or narrative.
Overview

Map Purpose

The Map of U.S. Militarization in Our Americas is an interactive resource designed to educate and engage organizations and individuals in our collective struggle to make Our Americas a Zone of Peace.

Through visuals and narratives, the map will:

  • Communicate the impacts of U.S. militarization in Our Americas, specifically through SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM base/site mapping,
  • Highlight resistance to U.S. militarism, and
  • Make direct connections to BAP’s Zone of Peace Campaign and the forward movement and solidarity of the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network.
The Black Alliance for Peace Zone of Peace Campaign

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with key partner organizations, is leading an effort to activate the popular movements in our region in support of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) 2014 call to make the Americas region a “Zone of Peace.” This campaign is informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition. With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.

Zone of Peace Campaign Objectives:

  • Build a people(s)-centered campaign that coordinates anti-imperialist, anti-war and pro-peace organizations, political parties, labor and social-justice organizations, as well as movements across our region to move our Americas toward building alternative institutions and centers of power,
  • Strengthen an Americas-wide consciousness among the peoples of the region, and
  • Establish people(s)-centered, Americas-wide coordinating structures that would facilitate the successful expulsion of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination from our region (Nuestra América).

The Zone of Peace Campaign has six core demands, directly connected to each map layer.

Americas-wide Consciousness

Nuestra América is a term revolutionary forces in the Americas have used to assert themselves against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile for all of the historically oppressed peoples of the region.

BAP has translated the singular Nuestra América (Our America) into the plural “Our Americas” to help bridge the gap between the U.S. usage, “America,” that describes the United States as the only “America” and the concept put forth by revolutionary forces.

The map reinforces this hemispheric perspective, visually communicating the scope of U.S. militarization within Our Americas in order to connect international and domestic imperialist-driven militarism, disproportionately affecting Black/African, Indigenous, colonized and working peoples across Our Americas. The map is also designed as a tool for anti-base/site organizing and other forms of resistance against the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination in Our Americas by reinforcing hemispheric coordination to support local organizing efforts in solidarity with our joint struggle:

“Together with the global majority, we are engaged in a struggle for self-determination and sovereignty against a common enemy. We have a common struggle of liberation against empire.” (Nuestra América and the Black Radical Peace Tradition, March 2025)

U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network

To coordinate unified struggle, BAP established the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network in 2024, driven by a Popular Steering Committee, a decentralized structure of 15 organizations across Our Americas committed to the campaign’s demands. This aspect of the multi-phase collective campaign establishes a coordinating structure throughout the Americas, which is mass-based, people(s)-centered, and can facilitate the successful expulsion of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination from our region.

The Map

Layer Definitions

The map contains five base layers, which can be viewed together, communicating the extensive land mass occupied by U.S. militarization in Our Americas, or separately, as needed.

These layers include:

    U.S. Military Commands
    Operational U.S. Military Bases (Installations)
    U.S. Military Bases being built
    U.S. Military Training Facilities
    “Public Safety Training Centers” (“Cop Cities”)

U.S. Military Commands

  • Northern Command
    • NORTHCOM's “Area of Responsibility” encompasses the continental United States, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and the surrounding water out to approximately 500 nautical miles.
    • Includes “U.S. commonwealths, territories, and possessions”
  • Southern Command
    • SOUTHCOM’s “Area of Responsibility” includes: Central America, South America, and the Caribbean
    • Has operated within NORTHCOM’s “area”, such as in Puerto Rico

Operational U.S. Military bases

  • Base of operations: characterized, according to the Pentagon, by having an extension of more than 10 acres, a value of more than 10 million dollars and an active service of more than 200 US military. They are facilities belonging entirely to the United States Department of Defense.
  • Small military base (“lily pad”): a small military installation belonging to the United States that consists, according to the Annual Report of the Pentagon, of an extension of less than 10 acres and a value of less than 10 million of dollars. This categorization also includes any other cooperative security location or forward operating site where the US military has a presence.
  • Funded base: a host-country facility where U.S. operational personnel may have full or partial access given government funding for such sites. Most of the existing bases in Latin America fall into this category and serve as centers of operations and military training, under the guise of monitoring drug trafficking, when, in reality, the access is in place as an additional means of control of a nation’s people and resources.
  • The map contains all (overt) military installations as well as some large and small sites.
    From the Pentagon’s 2024 Base Structure Report:
    • Site: A specific geographic location that has individual land parcels or facilities assigned to it. Physical (geographic) location that is, or was owned by, leased to, or otherwise under the jurisdiction of a DoD (Department of Defense) Component on behalf of the United States. A site may be contiguous to another site but cannot geographically overlap or be within another site. A site may exist in one of three forms: land only – where no facilities are present; facility or facilities only – where the underlying land is neither owned nor controlled by the government, and land with facilities – where both are present.
    • Large Site: A site reported with acreage equal to, or greater than, 100K Acres, OR a Total Building Square Footage equal to, or greater than, 4.5M Square Feet.
    • Installation: A military base, camp, post, station, yard, center, homeport facility for any ship, or other activity under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, including leased space, that is controlled by, or primarily supports DoD’s activities. An installation may consist of one or more sites.

U.S. Military Bases Being Built

In alignment with the definitions of operational bases, this layer references installations that have either been publicly announced and/or have begun construction for a U.S. military base in Our Americas.

U.S. Military Training Facilities

These entities on the map indicate facilities where military (on a local, regional, and national level) training occurs, whether that facility is public-facing as a militarized entity or not. The locations are not comprehensive in scope since covert training operations occur in locations that are intentionally hidden from the public.

“Public Safety Training Centers” (“Cop Cities”)

  • As a primary counterinsurgency tactic in response to the 2020 Uprisings in the U.S. against the ever-present police violence and murder of Black/African people, city, state, and federal investments in the billions have been made to establish “centers”, with the intention of functioning as cities, themselves. These strategically-placed centers operate as hubs for police training and recruitment, all aspects of which are intertwined with the U.S. military and imperialist agenda. As such, it is vital to recognize cop cities as U.S. militarized entities within the U.S., designed to maintain and implement hard power (force and violence) as a means of sustaining oppression.
  • Defining a Cop City: As the police state in this country continues to expand, as funding for policing under the guise of “training” and “recruitment” increases, and the number of people killed by police rises annually (see mappingpoliceviolence.org) it is necessary not to dismiss any facility – no matter the size, shape, cost or excuse – as insignificant.

Analysis

The following analysis links the map directly to:

    Geographically-specific repressive tactics of U.S. militarism to drive its imperialist agenda for full spectrum domination*,
    The necessity of amplifying, sustaining, and building upon collective resistance to U.S.-led imperialism with the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network and beyond, and
    The defeat of U.S. imperialism by making Our Americas a Zone of Peace and winning the campaign’s core demands.

*The Delusional Commitment to the Doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” is leading the U.S. and the World to Disaster (Ajamu Baraka)

With its rulers’ consciousness and worldviews infused with the psychopathologies of white supremacist ideology, the drive to maintain global “Full Spectrum Dominance ,” a grotesque, bipartisan doctrine that commits the U.S. to aggressive counters to any real or imagine threats to its global or regional economic and political dominance, reflects more than just a strategy for continued bourgeois economic and political hegemony. It takes on an existential character because for the ruling class, “whiteness” and dominance are naturally interconnected and serve as the foundation of their identity.

The Orinoco Tribune broadly frames Military Occupation in Our Americas:

The United States, which has some 6,000 military bases in its territory and some 800 across the rest of the world, currently has at least 76 military bases in Our America: almost double the number of countries in the region.

To name all these military enclaves would be too extensive. In Argentina, there is an area occupied by the United States in Tolhuin, Tierra del Fuego, and a military base in Resistencia, province of El Chaco. Military bases are being built in Neuquén and Vaca Muerta, near enormous petroleum reserves. The new neoliberal government will surely authorize other enclaves in an expeditious manner. There is one base in Chile, near Valparaíso. In Colombia, nine US military bases seriously interfere in internal affairs. In fact, each Colombian airport is a bastion that houses, supplies and repairs US military aircraft. In Cuba, the Guantánamo naval base remains open, despite the staunch opposition of the Cuban people and authorities. The government of Rafael Correa freed Ecuador from the Manta Base; the neoliberal Noboa ceded for the same use the Galapagos Islands, causing mortal harm to the ecology of the archipelago, and admitted an invasion of US troops under the pretext of fighting the criminal underworld. Haiti has been repeatedly and for prolonged periods occupied by US troops, with disastrous results. In Honduras, three military bases participated in the coup against Manuel Zelaya. In Panama, 12 bases continue the military occupation, despite the Torrijos-Carter agreements that recognize Panamanian sovereignty over the Panama Canal. Paraguay holds two bases that threaten the Guarani Aquifer and the Lithium Triangle. In Peru, eight US military enclaves support the repression of the dictator Dina Boluarte. In Puerto Rico, 12 bases maintain by force the nation’s humiliating condition of Free Associated State. In addition to those mentioned above, there are US bases in Aruba, Curaçao, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. In addition, there is a secret and indefinite number of “quasi-bases” that conduct espionage, communication, military tasks, and general interference in local affairs.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European armed wing of the United States, also has its own military enclaves in the region. NATO bases in the Malvinas Islands, Belize, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Argentina has been a “principal non-NATO ally” since 1997, Brazil since 2019, and Colombia has been a “NATO global partner” since 2022. European troops head the Overseas Department of Guyana.

By brute force or the consent of traitorous governments, Latin America and the Caribbean has become a de facto militarily occupied region.

Nuestra América and the Black Radical Peace Tradition:

The tools of this Axis of Domination are clear: military domination through the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom); economic warfare through sanctions, tariffs and other unilateral coercive measures; continuation of corporate extractivism over national development; and usurpation of state sovereignty through policies as the Global Fragility Act. And, of course, U.S. imperialism also depends on a captured class of neocolonial compradors (e.g., William Ruto in Kenya, Luis Abinader in the DR, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador) who work to uphold its Full Spectrum Dominance. Indeed, the Americas region remains under de facto colonial rule. And, despite years of anti-colonial resistance throughout the hemisphere, the current bold articulation of U.S. power seems calibrated to accelerate this full spectrum dominance while simultaneously attempting to paralyze and demobilize legitimate united resistance.

Analysis: Operational U.S. Military Bases (SOUTHCOM & NORTHCOM)

SOUTHCOM 2024 Year in Review:

SOUTHCOM has continued to work towards its goals of increasing U.S. dominance and interference in Our Americas by financially and politically undermining progressive and democratic governments; illegally occupying Haiti and sowing chaos through the increasing militarization of armed actors in the country; increasing economic, political, and military cooperation throughout the region by cementing partnerships with right-wing and neoliberal governments; and conducting military exercises that further endanger hopes for peaceful coexistence in the Americas.

SOUTHCOM is not merely a military entity, it is the embodiment of a centuries-old strategy to dominate the Americas, control its resources, and suppress any movements for sovereignty and self-determination.

Connecting to the map, we can see the sheer quantity of militarized occupation through NORTHCOM & SOUTHCOM operational bases. Functionally, we know that these bases serve to maintain military domination and settler colonial (U.S.), colonial (Puerto Rico, Guam, & U.S. Virgin Islands), and neocolonial rule of Our Americas.

Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay, for example, are operating as U.S. bases to allow for military and ICE detention and criminalization of migrants escaping conditions created by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

Specific to this map layer, the Zone of Peace Campaign counters this repression through its core demand(s):

  • Dismantle SOUTHCOM Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases and installations in the region.
  • End U.S./NATO militarism in the Americas. End U.S./NATO military exercises; close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves; and withdraw foreign occupation troops.
  • Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination.
  • Return Guantánamo to Cuba and end colonialism in the Americas. The U.S. must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies. The U.S. and European states must end their colonial occupations of lands and peoples in the Americas, including Puerto Rico, the Malvinas, Martinique, and others.

Analysis: U.S. Military Bases Being Built

Through the investment in the expansion of military bases, the U.S. is attempting to forge new military strongholds to control the region and its resources through geostrategic placement. One clear intention is to target socialist governments like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Another, especially as it relates to the Pacific coast, is to escalate a New Cold War against China, Iran, and Russia.

Witnessed through multiple “trojan horse” variations, the actual intention under any humanitarian or protective guise, as has been seen time and again, is to destroy socialist projects and bring them under U.S. control to serve the state’s imperialist interests through the expansion of military bases to protect corporate extractivism and repress people’s movements.

SOUTHCOM 2024 Year in Review:

One of the primary true goals of SOUTHCOM-led military exercises in the region is to militarize Our Americas to counter the supposed threat of China and its support for national development in the region and to prepare for struggles against socialist states like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela that offer an alternative to U.S. capitalist dominance.

A Snapshot of the Global War Against African People: Reflections From Ecuador:

BAP’s concerns are highlighted by the very real danger of the fulfillment of ongoing efforts to expand the U.S. military’s presence in Ecuador as part of a larger conquest of South America’s Pacific coast. This, in turn, will exacerbate the existing militarized presence in Ecuador, under the guise of security, already subjecting Afro, Indigenous, and poor Ecuadorians to daily human rights violations. The development of an independent, national AfroEcuadorian politics is even more urgent than before to not only counter U.S. and Ecuadorian reactionary right-wing forces but to ensure the human rights of AfroEcuadorians through the power of the people and popular mass movements.

New bases in Peru are significant, intensifying the attacks on the sovereignty of the Peruvian people as a result of the U.S-backed coup which ousted Pedro Castillo.

In other regions of the Americas, neocolonial/comprador governments allow for the U.S. to build new military bases at the expense of the people and environment. New U.S. bases in Trinidad and Guyana are meant to threaten Venezuelan sovereignty and profit from natural resources, such as oil and natural gas.

Specific to this map layer, the Zone of Peace Campaign counters this repression through its core demand(s):

  • End U.S./NATO militarism in the Americas. End U.S./NATO military exercises; close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves; and withdraw foreign occupation troops.
  • End imperialist sanctions and unilateral coercive measures. Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions, blockades, and unilateral coercive measures against regional states and peoples, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty.

Analysis: U.S. Military Training Facilities

U.S. military training facilities are active factions of the U.S. imperialist agenda for full spectrum global domination. Designed to repress colonized and oppressed peoples and their movements for liberation and self-determination which oppose U.S. hegemony, we see an ongoing history of U.S. investments to train and fund counterrevolutionary movements. The Deadly Exchange Program organizes and funds the training of U.S. military by Israeli Offensive Forces (IOF), resulting in, as its name suggests, an exchange of intentionally-lethal military tactics used to quell any opposition to the U.S. imperialist agenda.

Training facilities have been described by the U.S. government as honing this lethality, which begs the question - “lethality for what?” The intention of the U.S. empire is clear - the training facilities are honing a lethality to repress any obstacle, human or otherwise, in its way to total global domination, using any lethal combination of hybrid warfare. We see this war played out particularly against African/Black people domestically, throughout Our Americas, and abroad.

Given present-day war tactics, the training at these centers includes not only physical training for participants but also training for technological warfare, including GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, force simulations, and counterspace weapons (such as electronic and cyber technology).

Not included in this map layer, simply due to the quantity, are Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) Programs, which operate at over 3,500 schools in the U.S. alone. These programs are a blatant school-to-military pipeline, touting the propagandized objective to build “character and leadership.” Even the corporate-backed New York Times published a piece where students reported being registered for JROTC training programs without signing up, being told that their participation was “required.” Within this pipeline, the program’s not-so-covert intention is to recruit and train youth to be in unquestioned and subservient service to U.S. militarism and imperialism, intrinsically oppressing people-centered movements for liberation determination.

The training facilities throughout Our Americas are not just used to train U.S. military enacting violence domestically, but also includes the training of U.S.-backed proxy forces, such as Kenyan para-military troops, acting on behalf of the U.S., to terrorize and repress the Haitian people. Strategic cooperation planning and implementation for these forces as well as the CORE group have also been conducted at these sites.

Specific to this map layer, the Zone of Peace Campaign counters this repression through its core demand(s):

  • Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces.
  • Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination.

Analysis: “Public Safety Training Centers” (“Cop Cities”)

U.S. police forces are simply another name of the same domestic militarization. In an attempt to quell the 2020 uprisings, following the murder of George Floyd and countless Black/African people in the U.S., “cop cities,” under the guise of protecting communities as “public safety training centers”, were meant to suppress organic, peoples-centered movements that were making progress against racial capitalist violence.

Countering liberal notions, we understand that the issue is not more training for police. Rather, policing is the issue as a result of the training. Through the 1033 and Deadly Exchange Programs, we see the clear connections between militarization domestically and abroad, enabling U.S. police as a foreign occupying power on Turtle Island (& Hawai’i), to increase the repression of internal colonies in the U.S. Therefore, an end to U.S. militarism and withdrawal of foreign occupation troops in the Americas also necessitates the end to all Cop Cities.

The state’s message to the resistance movement with the planning and implementation of cop cities is clear. Using any and all capital available, the state will double down on its tactics of violence as resistance arises. On the other side of the coin, we understand that this response is only an indicator that the state, in fact, does fear the power of resistance to its hegemonic rule.

Cop cities as “public safety training centers” are strategically placed in locations that will simultaneously maintain the state-imposed status quo in the immediate region and also encourage military recruitment from the region, often targeting youth recruitment. In Baltimore, for example, the proposed cop city is for a $330 million training facility on the campus of Coppin University, an HBCU (Historically Black College/University). A few additional examples on the map include:

  • In Sanborn, NY, the Law Enforcement Academy is proposed for the college campus of Niagara University.
  • In Johnston, RI, a cop city was approved through eminent domain, prioritizing violence militarization in poor communities over a proposed affordable housing project.
  • A cop city is proposed in collaboration with Clemson University in South Carolina, as a justification for dealing with “mass casualty events” such as school shootings, when there is zero evidence that increased police presence (of any kind) prevents or even deescalates these events.
  • Concord, North Carolina, residents refer to the local (former) juvenile prison as a “cop city”, despite any public-facing propaganda regarding its peace-keeping purpose.
  • Las Vegas, NV, is building the Reality Based Training Center on 200 acres set aside on Nellis Air Force Base.
  • Nashville, TN, is investing in a $415 million cop city project on 800 acres, which will also house factions of the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
  • Sante Fe, New Mexico, is also home to another Reality Based Training Facility, framed as a “Public Safety Psychology Group” where police forces train for and implement psychological counterinsurgency strategies.

As evidenced through the establishment of cop city in Atlanta, the intentionality of these structures is obvious - to take life.

“Trees give life. Police take it”: Building and Fighting for Abolitionist Life-Worlds, from the Weelaunee Forest to Georgia's Jails:

The state and the Atlanta Police Foundation, the corporate-funded nonprofit organisation leasing the land to build the facility, call it the “Atlanta Public Safety Training Center”, with police ‘and politicians insisting that its purpose is to keep Atlantans safe and police officers trained. Forest defenders, on the other hand, call the facility Cop City’ for ‘its mock city design—eerily resembling the mock cities established by the United States military in the wake of the 1960s race riots, where police practised using military-grade weapons against fake street protests (Pettengill 2022). Forest defenders note that Cop City resembles a similar response in the wake of the militant uprisings against deadly, racialised police violence.

BAP-Atlanta Demands End to Cop City Project:

The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) is the local manifestation of the “Deadly Exchange” program, in which U.S. and Israeli police and Israeli military share hyper-militarized policing techniques and technology and physically travel to zionist Israel to engage in this exchange.

Eviction Notice from the Mvskoke People to Mayor Andre Dickens and Cop City:

Georgia is the birthplace of oppressive policing, originating with Indigenous genocide and the Trail of Tears and the capture and enslavement of African descendants seeking freedom. Our ancestors who are buried here continue to suffer while the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia deploy the very same escalated militarized tactics against Black, Indigenous and people of the global majority that were used in Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement. The state and the City of Atlanta have a historical, moral, and legal obligation to cease the clearing of trees and land and to cease developing militarized weaponized policing.

Specific to this map layer, the Zone of Peace Campaign counters this repression through its core demand(s):

  • End U.S./NATO militarism in the Americas. End U.S./NATO military exercises; close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves; and withdraw foreign occupation troops.
  • Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces.

Case Studies

  • Haiti
    • Although there are no (publicly known) U.S. military installations in Haiti, and therefore not marked as such on the map, there is still ongoing U.S. military intervention and occupation of the region, driving the continued violence and displacement of the Haitian people and preventing any movement towards Haitian self-determination.
    • As the U.S. continues to enforce its imperial controlunder the guise of security, humanitarianism, and/or “drug control”, U.S. paramilitary operations are a present and increasing force in place to maintain political, economic, and social control of Haiti, where 85% of the Port-au-Prince population is now under control of the U.S. paramilitary project.
    • The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for Resistance Against the Accelerating Imperialist War on Black/African Peoples in Our Americas:
      The State Department’s recent designation of armed paramilitary groups in Haiti as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists to use as the justification to continue violating the sovereignty of the Haitian people, clear out and occupy land, and operate with even more impunity. The U.S.-orchestrated Multinational Security Service Mission (MSS) in Haiti that has only further degraded safety and violated national sovereignty has not slowed down any of this violence, in fact it has increased. Now, declaring Haitian armed paramilitary groups as terrorists will only serve as justification for further militarized assaults on the nation and its people, with little regard for their wellbeing. Amidst a three month long teachers strike, the Executive Board of National Union of Haitian Educators (UNNOH) wrote, “in the current context of cynically manufactured chaos—orchestrated by powerful international criminals and their local collaborators—” and call for international mobilization amid a “silent genocide.”
    • Haitian resistance continues to organize against U.S. imperialist militarism, however, forced displacement and lack of shelter for the Haitian people present ongoing challenges.
  • Puerto Rico
    • According to the Pentagon’s Base Structure Report, U.S. military bases in Puerto Rico would be categorized under NORTHCOM’s “area of responsibility as a U.S. territory.” When we look at what’s actually happening on the ground, the reality is that NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM are actively occupying Puerto Rico through (at least) 30 fully operational military bases, conducting consistent military training exercises (driven by Israeli Offensive Forces’ tactics) as well as ensuring control of Puerto Rico’s land and people (socially and economically). Under the guise of humanitarianism, communicating that the goal of the U.S. military presence is to “maintain peace”, the U.S. military occupies [at least] 20,000 acres of Puerto Rico’s land to serve its own imperialist agenda of political, social, economic, and military control of the archipelago.
    • In their own words, the U.S. identifies Puerto Rico as a highly strategic location [for U.S. intervention and occupation] from a geopolitical standpoint. The propaganda is clear in relation to Puerto Rico as well as other locations throughout Our Americas: when it comes to U.S. operations (both overt and covert), empire carefully chooses what (mis)information to share, building on mobilization and/or repression tactics to support its agenda for imperialist control. As part of the work of building and sustaining collective resistance, verification and analysis of the realities of U.S. militarism is essential. As we can see, what we are hearing from the U.S. government and corporate-backed media is propagandized to repress and/or divide people power to set the stage for the imperial core to build upon its tactics of hybrid warfare for domination.
  • El Salvador
    • For decades, the U.S. has had a militarized presence in El Salvador, maintaining its own military installation in La Paz as well as training Salvadoran forces at U.S.-funded bases within the country.
    • Bases in El Salvador and neighboring Central American nations have been key operational centers for the U.S. military in the region. In the 2000s, U.S. forces from Honduras’ Soto Cano Air Base traveled to El Salvador to train the Salvadoran military prior to their deployment in support of the U.S. war on Iraq. And in 2025, a contingent of the Salvadoran military joined the ongoing U.S.-led occupation of Haiti.
    • These forces, who have also been trained at the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, have inflicted some of the most vicious acts of terror against civilians in El Salvador, notably the 1981 massacres at El Junquillo and El Mozote. This U.S.-backed violence, meant to suppress communist movements and commodify the country’s natural resources, has led to the mass displacement and criminalization of the Salvadoran people, and of colonized people in Our Americas more generally.
    • In tandem with the U.S.’s International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in San Salvador – which provides training to Central and South American police forces from U.S. police and security agencies – El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) has further enabled the militarization of Our Americas. Now partially funded by an agreement between the U.S. and Salvadoran governments, CECOT represents a “manifestation of prison imperialism, a system that perpetuates global inequality and repression” and “an extension of capitalist and colonial domination” targeting migrants, land and water defenders, community organizers, and poor and racialized communities throughout the hemisphere.
  • US South (Fort Benning/WHINSEC)
    • Located on occupied Mvskoke (Muscogee) lands, Fort Benning, Georgia houses the infamous School of the Americas – now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The School of the Americas/WHINSEC has and continues to train Latin American military, police, and death squads that carry out brutal counterinsurgency measures to secure U.S. political and economic control of the region and its resources.
    • Described as the “biggest base for destabilization” in Our Americas, the School of the Americas/WHINSEC is directly responsible for genocidal warfare targeting civilians, youth, Black/African and Indigenous populations, peasant groups, liberation-oriented clergy, environmental activists, union leaders, communists, and any democratic or progressive people(s)-centered movements.
    • By way of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, the U.S. military armed and trained right-wing leaders who would go on to carry out coups against left-wing governments and lead neocolonial regimes across the Caribbean, Central and South America, and on the African continent.
    • While most known for training “proxy fighters” in Latin America, the School of the Americas/WHINSEC has also been training domestic enforcers of U.S. imperialism: U.S. Border Patrol agents and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. This has set the stage for “US state agents to wage war against undocumented migrants and refugees at border crossings and within the United States.”
    • The network of terror developed by the School of the Americas/WHINSEC has come full circle; U.S.-backed Colombian soldiers and paramilitaries – responsible for making Colombia one of the most dangerous countries for human rights activists – have provided training to Atlanta police forces, who have also received training from israeli occupation forces.

Entities Not Shown

As expected, completely comprehensive information regarding all U.S. militarized entities in Our Americas is not available publicly. As we have seen in the imperialist playbook, the U.S. is strategic in its release of information and propaganda. Site information included in the map is verifiable through sources on-the-ground and/or U.S. “official” reports, such as the Pentagon’s Base Structure Report, and, as a result, there are many types of physical, militarized entities that are not shown because their information is intentionally hidden. This includes, but is certainly not limited to:

  • CIA sites
  • Access points such as government buildings or airports that operate open to the public for a primary purpose, but also house military operations and/or function as military training facilities,
  • Weapons manufacturers that also function as U.S. military training facilities
  • Specific repressive covert operations

As a result, we understand that the map cannot be fully comprehensive of all U.S. military presence in Our Americas. However, even with an unknown number of entities not shown in comparison to what we know exists, the total occupied land mass of the 1,335 listed U.S. military sites on this map alone totals 33,026,326 acres (not including 103 mapped entities with unknown acreage), approximately a third of California.

Sites of Resistance

“Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.” - Assata Shakur

It is vital to note that there is active and mobilized resistance in the vast majority of Our Americas. Consistent coalition building alongside coordinated and strategic actions continue to resist the violent, relentless, and escalating repression of the U.S. imperial core. For security purposes, details on the resistance are not shared as a part of this Toolkit, however, we encourage deepened coordination and communication by joining the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network, a coalition of international organizations throughout the Americas working collectively to further the work of the Zone of Peace Campaign and make Our Americas a Zone of Peace.

Additional Resources: U.S. Militarism in Our Americas

General

Zone of Peace/Broader Americas

Haiti

Panama

Ecuador

Trinidad and Tobago

Guyana

Peru

Bolivia

Puerto Rico

Cuba