U.S. Navy base closure affects 'a lot of people'

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Puerto Rico
MIAMI HERALD
U.S. Navy base closure affects 'a lot of people'
By Nancy San Martin
Posted on Mon, Feb. 23, 2004

The Roosevelt Roads Navy base in Puerto Rico is closing, taking with it
about 2,500 jobs and $300 million.

ROOSEVELT ROADS NAVAL STATION, Puerto Rico - Pennsylvania native
Michelle Hoffman came and opened her Splash tattoo parlor near here in
1995 after noticing that the community surrounding this U.S. Navy base
did not have one of the sailors' ages-old activities.

''In every port there is a tattoo shop. When I found out they didn't
have one here, I jumped on it,'' said Hoffman, 37, whose shop in Ceiba
brought in up to $60,000 a year. ``It was great for a long time. We were
busy all the time.''

But now her profits have dropped by about half as the 60-year-old base,
known popularly as Rosie Roads, winds down and heads toward its official
closure March 31 -- a move that will mean the loss of about 2,500
civilian jobs and $300 million in Puerto Rico.

''This is going to be a ghost town,'' said Máximo Menéndez, who had a
part-time security guard job at the base. ``A lot of people are
affected. People who worked there 20 or 30 years, they have nothing
now.''

For some of its neighbors and employees, the base's closing is
retaliation for the Puerto Ricans' raucous pressures that forced the
Navy to surrender its bombing range on the eastern tip of the tiny
island of Vieques, eight miles southeast of Rosie Roads. For others it
represents another step toward an end to U.S. colonial presence in
Puerto Rico, seized by U.S. troops during the Spanish-American War in
1898.

But for nearly everyone, it is an economic hammer blow that leaves
people like Hoffman, Menéndez and others in and around Ceiba, a pleasant
town of 18,000, all but gasping and struggling for survival.

''Business has gone down a lot,'' said Daisy Santos, a cashier at a
grocery store just outside the base. ``This used to be packed on
weekends. Most of our customers were from the base. I guess we'll wait
and see what happens.''

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/8017585.htm

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