LeBrónof transparency. At its conclusion, the Puerto Rican Housing Authority
had awarded contracts to 11 private management firms to deal with the
day-to-day maintenance and operation of Puerto Rico’s 58,000 public
housing units, affecting approximately 60,000 families living in 332
public housing complexes.
Rosselló’s use of the National Guard would become one its longest
“peacetime” deployments in U.S. history. In 1989 Congress had authorized
federal funding to permit National Guard units to support drug interdic-
tion and other counter-drug activities. States desiring to participate in the
program were required to draw up plans to be approved by the secretary
of defense and Department of Justice. Rosselló was able to skirt some of
these requirements by evoking “extraordinary” circumstances to justify
the mobilization of military power for the archipelago’s war on drugs.
Military analysts and strategists therefore watched with curiosity, as
Rosselló’s repurposing of the Guard seemed to respond to the challenge
of what to do with surplus military technology and personnel following
the end of the Cold War—a readymade solution to local and federal police
agencies looking to be “tough on crime” while adhering to the neoliberal
economic imperative to watch their bottom line.
Others took notice as well. Mano Dura received coverage in major
national news outlets, and, in late 1994, Rosselló was asked to testify
before a congressional subcommittee on the use of the National Guard
to fight crime. Rosselló encouraged the committee members, “with the
Cold War won and the Soviet Union dissolved—the time has come to
direct more of our attention to internal security issues; to current dan-
gers we face at home: drug-trafficking, and the violent crime that drug-
trafficking engenders.” Puerto Rico, Rosselló argued, had “redefined
the role of our citizen soldiers” in a way “certainly worthy of study, and
maybe emulation.” U.S. policymakers, however, struggled with how to
reconcile a declared War on Drugs, and the ready availability of surplus