page_title: Puerto Rican women in the military
section_title: 21st century
hierarchical_section_title: Puerto Rican women in the military / 21st century
caption_attribution_description: English: Linda Garcia Cubero
context_page_description: Two of the least-known roles played by Puerto Rican women and women of Puerto Rican descent have been that of soldier and that of revolutionary. 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.
context_section_description: Changes within the policy and military structure of the U.S. armed forces helped expand the participation and roles for women in the military, among these the establishment of the All-Volunteer Force in the 1970s. Puerto Rican women and women of Puerto Rican descent have continued to join the Armed Forces, and some have even made the military a career.
  Colonel Maritza Sáenz Ryan (U.S. Army) is the head of the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy. She is the first woman and first Hispanic (Puerto Rican father and Spanish mother) West Point graduate to serve as an academic department head. She also has the distinction of being the most senior-ranking Hispanic Judge Advocate. 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.
  Colonel Maria Zumwalt (U. S. Army) from Bayamon, was named commander of the 48th Chemical Brigade effective June 15, 2011.
  Captain Haydee Javier Kimmich (U.S. Navy) from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, was the highest-ranking Hispanic female in the Navy. The naval rank of Captain is the equivalent of Colonel in the other US armed forces. Kimmich was assigned as the Chief of Orthopedics at the Navy Medical Center in Bethesda and reorganized their Reservist Department during Operation Desert Storm. In 1998, she was selected as the woman of the year in Puerto Rico.
  Lieutenant Colonel Olga E. Custodio (USAF) became the first female Hispanic U.S. military pilot. She holds the distinction of being first Latina to complete U.S. Air Force military pilot training. Upon retiring from the military, she became the first Latina commercial airline captain.
  Major Sonia Roca born December 4, 1955 in San Juan, was the first Hispanic female officer to attend the Command and General Staff Officer Course at the Army's School of the Americas.
  Captain Linda Garcia Cubero was the first Hispanic woman graduate of the Air Force Academy in 1980, when the first class with women graduated. She is of Mexican-American and Puerto Rican heritage.
  Captain Hila Levy from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico In 2007 she became the first Puerto Rican Rhodes scholar. As a Cadet in the United States Air Force Academy,  she finished as the top graduate, earning the Outstanding Cadet in the Order of Graduation Award, and a spot on the academy's 100-year Honor Roll.
  On December 1, 1998, María V. Martínez was promoted to Command Sergeant Major. the first Puerto Rican female to reach said rank in the U.S. Army. She serves as Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Director of the Army Diversity Office in the Pentagon, Washington D.C.
caption: Capt. Linda Garcia Cubero, the first Hispanic woman to graduate from any service academy
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