GRENADA REVISITED: AN INTERIM REPORT

Author(s): Audre Lorde

Source: The Black Scholar, Vol. 15, No. 1, THE STRUGGLE FOR GRENADA (January-
February, 1984), pp. 21-29
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067070
Accessed: 08-01-2020 19:28 UTC

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 GRENADA REVISITED:
AN INTERIM REPORT*

by Audre Lorde

first time I came to Grenada I

interfering with her determined step.
Her soft
came seeking "home," for this was shapeless hat. Underneath,
my mother's birthplace andsharp, unhurried eyes snapped out
she had
from
always defined it so for me. Vivid chocolate skin dusted grey with
images
remained of what I saw there and of age.
what I knew it could become. • Another woman, younger, switch
• Grand Anse Beach was a busy held between elbow and waist, driving
seven sheep that look like goats except
thoroughfare in the early, direct morn-
goats carry their tails up and sheep
ing. Children in proper school uniforms
down.
carrying shoes, trying to decide between
the lure of a coco palm adventure to• one
The Fat-Woman-Who-Fries-Fish-
side and the delicious morning seaIn-The-Market
on actually did, and it w
the other, while they are bound delicious, served on the counterboards
straightforward to well-worn chalkywith her fragrant chocolate-tea in mugs
desks. fashioned from Campbell's Pork 'n
• The mended hem of the print dress Beans cans with metal handles attached.
the skinny old woman wore, swinging • The full moon turning the night
along down the beach, cutlass in hand.beach flash green.
Oversized, high rubber boots never once I came to Grenada for the first time
eleven months before the March 13,

• I spent a week in Grenada in late December

1979, bloodless coup of the New Jewel
1983, barely two months after the U.S. invasionMovement which ushered in the People's
of the Black Caribbean island my parents leftRevolutionary Government (PRG) of
some sixty years earlier. It was my second visit inGrenada under Prime Minister Maurice
five years. This is an interim essay, a report
written as the rest of Sister Outsider was alreadyBishop. This brought an end to twenty-
being typeset. nine years of Sir Eric Gairy's regime -

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wasteful, corrupt, and United Statesstudents were in danger. Officials of the
sanctioned. school deny this.1 Students deny this.2
The road from tiny Pearl's Airport The
in U.S. government had received
assurances from General Hudson Austin
Grenville, up over the Grand Etang
Mountain through Beauregard and of the Revolutionary Military Council
Birch Grove, a rainbow of children guaranteeing the students' safety. These
assurances were ignored.3
calling after us down the one narrow
road through these hamlets cut into the2. That the U.S. was invited to intervene
hills. Tree ferns straight up like shingles
by lhe signers of an Organization of Eastern
along the mountainside. In 1978 there Caribbean States Treaty. This would only
have been internationally legal had
was only one paved road in Grenada.
During the People's Revolutionary Gov- Grenada invaded another island.4 The
ernment, all roads were widened and decision to invade was made by four of
reworked, and a functioning bus servicethe seven signatories. The invitation
was established that did more than ferryiuell' was actually drafted by the U.S.
tourists back and forth to the cruise State Department and sent down to the
'"astern
ships lying at anchor in the creenage. Caribbean nations.5

Wild banana fronds, baligey, in clumps

3. That Grenada threatened U.S. security
below the road's slope. Stands of because of the construction of a military
particular trees within the bush - red airport and the stockpiling of an arsenal of
cocoa fruit, golden apple, mango, modern weapons. Grenada's new airport
breadfruit, peach-ripe nutmeg, banana. is a civilian airport built to accommodate
Girls on the road to Annandale, baskets tourists. It has been in planning for over
of laundry balanced on their heads, twenty-five years, half financed by
hands on hips, swaying, reminiscent of several Western European countries and
100 roads through Africa. Canada. According to Plessey, the
Grenada, tiny spice island, is the British firm which underwrote the project
second larget producer of nutmeg in the the airport was being built to civil, not
world. Its cocoa has a 45 percent fatmilitary, standards. All U.S. reports on
content and sells for premium prices on Grenada now stress the necessity of this
the world market. But Grenadians payairport for a Grenadian tourist industry.7
eight times more than that price ifThe "stockpile" of weapons was less than
they wish to drink processed hot two warehouses. Of 6,300 rifles, about
chocolate, all of which is imported. 400 were fairly modern; the rest were
The second time I came to Grenada I very old, and some antique.8
came in mourning and fear that this As even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
land which I was learning had been observed, "Now we launch a sneak
savaged, invaded, its people maneu- attack on a pathetic island of 110,000
vered into saying thank you to their people with no army, no navy or air
invaders. I knew the lies and distortions force, and claim a glorious victory."9
of secrecy surrounding the invasion of
Grenada by the United States on group of men and women mend
October 25, 1983; the rationalizations the road ahead of us with hoes and
which collapse under the weight of facts;rock hammers, wheelbarrows, and other
the facts that are readily available, evenhand tools. They step to one side as we
now, from the back pages of the Newpass by. One woman wipes her face with
York Times. the end of her headcloth, leaning upon
1. That the St. Georges Medical School the handle of her scythe. Another

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woman is barefooted, young, but when bowed.
she smiles I see all of her front teeth are Had the amount this invasion cost
missing. The PRG brought free medical each one of us in taxes been lent to the
care to Grenada, and no more school PRG when it requested economic aid
fees. Most estate workers and peasants from the U.S. five years ago, the
gratitude of Grenadians would have
in the small villages saw a dentist for the
been real, and hundreds of lives could
first time in their lives. Literacy was
raised by teacher education and a have been saved. But then Grenada
planned each-one-teach-one program would have been self-defined, indepen
throughout the countryside. dent; and, of course, that could not be
Revolution. A nation decides for itself
allowed. What a bad example, a danger-
ous precedent, an independent Grenada
what it needs. How best to get it. Food.
Dentists. Doctors. Roads. When I first would be for the peoples of Color in the
visited Grenada in 1978, one-third of Caribbean, in Central America, for
the farmable land in the country lay idle,those of us here in the United States.
owned by absentee landlords who did The ready acceptance by the majority
not work it. The PRG required thatof Americans of the Grenadian invasion

plans be filed either for fanning thatand of the shady U.S. involvement in the
land, turning it over to those who would,events leading up to the assassination of
or deeding it to the state. The World Prime Minister Maurice Bishop both
Bank notes the health of the Grenadianhappen in an America whose moral and
ethical fiber is weakened by racism as
economy, surpassing all other Caribbean
economies in the rate of its growth thoroughly
and as wood is weakened by dry
stability despite the opposition of rot.
the White America has been well-

U.S. Unemployment dips from schooled in the dehumanization of

40
percent to 14 percent. Now there is Black
no people. A Black island nation
work again. Why, don't be ridiculous! If they weren
Four years ago, the U.S. acted all so uppity, we'd have enough jobs an
1 1) rough the International Monetaryno recession. The lynching of Blac
youth and shooting down of Black
1-iind to to assure that there would be
im western money available forwomen,
the 60 percent of Black teenager
Gienadian economy, much less for
unemployed and rapidly becoming u
employable, the presidential dismant
protecting her shores from an invasion
threatened by Gairy operating out ofof the Civil Rights Commission, an
ing
San Diego, California, where he more
had Black families below the povert
sought asylum. When the PRG sought
line than twenty years ago - if these fact
economic aid from the the U.S. in 1979 of American life and racism can be

to help rebuild the infrastructure ofpassed

a over as unremarkable, then why
not the rape and annexation of tiny
country fallen into disrepair during the
Black Grenada?
twenty-nine years of Gairy's regime, the
U.S. response was to offer the insult of
$5,000 from an ambassador's discretion- Pentagon has been spoiling for
ary fund! Now it is 1983, post-invasion, a fight it could win for a long time;
and the conquerors are promisingthe last one was the battle for Inchon in
Grenadians welfare, their second main the 1950s. How better to wipe out the
exportable drug. Three million dollars bitter memories of Vietnam defeats by
thus far, administered under U.S. guns, Yellow people than with a restoration of
so long as the heads that take it are power in the eyes of the American

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public - the image of American Marines the hills behind Grenville, St. George
splashing through a little Black blood? Gouyave. American Marines tore
". . . to keep our honor clean" the through homes and hotels searching for
Marine anthem says. So the American "Cubans." Now the ministries are silent.
public was diverted from recession, The state farms are at a standstill. The
unemployment, the debacle in Beirut, cooperatives are suspended. The can-
from nuclear madness and dying oceans nery plant in True Blue is a shambles,
and a growing national depression and shelled to silence. On the day after the
despair, by the bombing of a mental invasion, unemployment was back up
hospital where fifty people were killed. to 35 percent. A cheap, acquiescent la-
Even that piece of proud news was bor pool is the delight of supply-side
withheld for over a week while various economics. One month later, the U.S.
cosmetic stories were constructed. Bread
Agency for International Development
and circuses. visits Grenada. They report upon the
If the United Stats is even remotely
role of the private sector in Grenada's
future, recommending the revision of
interested in seeing democracy flourish
tax codes to favor private enterprise
in the Caribbean, why does it continue
to support Haiti and the Dominican (usually foreign), the development of a
Republic, two of the most corrupt andlabor code that will ensure a compliant la-
repressive governments in the bor movement, and the selling off of public
Americas? The racism that coats the sector enterprises to private interests."
How soon
U.S. government lies about Grenada is will it be Grenadian women
the same racism that blinded American
who were going blind from assembling
eyes to the Black faces of 131 Haitians
microcomputer chips at $.80 an hour for
washed up on shore in Miami, drowned
international industrial corporations? "I
fleeing the Duvalier regime. It is used
the to work at the radio station," says
same racism that keeps American aeyesyoung woman on the beach, shrugging.
"But that ended in the war."
turned aside froom the corrosive apar-
theid eating like acid into the face This
of short, undeclared, and cynical
White South Africa and the Reagan
war against Grenada is not a new
direction for American foreign policy.
government which shares her bed under
It is merely a blatant example of a
the guise of "constructive engagement."
White South Africa has the highest 160-year-old course of action called the
standard of living of any nation in Monroe
the Doctrine. In its name America
has invaded
world, and 50 percent of Black South small Caribbean and Cen-
Africa's children die before they are tral
five.American countries over and over
A statistic. The infant mortality ratesince
for 1823, cloaking these invasions
Black Americans is almost twice that of
under a variety of names. Thirty-eight
such invasions occurred prior to 1917
White Americans - in the most highly
before the Soviet Union even existed.
industrialized country in the world.
For example, in 1897 U.S. Marines
White America has been well-schooled
landed in Puerto Rico to fight the
in the acceptance of Black destruction.
So what is Black Grenada and its Spanish-American War. They never left.
110,000 Black lives?
Unemployment in Grenada dropped
Beginning
rehearsed in
26 percent in four years.10 On October the1981, the United
invasion States
of Grenada
25, 1983, American Corsair missiles
openly. and
It practiced the war game Ocean
Venture in
naval shells and mortars pounded which
into it bombed the Puerto

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Rican island of Vieques, calling it slayers of the Grenadian people's be-
"Amber of the Amberines" (Grenada of loved Maurice Bishop. It is well known
the Grenadines). In this grisly make- that had Bishop lived, Grenada would
believe, a situation is supposed to occur have fought any invasion down to the
where Americans are held hostage. As last child. So scapegoats for his death
we know, this was the first excuse used were essential. The details of the power
to justify the invasion of Grenada. As forstruggles which occurred within the
Americans really being in danger, there New Jewel Movement Party - if such
were still over 500 resident American they were - are yet to be known and
citizens who chose to remain in Grenada assuredly complex. Yet months later,
during and after the invasion. But sincethese men are still being held incom-
Ocean Venture appears to be the script, municado in Richmond Hill prison, St.
we must remember that it also calls for Georges, by "security forces," non-
the assassination of the Prime Minister Grenadian. They have not been charged
of Amber. Are we now to believe thatnor brought to trial as of this writing,
the U.S./CIA was not involved directly
nor have the forty-odd other Grenadians
or indirectly with Prime Ministerstill detained with them.
Maurice Bishop's death? Was the coup Nothing is now heard of the two
Americans known to have been involved
which served as the opening for Ocean
in the last days of the Bishop regime,
Venture to become a reality merely an
unhappy coincidence of personal in-one of whom was wanted on a weapons
charge here in the U.S., and one of
trigue, or was it an event lengthily
orchestrated by clever manipulators. whom holds passports in two countries.15
The Pentagon has admitted in secret Who were they working for and on what
side? Their identities have never been
Congressional briefings that it knew of
the coup against Bishop two weeksdivulged - a favorite tactic to cover
destabilization operatives - and their
before it happened.12 The Ranger unit
existence attested to only by one line in
participating in the invasion had spent
six days between September 23 and
the back pages of the New York Times. So,
too, was the assertion by Ambassador to
October 2, 1983, practicing the takeover
of an airport and the liberation ofFrance Evan Galbraith on public TV
hostages, a maneuver about which thethat the U.S. was involved in Grenada

Pentagon had requested no publicity.13

"weeks before Bishop's death."16
A West German nurse working in
One Senator disclosed that there were
Grenada, Regina Fuchs, reports she
CIA agents accompanying the seventy
students flown out of Grenada on was jailed and relentlessly interro-
gatedl4after being falsely accused of
October 26, the day after the invasion.
harboring fugitives by two Americans,
There will be a long and painstaking
one of whom, Frank Gonzales, identified
search for answers to these questions.
P.S.Y.O.P.S., the psychological himself to her as CIA.17
opera-
tions unit of the U.S. occupation The action in Grenada served many
forces - a new development heard from purposes for the United States, provided
in combat here for the first time - was the ground for many tests. A major one
was addressed to the concern long
quick to plaster St. Georges and the rest
of Grenada with posters of Bernard expressed by the Pentagon as to whether
Coard and General Hudson Austin, or not Black American soldiers could be
gotten to fire upon other Black people.
stripped naked and blindfolded, holding
them up to ridicule and scorn asThis
thebecomes a vital question as the U.S.

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military-industrial complex executes in- honestly confused, defending "our"
creasingly military solutions to this invasion of Black Grenada under a
country's precarious position in the mistaken mirage of patriotism.
Third World, where the U.S. either Nineteen eighty-four is upon us, and
ignores or stands upon the wrong sidedoublethink
of has come home to scramble
our brains and blanket our protest.
virtually every single struggle for libera-
tion by oppressed peoples. Of course,In addition to being a demonstration
there were also lesser tests. In addition to the Caribbean community of what will
to trying out new armaments, there washappen
the to any country that dares to
question of whether the Marines liked
assume responsibility for its own destiny,
their new Nazi-style helmets. They the
didinvasion of Grenada also serves as a
not because they couldn't shave in them.
naked warning to thirty million African-
And whether the new Army uniformsAmericans. Watch your step. We did it
to them down there and we will not
were too heavy to be worn comfortably
in the tropics. They were.18 hesitate to do it to you. Internment
camps. Interrogation booths. Isolation
cells hastily built by U.S. occupation
Listen
the to the language
Pentagon, that by
orchestrated came
thefrom forces. Blindfolded stripped prisoners.
psychological warfare experts operating House-to-house searches for phantom
in Grenada. Cubans. Neighbors pressured to inform
- We gol liiere j usi in I hue. against each other. No strange gods
- Not mi invasion, a 'rescue mission. before us. U.S. soldiers at roadblocks
Wnpl.'nig up. and airports, assisted by former mem-
- .£ was our iurj. li e ¡unì ex>er' riglff.
bers of Gairy's infamous Mongoose Gang,
- Arm e rii hugs (the Grenadian militia).U.S. soldiers at roadblocks and airports
- An Idi Amin-type character, capablecarrying
of notebooks with lists of Bishop
taking hostages (General Austin). Impris-
and PRG sympathizers.19 The tactics for
oned for spreading ill will amongquelling the a conquered people. No courts,
people. no charges, no legal process. Welfare,
This language is calculated to reduce but no reparation for damaged busi-
a Black nation's aspirations in the eyes nesses, destroyed homes and lives.
and ears of White Americans already Street passes. Imprisonment of "trouble-
secretly terrified by the Black Menace, makers." The new radio station blaring
enraged by myths of Black Progress, at The Beach Boys rock group music hour
the same time encouraged by govern- after hour.
ment action never to take the life of a Whose country was Grenada?
Black person seriously. Hundreds of Grenadian bodies are
Even many Black Americans, buried in unmarked graves, relatives
threatened by some specter of a socialism
missing and unaccounted for, survivors
that is mythic and undefined at best,
stunned and frightened into silence by
have bought the government line fear
of of being jailed and accused of
"them" against "us." But; which one "spreading
of unrest among the people."
us as a Black American has ever taken No, recognition and therefore no aid to
the time to examine this threat of the sisters, mothers, wives, children of
socialism for any reality nearly as
the dead, families disrupted and lives
destructive as racism is within all of our vandalized by the conscious brutality of
lives? With the constant manipulation aofplanned, undeclared war. No attention
the media, many Black Americans given are to the Grenadian bodies shipped

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back and forth across the sea in plastic civilian cars those army vehicles collided
bodybags from Barbados to Grenada to with. It meant the appropriation, use,
Cuba and back again to Grenada. After and destruction of homes and stores and
all, they all look alike, and besides, other businesses with no compensation.
maybe if they are flown around the When the American press was finally
world long enough they will simply admitted after the cosmetic cleanup, we
disappear, or become invisible, or some were treated to photographs of smiling
other peoples' sacrifice. Grenadians welcoming their conquerors
"My brother died in Calliste when (look what your tax dollars have
they shot up the house," Isme said, brought). But no photos of the signs
"because they thought Cubans were calling for information about neighbors.
living there. My father lost his arm and No photos of the signs throughout the
a leg. They took him to hospital in countryside calling for an end to yankee
Barbados but he passed away there. His imperialism. NO BISHOP NO REVO.
body was brought back to Pearl's Airport So what did Revolution in Grenada
but I've got to borrow some money now mean? It meant the inauguration of an
to bring him home for his funeral." agro-industry; which for the first time
in the island's history processed the
island's own fruit, its own coffee, under
after the invasion, Grena- its own brand, Spice Isle Foods. Canned
dians were still smelling out and from their own soil available in
products
burying bodies which lay all over stores.
theThe beginning of a fishing and
island. The true casualty figures fish-processing
will industry. In a country
never be known. rich with tropical fruit, whose waters
abound with fish, why should the most
No civilian body count is available.
Even the bodies of Maurice Bishop andcommon fruit juice be Florid orange
juice, the most commonly used fish,
his slain ministers are never positively
identified, no doubt to forestall anyimported saltfish from Canada?
possible enshrinement by the people It meant almost doubling the number
who loved him, no doubt to make the of doctors on the island from twenty-
task of smearing his popular memory three to forty, a health center set up in
every parish for the first time, a dental
more easily accomplished. It has already
begun. clinic. It meant a public health anti-
For the first time in an American war, mosquito cleanup campaign im-
the American press was kept out until plemented by the National Youth
the stage could be set. This extends by Organization that successfully protected
precedent the meaning of military Grenada from the wave of Dengue
censorship in this country. At the time, Fever sweeping through the rest of the
it also deflected attention from the Caribbean in the summer of 198 1.20
It meant 12-year-old Lyndon Adams
invasion itself. Mission accomplished
of L'Esterre, Carriacou, teaching a
with "surgical precision" meant attempt-
73-year-old woman how to read and
ing to conceal the bombing and destruc-
tion of civilian homes, the destruction ofas part of the each-one-teach-one
write
program against functional illiteracy
a hospital and a radio station and police
headquarters; attempting to concealconducted
the by the Center for Popular
American heavy transports left mangledEducation. This highly successful pro-
on the side of the road by soldiers notenlisted the aid of one of the most
gram
trained to drive to the left, and the brilliant educators of all time, Paulo

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Freire, head of the World Council of ent groups. Problems of colorism and
Churches' literacy program. When theclassism are deep, far-reaching, and
echos of Ocean Venture drifted across the very complex legacies left from succes-
Caribbean from Vieques in 1981, andsive colonialisms. Grenadians, rightly so,
the stench of the threat of U.S. invasion are highly resistant to any external
hung over the hills from Grand Etang suggestions of a superficial solution. By
to Harvey Vale, Lyndon, one of thebringing the goals of these diverse
youngest teachers in the CPE program, groups together, the Revolution became
was quoted as saying: "Before the even more threatening to the U.S.
revolution we were not in the light. I will To the average Grenadian, the United
never give up. I rather they killed me States is a large but dim presence where
dead than I go work for them if they some dear relative lives. Until the in-
come to take over we land and try to formation campaigns of the PRG, the
oppress we again." His 73-year-old lack of international news coverage and
neighbor and student says: "In L'Esterre commentary kept Grenadians largely
now, I find things is plenty better and unaware of the U.S. position in world
getting better still. And look how the politics and its history of institutionalized
children developing and doing good! racism and classism. Ronald Reagan was
For that boy's age I find he was doing seen as a fatherly movie star un-
all right!"21 connected to policies of systematic
The American medical student who economic and military oppression of
witnessed the shooting of the first people of Color throughout the develop-
American Marine killed landing ing oncountries of the world.
Grenada resists the prompting of her But the average Grenadian is also
extremely involved with the political
TV interviewer. Pockets of foreign resis-
tance. Cubans hiding in the hills. "Ohaffairs
no, of his and her own country,
he wasn't shot by Cubans. It was an wherever
old there is room beyond survival
man and his son, firing from their
concerns for such involvement. Facets of
the October events surface in every
house." Lyndon Adams and his neigh-
bor are not Cuban. The old man and his conversation, guarded or unguarded,
son defending their home werecasual
notor otherwise.
Cubans. They were Grenadians who The conflicts in the New Jewel
dared to believe that they could have a Movement, Bishop's house arrest, the
right to define themselves and the subsequent demonstration of ten
future of their nation independent of thousand Grenadians, the second
the United States. smaller march which resulted in Bishop's
Grenada is a highly stratified society
liberation and murder along with other
Ministers and hundreds of Grenadians on
made up of a large, extremely poor mass
Richmond Hill, and the four-day mili-
of estate workers and small land-holding
peasants, a small but growing group of curfew that followed these events
tary
urban service workers, and a tiny left terror in the hearts of all Grenadians.
well-to-do middle class, civil servants Any ending seemed preferable at the
and landed, who traditionally have time.
involved themselves with the economics The U.S. -operated Spice Island Radio
of import-export rather than the went into operation the afternoon of the
economics of national production. Theinvasion, and most Grenadians obtained
Bishop government was becoming a whatever information they got about
successful bridge between these differ- events from posters and handbills put

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up around the countryside by has. Grenada is bruised but very much
P.S.Y.O.P.S. Rumors have been rife alive. Grenadians are a warm and
among the people, attempting to resilient
explain people (I hear my mother's
the inexplicable. One shopgirlvoice:
in St."Island women make good wives.
Georges told me she had heard theWhatever
reason happens, they've seen worse"),
and at
why the army fired upon the people they have survived colonizations
before. I am proud to be of stock from
Fort Rupert was because "the Russians
had put the tablets into their milk the country that mounted the first Black
would
make them shoot anybody on sight." English-speaking People's Revolution in
It remains to be seen if the future this hemisphere. Much has been terribly
lost in Grenada, but not all - not the
plans of the U.S. for Grenada will justify
the vision of many Grenadians of spirit
the of the people. Forward Ever,
United States as savior. Even now this Backward Never22 is more than a mere
view is not nearly as widespread as whistle
the in the present dark.
American media would have us believe.
Says a newly-unemployed 19-year-old NOTES
laborer in St. Georges, "They can call it
* Slogan of the Grenadian Revolution.
a rescue mission all they want, but I
1. P. Tyler, Washington Post, October 10, 1983,
haven't been rescued yet." Therep.is
A14.
much pain beneath the veneer 2. ofA. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8, 1983,
gratitude: too many fathers and uncles
p. 11.
3. B.D. Ayers, New York Times, October 22, 1983,
and brothers and daughters injured and
p. A5 and J. McQuiston, New York Times, October
killed because "the Americans thought
26, 1983, p. A20.
there were Cubans living in there."4.All
Text of Treaty, New York Times, October 26,
over Grenada, I felt the deadening
1983, p. A19.
5. S. Taylor, New York Times, October 26, 1983,
effect of horror and disbelief in every
p. A 19.
conversation about the war, often 6. A. Lewis, New York Times, November 3, 1983,
beneath a surface animation. and A. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8,
1983, p. 10.
I came to Grenada my second time six
7. S. Mydans, New York Times, Januiary 15, 1984,
weeks after the invasion, wanting top. 9.
know she was still alive, wanting 8.toChristian Science Monitor, November 7, 1983.
9. A. Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, October
examine what my legitimate position as
26, 1983.
a concerned Grenadian-American was
10. C. Sunshine, ed., GLrenada - The Peaceful
toward the military invasion of this Revolution
tiny E.P.I.C.A., Washington, D.C., 1982).
11. C. Sunshine, The Guardian, December 28,
Black nation by the mighty U.S. I looked
1983.
around me, talked with Grenadians on
12. E. Ray and B. Schaap, "U.S. Crushes
the street, the shops, the beaches, on
Caribbean Jewel," Covert Action Bulletin #20,
Winter 1984, p. 11.
porches in the solstice twilight. Grenada
13. Ibid., p. 13.
is their country. I am only a relative. I 14. Ibid., p. 5.
must listen long and hard and ponder
15. S. Taylor, New York Times, November 6, 1983,
the implications of what I have heard,
p. 20.
16. Ibid.
or be guilty of the same quick arrogance
17. Washington Post, November 21, 1983.
of the U.S. government in believing
18. CBS Evening News, December 18, 1983.
there are external solutions to Grenada's 19. The London Guardian, November 4, 1983.
future. 20. Grenada - The Peaceful Revolution, p. 87.
I also came for reassurance, to see if 2 1 . Carriacou - In the Mainstream of the Revolution
(Fedon Publishers, St. Georges, Grenada, 1983),
Grenada had survived the onslaught of pp. 54-57.
the most powerful nation on earth. She 22. Slogan of the Grenadian Revolution.

THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 29

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