Grenada Revisited: An Interim Report PDF by Audre Lorde (1984)

GRENADA REVISITED: AN INTERIM REPORT Author(s): Audre Lorde Source: The Black Scholar , January-February, 1984, 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 JSTOR is a not-for-pro...

GRENADA REVISITED: AN INTERIM REPORT Author(s): Audre Lorde Source: The Black Scholar , January-February, 1984, 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 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Black Scholar This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  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 - THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 21 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 PAGE 22 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 1984 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 23 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 PAGE 24 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 25 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 PAGE 26 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 27 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 PAGE 28 THE BLACK SCHOLAR JANUARY I FEBRUARY 1984 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.248.156.45 on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 05:14:50 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms