Commentary: Maurice Bishop was my friend and I know the Grenada story Published on October 19, 2013 By Jai Parasram I am deeply offended by American writers who, after 30 years, continue to push the propaganda that America saved the Grenadians and that the people welcomed the invasion of their island. Jai Parasram is the author of Far From the Mountain, a series of political stories and commentaries covering Trinidad and Tobago over the period 2007 to 2012 and covers the a turbulent period from the struggles within the opposition UNC, the change of leadership and the rise of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as the first female PM of T&T. He may be contacted at jparasram@hotmail or through his website Grenada was very personal to me and still is. Maurice Bishop was my friend and I know the Grenada story better than most journalists because Maurice told me what was happening in Grenada when I last spoke with him in New Delhi at the Non aligned Conference in 1983. He knew something was going to happen and it would not be pretty. And one of the people who truly understood that Grenada was a progressive democratic state under the Bishop administration was Allan Alexander, the Trinidad and Tobago lawyer who was writing the Grenada constitution when Maurice and the others were slaughtered by a murderous gang after the Grenadian people freed him from captivity. The Americans who subsequently invaded the island were not the angels they claim to be. They were an invasion force acting on behalf of their government to crush what Washington viewed as a dangerous threat to “democracy” in the Caribbean and the Americas. It was part of a plot that was hatched long before Bernard Coard moved against Maurice. The whole thing had the backing of Caribbean leaders like Edward Seaga, Eugenia Charles and Tom Adams. It was Adams who allowed the Americans to stage the whole thing from Barbados and keep journalists in the dark. When the American PR gurus showed up they took a selected band of journalists to show them the American version of reality in the island. Adams refused to let the Barbadian TV service broadcast pictures. My friends at CBC Barbados gave me the tape and I broadcast it back at TTT the night of the invasion. I was unable to get to Grenada because the Americans threatened to shoot down the private plane that my TV station chartered to take me to Grenada. I was only able to reach Barbados, where the Americans had taken charge and treating the Barbadian minister as their puppet. The popular fairy tale is that a bunch of communists were threatening American medical students in St George’s and that the invasion was partly to rescue them and partly to restore law and order in the aftermath of the chaos caused by the arrest and murder of Bishop and some of his cabinet ministers. No student was under threat. The Cubans who were building the Point Salines airport were there to do just that. And, yes, there was a stash of arms because from the day Maurice and the New Jewel boys chased the dictator Eric Gairy out of office Grenada was under threat from the “free” world. Caribbean leaders met in Trinidad to decide on a course of action but Seaga and company walked out and went to Washington where President Reagan was waiting to execute his orders to take over Grenada. Why was America so worried about this tiny rock in the Caribbean Sea? Reagan was frightened that communism would take root and threaten the security of the region. His triangle of “evil” included Guyana, led by Forbes Burnham, and Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega was in charge. They had already disposed of Michael Manley in Jamaica through the election of 1980 and they could not move Fidel Castro. So Maurice and tiny Grenada became the target to “teach the commies” a lesson and get the Americas fully in line with what America considered good for us. The Americans who keep writing about their country as the saviour of Grenadians should try to find out the truth. Why was Reagan meeting in private at the White House in early 1983 with Caribbean diplomats and ministers? Why was Washington telling these people to destabilise and undermine Grenada? Why was there an instruction that Grenada must not get any help from the Caribbean Basin Initiative or from the Caribbean Development Bank? They should ask about Russians living in North America who were part of the plot to destabilise Grenada. If you ask Grenadians today they would tell you they still love Maurice because he was helping build a kind of participatory democracy in which everyone was involved. It was something that you could do in a small island state but not in America. Maurice was interested in people, not in governing them. He cared about improving their lives and pulling Grenada up from the abyss where Gairy had pushed it. America had every opportunity to help Granada as did all the countries in the Caribbean but that did not suit Washington’s agenda. American writers also need to ask why Washington intervened instead of Great Britain. The Queen was the Head of State and the Governor General was her representative. Nobody told Margaret Thatcher that the marines were heading to Grenada and nobody told her of the plotting that was taking place long before Coard and company arrested Maurice. American writers need to also recall that Tom Adams told a British journalist that the Governor General had no contact with the outside world, which is why he could not appeal to London for help. How then did he get the message to Washington? Adams never provided the answer to explain the contradiction. When somebody writes the true history of Grenada and that dark period when the Americans destroyed a true people’s democratic revolution, the world would learn the truth for the first time – and the Americans would reject it as fiction. Somebody needs to tell the world that Maurice Bishop died because he wanted to build a new free and democratic Grenada, based on equality for all. That’s why Coard got help from “friends” to rise against Maurice. And they would also learn that no Grenadian welcomed the Americans because of a dislike of Maurice. They welcomed the Americans because Hudson Austin had created mayhem and they needed to escape that. But how did it all come to pass? How did Coard rise against his leader? That is the question that we all need to ask the Americans. They needed to create a crisis to give them an excuse. They planned and executed it well and the cameras were ready to capture the moment and tell the world the grateful Grenadians were saying, “Thank God for America.”
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 08:56:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015