The Grenada Revolution In The Caribbean Present

The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory is the first scholarly book from the humanities on the subject of the Grenada Revolution and the US intervention. It is simultaneously a critique, tribute, and memorial. It argues that in both its making and its fall, the 1979-1983 Revolution was a transnational event that deeply impacted politics and culture across the Caribbean and its diaspora during its life and in the decades since its fall. Drawing together studies of landscape, memorials, literature, music, painting, photographs, film and TV, cartoons, memorabilia traded on e-bay, interviews, everyday life, and government, journalistic, and scholarly accounts, the book assembles and analyzes an archive of divergent memories. In an analysis that is relevant to all micro-states, the book reflects on how Grenada's small size shapes memory, political and poetic practice, and efforts at reconciliation.

Studying cultural memory of the Grenada Revolution as it surfaces in literature, music, the visual arts, law, landscape, and everyday life, this book approaches the 1979-1983 Grenada Revolution as a pan-Caribbean event. Puri reveals the deep consequences for Caribbean politics and culture even today.

The 1979 Grenada Revolution, orchestrated by the New Jewel Movement, culminated four-and-a-half years later in the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and the US-led military invasion which threw Grenada onto the international political stage. Though much has been written on the Revolution and its untimely and violent demise, the overwhelming majority of the authors have been non-Grenadian. All the contributors to this volume, except one, are Grenadian. In this regard, it is unique, and captures the voices of persons who were active participants, children, teenagers, young adults, and some yet unborn in the 1979 to 1983 period, illustrative of the continued influence of the Revolution on Grenadians. The essays examine the legality of the Revolution, the historical connections between it and the 1795 Fédon’s Rebellion, the nation’s collective memory of the Revolution by its second generation, the conflict between religion and the Revolution, the empowerment of women by the revolutionary process, and the role of poetry and art in raising salient and often difficult and painful aspects of the Revolution. This collection of essays captures the Revolution from a Grenadian perspective.

In Part 1 of this book, Dr. Schoenhals places the Grenadian Revolution and its aftermath in historical perspective. He explores the Anglo-French rivalry over the island, the period of slavery, and the British colonial administration and gives particular emphasis to the Gairy decades (1951-1979). His discussion of the People's Revolutionary Government is based on extensive Interviews with the leadership of the New Jewel Movement, foreign diplomats, and Grenadian citizens, and on a review of documents captured by the United States during occupation of the island. In Part 2, Dr. Melanson, after briefly reviewing the nature of U.S. interests In the region and U.S.-Caribbean relations during the Nixon years, focuses on the Carter and Reagan administrations' policies in the Caribbean and relations with the Grenadian government. He examines the justification offered by President Reagan for the 1983 intervention, domestic responses to the action in the United States, and its implications for Reagan's Central American policies. Finally, he considers whether the action will prove to be a prelude to a new domestic consensus about the use of U.S. military power in the Third World.

Grenada experienced much turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in an armed Marxist revolution, a bloody military coup, and finally in 1983 Operation Urgent Fury, a United States–led invasion. Wendy C. Grenade combines various perspectives to tell a Caribbean story about this revolution, weaving together historical accounts of slain Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the New Jewel Leftist Movement, and contemporary analysis. There is much controversy. Though the Organization of American States formally requested intervention from President Ronald Reagan, world media coverage was largely negative and skeptical, if not baffled, by the action, which resulted in a rapid defeat and the deposition of the Revolutionary Military Council. By examining the possibilities and contradictions of the Grenada Revolution, the contributors draw upon thirty years’ of hindsight to illuminate a crucial period of the Cold War. Beyond geopolitics, the book interrogates but transcends the nuances and peculiarities of Grenada’s political history to situate this revolution in its larger Caribbean and global context. In doing so, contributors seek to unsettle old debates while providing fresh understandings about a critical period in the Caribbean’s postcolonial experience. This collection throws into sharp focus the centrality of the Grenada Revolution, offering a timely contribution to Caribbean scholarship and to wider understanding of politics in small developing, postcolonial societies.