“Was your life ever in danger?” I asked in our interview.
“Yes,” he responded with only a slight expression of emotion on his face.
I was sitting across from Don Rojas, who had served as the press secretary and director of communications for the late Maurice Bishop, the Prime Minister of the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada. He was describing the process of the 1983 coup that overthrew Bishop, and the eventual murder of Bishop and many of his key allies by the coup-plotters (led by Bishop’s supposed comrades, Bernard Coard and General Hudson Austin). Had circumstances played themselves out differently, Rojas could have found himself facing the Coard/Austin firing squad.
The degeneration of the Grenadian Revolution was followed by a U.S. invasion aimed, allegedly, at restoring order and protecting the lives of U.S. medical students enrolled at St. George’s University. Though there was never any threat to the students, the administration of then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan was able to make the straight-faced assertion that there was great danger and that the United States needed to intervene. This invasion served as the coup d’grace to a radical process that started in 1979.
Grenada is a small island in the Caribbean, in a chain called the Grenadines. In 1979 it was led by the tyrant Eric Gairy. A left-wing opposition party, the New Jewel Movement, found itself facing intense repression from the Gairy regime including alleged plans by Gairy for the assassination of New Jewel Movement leaders. At that point the NJM launched a successful and very popular uprising against Gairy and proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), quickly aligning itself with other movements and nations that it saw as anti-imperialist.
The PRG, with the assistance of Cuba, began a transformation process that included the creation of mass-membership organizations in order to promote grassroots democracy. Yet, from nearly the beginning of this process, the Grenadian Revolution found itself facing immense hostility from the U.S. government, including various efforts at destabilization. With the advent of the Reagan administration, such efforts increased in scope and tempo.
The destabilization efforts were noteworthy for the manner in which the mainstream, elite media was used to paint a picture of Grenada that departed from the truth in significant ways. There are two interesting examples that help to illustrate this point. First, was the construction of Grenada’s airport; and, second, the question of Cuban advisors.
The PRG, recognizing the economic challenges facing Grenada, concluded that an international airport needed to be constructed in order to increase tourism. From the beginning the U.S. advanced rumors suggesting that the airport was not to be an airport, but instead to be a military airbase to be used by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Such assertions even made their way into Left circles where suspicion of the alleged revolutionary objectives of the USSR had been increasing over the years. The United States was never able to present any credible evidence suggesting that the airport was to be anything other than an airport. Yet, during those years in the renewed Cold War, paranoia + anti-communism + anti-nationalism trumped facts and reason.
The question of the Cubans was another case in point. Cuban advisors were sent to assist the PRG in many aspects of the transformative effort. There were, however, no Cuban military units. Despite this fact, the Reagan administration and their allies continued to press the point, suggesting that there were Cuban military forces on the island which would imply that Grenada was a Cuban proxy. Again, there were no facts advanced to make this point, but it was asserted and reasserted, and played a role in the approach that the media took toward the U.S. military invasion that followed the coup by a week.
Despite the small size of Grenada, its revolutionary process engaged many activists in the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. The National Black United Front, for instance, an organization formed in 1980 by Black nationalists, Pan Africanists and other leftists, developed a close relationship with the New Jewel Movement. Visits to Grenada took place, and there were continuous discussions in the United States among Black left activists as to how to express solidarity to this Black, English-speaking revolutionary movement in the Caribbean. Dismayed by the hostility of the United States toward the Grenadian PRG, many U.S. Black leftists were unable and/or unwilling to identify potential problems that emerged in the revolutionary process.
In September 1983, two good friends of mine—both leftists—honeymooned in Grenada. This was the second visit by one, and the first by the other. When they returned we had a very sobering discussion. They sensed that something was wrong in the Grenadian revolutionary process. They indicated that mass-membership organizations seemed to be losing steam. My friends conveyed more of a ‘feeling’ than an analysis, but I could tell that they were worried.
In our interview, for The Global African (on teleSUR English), Don Rojas confirmed that there were problems that had been emerging for some months. A split was developing within the leadership of the PRG over the direction that the revolution should advance. Forces grouped around Coard—an individual whose reputation was that of a very pro-Soviet old-style leftist—believed that the revolutionary process was moving too slowly. They began to see Bishop not as a popular, revolutionary figure in whom so many had invested their trust and confidence, but rather as a less-than-committed populist who had to be replaced.
“Why,” I asked Rojas, “did Coard and others decide that they had to take the course of a coup in order to address their differences?” Rojas indicated that this was part of the mystery of the entire circumstances. In his response, I could see how that mystery, and the tragedy associated with it, had weighed on him these last 31 years.
To some extent, however, the coup should not have been a complete surprise. One of the challenges that has faced revolutionary Left movements since the early part of the 20th century, is that of institutionalizing popular control and a democratic process, all linked to the notion of revolutionary leadership. Coard, as Rojas acknowledged, was in that sense not very different from Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea/Cambodia. They both saw themselves, with almost religious zealousness, as representing the aspirations of the people and the vision for the future. To that extent they were unprepared to let anything, or anyone, stand in their way. Both also made a fundamental mistake in not respecting what I tend to think of as “the mandate of the revolution.” Their failure to support a mass-based revolutionary process, which can only be successful when it operates with mass participation and respects the objectives that the people believe they have endorsed.
In the case of Grenada, the uprising of 1979 was an uprising against corruption, tyranny and subservience to Britain and the United States. It was not, at least at that point, a movement for socialism. Bishop, and many other leaders of the NJM, understood this. Coard and Austin, on the other hand, dismissed this fact. But in both cases, provisions had not been created to actually engage the masses of Grenadians in a process in which they would be the ultimate decision-makers.
The October 1983 coup in Grenada, followed closely by the U.S. invasion of the island, not only signaled the death of a profoundly interesting and important revolutionary process, but was also another indicator of a challenge facing the global Left. There is an integral relationship between leadership and democratic governance. It is not a one-way channel from the leaders to the people. If there is not a democratic interaction between the people and the leaders, the process will stagnate, if not collapse altogether, a fact that became quite evident throughout the 20th century. Grenada, through its successes as well as ultimate failure, was a sign-post warning the global Left that it would find itself in an ideological and practical cul de sac if it did not address the complicated dynamics of, on the one hand, external hostility from the capitalist powers, as well as, on the other hand, the internal challenge of advancing a transformational process with, and not for, those who have been historically dispossessed.
A postscript. The airport that the United States ‘warned’ would serve as a Soviet/Cuban military airbase, finally was opened as an international airport, as had always been the plan. Can you guess the name of the airport? The Maurice Bishop International Airport. I cannot say for certain whether this represents a cruel joke or a profound irony.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of teleSUR English’s The Global African. The full interview with Don Rojas can be found there. Fletcher is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. He can be followed on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
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