Grenada

It is almost 20 years ago that the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada briefly occupied the world stage with images of invading marines and celebrating islanders. But as 6,000 US troops took possession of an island of fewer than 100,000 people in October 1983, there was confusion as to where the action was actually taking place. Viewers of Soviet television news bulletins were disconcerted to learn that American forces had invaded southern Spain and taken the Andalucian city of Granada.

Grenada's emergence from international obscurity was the culmination of four turbulent years of revolution and social experimentation. The New Jewel Movement, a group of young radicals, had ousted the dictatorial Eric Gairy in March 1979 and introduced long-overdue reforms for the island's impoverished majority. The revolutionary government, and especially its charismatic leader Maurice Bishop, won support at home and abroad, but the US viewed developments, particularly an alignment with Cuba, with deep suspicion. In the end, the revolution imploded in factional in-fighting, Bishop and several supporters were murdered and a short-lived and hated military council was swept away by the marines.

Today, those traumatic events still haunt this beautiful island. Bishop's body has never been found, while his killers, their death sentences commuted, languish in a jail high above the picturesque capital of St George's. No real reconciliation has taken place and families still wonder what happened to their relatives. At the same time, the bonanza of US aid and investment, promised after the 'intervention' by the Reagan Administration, never materialized. With the Cold War over, Grenada was again no more than a dot on the map.

But the legacy of Grenada's 'revo' is not entirely dead. Individuals and communities learned much about self-belief and organization during the New Jewel period and a lively trade-union and NGO sector is testimony to that politicization. Today, opposition politicians complain that the government of Keith Mitchell has recruited many people prominent during the revolutionary period, an accusation that is not denied. It seems that even those hostile to the official Marxism of 1979-83 recognize that the revolution introduced innovative and valuable reforms after decades of corruption and stagnation. Perhaps most significantly, the modern Point Salines airport, built with Cuban assistance and fancifully depicted as a Soviet airbase by Reagan, is nowadays the key to Grenada's modest prosperity.

The island, like all its neighbours, is pinning its hopes on tourism and the airport is central to such plans. Agriculture is still the rural mainstay, but falling prices and a crisis in the banana industry have driven many young people from family-run farms to look for work in town or abroad. Tourism, and to a lesser extent data processing, offers not only employment but also much-needed dollars to a government that is painfully aware of a yawning gap between imports and exports.

Even in tourism, the influence of the revolution can still be felt. Bishop's Government banned high-rise developments and discouraged big foreign-owned hotel chains. As a result, Grenada attracts visitors with its small, family-run hotels and guesthouses. With strong environmental legislation and a determined bid to make hotels buy food from local agricultural producers, the revolutionary regime was ahead of its time. Few tourists strolling along the idyllic Grand Anse beach may realize it, but their holiday experience owes much to a far-sighted and radical government that the White House saw only as a 'tyranny'.

James Ferguson