FEATURES

Grenada one year
after the invasion

This island with its 110,000 population
is perhaps on the way to losing its natural
character and instead becoming some-
thing like Bangkok during the Vietnam
war. Last year I saw merely some Rastas
smoking home-grown marijuana. With
the October invasion has also come the
hard drugs, heroin, opium and cocaine.

After the revolution of 1979 prostitu-
tion didn’t have a chance any more.

‘**Mama,”’ the chief ‘madam’ of the capi-
tal, resorted to cooking and till today has
remained in her small restaurant. Now
the so-called ‘oldest profession’ has been
revived — it is no longer easy to earn
one’s living.

Contrary to the noisy promises of
Reagan, the expected money from
heaven has not yet appeared. Un-
employment, which under the Bishop
government stood at 14 per cent — the
lowest for the whole English-speaking
Caribbean — has now suddenly jumped
to 40 percent. Many Grenadians estimate
that it is actually even higher than that.

It is depressing to, visit acquaintances
and friends from the poorer sections of
the people. Now things for them have got
even worse, the old cheerfulness, the old
nerve to be able to deal with the situation
are gone, instead a pessimistic mood
predominates.

~The Washington controlled interim
government of Nicholas Braithwaite has
alone sacked more than 3,000 employees
from the Public Services, as well as stop-
ping the majority of economic projects,
including the agro-industry, which was
still in its infancy.

In contrast to last year I had to drink
expensive cans imported from Canada
and California, the ‘‘local juice’’ doesn’t
exist anymore. On the land the fruit rots
for want of marketing.

Never had Grenada so many doctors
or people helping develop the country as
during the four and a half years of revo-
lution. They were all sent home, now
there is only a single dentist for the entire
island.

'

Tourism has also hit an all time low. A
number of hotels were bombarded dur-
ing the invasion and the remaining ones
are mainly used to billet soldiers, as well
as U.S. embassy personnel, members of
the CIA and about 200 experts in pscyho-
logical warfare (PSYOPS).

To make my way to the most ambiti-
ous and important project, the airport at
Point Salines, I had to take back paths and
climb over NATO-issue barbed wire, Be-
fore everyone could enter quite freely.
The U.S. students attending ‘‘St.
George’s University Medical School”
used the finished runway for jogging or for
motorbike races.

Numerous donors from both east
and west, including the EEC and the

Harbor of St. George’s, many of the hotels are being used to house the U.S. military:

October 25, marked the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Grenada.
To rub salt in the wound the occupation forces used: October to open the »
controversial airport at Point Salinis and to begin the trials of former New.
Jewel members accused with the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
In this report Claus Anton contrast his previous visits to the island during the
Bishop era, to the Grenada of today. This is an abridged translation of the
article first printed in the West German paper Deutsche Volkzeitung/die Tat.

Grenadan church, financed the scheme.
Working together had been workers
from Cuba and engineers from the
British firm Plessey in addition to others
from Finland and the USA.

And today? Reagan had always in-
sisted that later the airport would be used
for military purposes, and now it is, for
U.S. fighter planes. Never before has
Washington acquired so cheaply a new
military base.

Former sympathisers of the New
Jewel Movement (Jewel = Joint En-
deavor for Welfare, Education and
Liberation) are being persecuted. They
have all been sacked and are now unable
to find new jobs.

Even past visits to Cuba are sufficient
reason to fire someone. The interim ad-
ministration is employing the same

Soldiers take away hooded prisoner.

people in the police, who tortured and
murdered progressives during the reign
of the former dictator, Eric Gairy.

Shortly after the invasion Gairy re-
turned from his exile in the USA to his
spacious and well-guarded home,
which lies in the immediate vicinity to the
residence of Sir Paul Scoon, the man he
appointed to be Governor-General for
the British Crown in Grenada.

The opposition from Gairy’s time, is
the opposition of today. Once again
they’re confronted with such types as
Rushin police uniform. He used to almost
drown his prisoners by sticking their
heads down toilets and he would force
them to eat cockroaches, which in the
tripics can grow to be as big as 8 centi-
meters (3 ins) in length.

Those on Grenada today, who are
pledged to the aims of the Bishop
government are risking a lot; however
quite a few are doing it. Since the begin-
ning of the year there exists a new poli-
tical institution, which is causing the
U.S. occupation forces and the interim
government considerable headaches.

The institution is called the ‘* Maurice
Bishop and October 19th Martyrs
Foundation.”’ It carries on its work quite
openly and is becoming more and more
an assembly-point for supporters of the
NJM ...

Sections of the Foundation exist in
every district of Grenada ... The Bishop
Foundation finances its work from the
donations of sympathisers, although

i = ~

financial help which is not insignificant
is coming from solidarity groups abroad

In the recent past George Louison (th
former Agricultural Minister) and th
former Minister of Justice, Kendricl
Radix, visited North America and Wes!
ern Europe at the invitation of thes
groups. They have also received suppo!
from parties such as the Greens.

In the capital, immediately after th
invasion, groups with paint removed
visible signs of the Bishop era — W:
slogans were replaced with absut
graffiti of the new power. I read thé
‘Bishop sold us to Russia,”’ ‘‘We wan
to become a state of the USA” or ‘Gall
for President.”

In the shops there is an abundance of
shirts with the inscription — ‘‘Ameri¢
— thank you for liberating Grenada,
which as far as I could see hardly any0?
wore. More often, I met young peoP)
who were wearing T shirts with a portra
of Bishop, that carried the words, “Hi
Spirit Lives.”

In the rural areas, where the reforms‘
the NJM had the most effect, it seems ™
Revolution is even more popular than!
the more heavily patrolled St. George
In Sauteurs, at the other end of the #
land, none of the shops sell shirts cel
brating the invasion. Instead most 0
shops display Bishop posters. |

One wall was painted: ‘The Frien!
ship between Cuba and Grenada is ¥
destructible.”’

On Dec. 3 “‘free’’ elections will be he
in Grenada. Braithwaite, the intet!
president, wants to keep the U.S. 0%
tingent on the island, at least until the!
He says that until the elections the mal
aim will be to deal with the ‘“‘mar™
indoctrination’’ — the danger of left S¥
version has not yet been removed.

Such statements might mak
Grenada’s true friends feel optimist

rather than anything else.
a

War or revolution: are the choices so simple?

(A statement by the Central Executive Council of the
Young Communist League of Canada.)

‘*War or Revolution’’? If only the choices in life were
as clear cut. Apparently there are people about, small in
number albeit, that believe the riddles of human exis-
tence in the 20th Century can be reduced to this absurd
level. Such is the position of the Trotskyist League (4th
International), et al. In Toronto, they have been busily
distributing a letter of resignation of one Maria
Louladakis submitted to the Toronto Disarmament
Network Youth Subcommittee. It is the acceptance of
this incredulous position that led Maria, a dedicated,
hard working young peace activist to abandon the peace
movement in favor of ‘‘workers’ revolution’.

For young people active in the peace movement there
is naturally a certain impatience and often frustration
with the Herculean tasks of organizing and unifying a
broad peace movement. This is detected in their ten-
dency to either retreat from activism or to emphasize

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 7, 1984

tactics of civil disobediance. The “‘war or revolution”
position is skillfully the synthesis of the two — rejection
of the necessity of the struggle for peace combined with
ideological ‘‘civil disobedience’, i.e., chanting ‘‘revo-
lution now’’. Simply on this basis, and with a potentially
fertile audience of young, impatient peace activists, this
line must be exposed for the charade it is.

The essential feature of the analysis the Trotskyist
League puts forward runs to the effect that socialism and
peace are incompatible: the struggle for peace leads the
workers into collaboration with the bourgeoisie and thus
away from socialism; and all this buttressed with some
specious quotations from V.I. Lenin and a sparse over-
view of history since 1917.

To argue that socialism and peace are incompatible in
the present struggle of the working people and pro-
gressive forces is but an infantile retreat into pre-
Homosapiens logical thought. If the bourgeoisie is aware
of its class interests, it is clearly aware that peace leads

inextricably toward socialism on the global scale- Th
Russian Revolution was victorious in achieving peat
and survived as a result, the national liberation mov
ment has been extremely successful in periods of
tente, rather than periods of hostilities, the working cla
in all countries is in favor of peace. i
But no, to the Trotskyist League, strategy and tacti
are but one in the same — ‘‘workers’ revolution”. 1t¢
only be attained by ‘“‘workers’ revolution’: |
propagandizing for ‘‘workers’ revolution’’ and any 0°
struggle is class collaboration. 4
If workers want peace, a 32-hour work week, on
increase in their cost-of-living allowance, only el
ers’ revolution’ can achieve this end. © “i
The alternatives are hardly as stark as war oF 7
lution. As Lenin stated in a speech to the First Const
of the All-Russia Navy, ‘‘one thing is clear: to kill wat
to defeat capital, and Soviet power has started the stt?
gle to that end’’. ae