Towards Healing: Confronting the Impacts of the Grenadian Revolution
Introduction
We sat across from each other. There was kindness, mystery, and an unquestionable sadness in his eyes, seemingly stretching and shaping his posture. He was almost broken. Almost. I was about to interview the father of a friend. He served as a captain in the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA), and had been imprisoned along with others for the October 19th murders of Maurice Bishop and other political leaders. My friend knew that I was preparing to present at the Grenada Country Conference, “Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution 1979–83” hosted by the University of the West Indies Open Campus in St. George’s, Grenada. He thought that it would be important for me to meet his father. Our encounter was the culmination of direct and intergenerational trauma as a result of the 1979–83 Grenada Revolution.
I had not expected for this stranger to help illuminate for me what are, and continue to be, silenced, yet revealing parts of my father’s past. I knew that there had to be an explanation behind the bitterness and anger that sometimes seemed to percolate from his pores, but I had never made the connection to the socialist Revolution of 1979. I knew that my father was involved in the PRA, but he had never divulged what his participation had been; in fact, he rarely talked about his past. Like so many young people at the time, my father was largely apolitical, going through the daily motions in a “postcolonial” state still trying to grapple with what independence and freedom looked like. He was also born and raised in the New Jewel Movement (NJM) stronghold of St. Paul’s; Mardi Gras, to be exact. The Revolution presented him and other youth an opportunity to play a critical role in shaping their country’s political future.
In the years leading up to the 1979 coup d’etat, revolutionary fervor was progressively strengthening and was stretching to every corner of the 344-square-mile island, with a population of roughly 100,000. The Revolution provided political consciousness-raising and a sense of purpose to the majority working-class populace. The launch of the Grenadian Revolution (also known as and referred to throughout this chapter as the Grenada Revolution) challenged the messages coming from the state, family, and from within: that change was limited, that it was already defined, and that anything outside of colonial, patriarchal, and heterosexist boundaries would be punished.
From being the descendants of slaves, from people who’d been colonised, from people who’d been tossed aside, we suddenly became the controllers of our own destiny. For 400 years, our forebears were enslaved. We suffered in order to produce Europe’s wealth. After slavery we were further enslaved under colonialism. But in 1979, with our own ability, by our own efforts, we changed our course. Yes, others helped, but it was us.1
During our interview, my friend’s father pronounced, with teary eyes: “I feel like we failed you, we failed your generation.” His words were painted with such pain and profundity that I could not help but respond with emotion. I wondered how often he had thought about this. How many times had he really examined the impacts of such words and feelings on his psyche?
My friend’s father’s words are indicative of some of the voiced, yet variously experienced, impacts of the socialist revolution on Grenadians. These sentiments were evident at the Grenada Country Conference when participants and some panelists shared concerns over what they saw as a lack of political and social will by the state and society, to critically and seriously address past personal and collective wounds, hurt, and trauma. Little had been done to address the physical wounds, let alone the mental and emotional. Grenadians, participants in the Revolution and those not yet born, were experiencing the pains and trauma felt as a result of such significant events in the form of direct, historical and/or intergenerational trauma, the latter referring to the holding and passing down of collective trauma from one generation to the next. Collective trauma can be defined as the trauma resulting from a shared experience of violence, repression, and subjugation such as slavery, civil war, unrest, and/or genocide.
The words of Maurice Bishop, “they’ve turned the guns on the people!,” as captured in Bruce Paddington’s documentary on the revolution, help to explain why the implosion of the Grenada Revolution continues to weigh so heavily on the minds and bodies of Grenadians.2 One of the rules of the PRA that helped guide the People’s Militia was that at no point would the guns be turned on the people. That point came on Fort Rupert (now named Fort George) and represented a significant departure from the people-centered movement to one that was now unpredictable and disconnected from the very principles of the Revolution. They had turned the guns on the people. Furthermore, “October 19, 1983, was a decidedly public, highly spectacular moment of collective trauma for Grenadians,”3 as Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Fitzroy Bain, Unison Whiteman, Norris Bain, Evelyn Bullen, Keith Hayling, Evelyn Maitland, and Vincent Noel were gunned down at Fort George in front of thousands of Grenadians who had come to save their Prime Minister.
An important factor when examining the magnitude of the implosion and subsequent U.S. invasion in 1983 is the size of the island. With a population of 100,000, the killings and imprisonment—of each other, family, and community members—were personal. The soldier who jailed or killed your brother could be your own relative or someone whom you passed everyday on the street. This played a critical role in how people experienced the Revolution and in subsequent attempts to heal and transition.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Grenada (TRC) was established in 2000 to explore and assess political events, particularly those related to the socialist revolution from 1976–1991. The TRC began gathering data on September 4, 2001, and acknowledged in their final report the role of direct and historical trauma. When referencing obstacles to healing and reconciliation, the Commission said:
Going back to the days of Eric Matthew Gairy up to the 1979 revolution, then to the tragic events of October 19th, 1983, and the intervention of a combined U.S. and Caribbean forces on October 25th, 1983, one sees that apart from the many persons who lost their lives during those periods, many more have suffered and have been wounded and scarred (some permanently) physically, emotionally, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually. Those wounds are responsible for a tremendous amount of bitterness among many Grenadians up to today.4
The report by the TRC coupled with the interview process with my friend’s father helped galvanize my interest in exploring some of the ongoing traumatic impacts of the Grenadian Revolution on those who participated in one way or another, on those not yet born such as myself, future generations of Grenadians, and on those still imprisoned, mentally, physically, and/or emotionally. This paper just scratches the surface.
Thirty-three years since the implosion of the Revolution and the Reagan-led U.S. invasion, Grenadians of all generations continue to feel the impacts of those revolutionary years through their blood memory and in material ways, vis-à-vis economic policies, in the education system, and in how political possibilities are defined, stifled and, in some instances, criminalized. Using an anti-capitalist and Black feminist approach, this chapter will briefly interrogate some of the emotional, economic, social, and political impacts of the Grenadian Revolution of 1979–83 on the state and people of Grenada. I approach the question of “why don’t the poor rise up?” recognizing the ways in which multigenerational trauma is passed on from generation to generation, and the material ways by which poverty and political conflict can seriously affect one’s decision to engage in resistance and liberation movements.
The Socio-economic Landscape and Pushback of the Grenada Revolution
The Grenadian Revolution was the first socialist revolution in the Anglophone Caribbean, and was a response to the dictatorial leadership of the inaugural Prime Minister Eric Matthew Gairy. Grenada, trying to ground itself post-independence (February 7, 1974) and reeling from the impacts of a plantation economy and the global economic realities of the day, witnessed high unemployment rates, worsening poverty rates, and limited access to a restricted and colonized education system that reflected the class and race stratification of the society. By 1978, unemployment rates were at an astronomical high, at 49%, and the global oil crisis at the time meant skyrocketing inflation rates.5 Criminal profiteering, decreasing value for Grenadian agricultural products, increasing police brutality, and sexual violence became mainstays for Grenadian women trying to keep their sources of income.6 Contrary to Gairy’s entrance into the political arena as a trade unionist challenging the plantation aristocracy and fighting for the everyday working Grenadian, by March 1979 Gairy had grown wealthy, “owning $25 million (EC) worth of property in Grenada alone.”7
The 1970s saw the rise of neoliberalism as a response to the decreasing rate of profit affecting global capitalism.8 Under new neoliberal policies we saw increasing demands for limited or no state intervention and new rules on tariffs, ushering in global free trade. Deregulation, rule of the market, privatization, and the elimination of the “public good” were the foundations of this growing neoliberal agenda, and newly independent Grenada had to fit its struggling economy within this global context.
It is particularly important to note that as the global economy was experiencing reductions in its growth rates,9 the Grenadian economy under the rule of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) was witnessing increases in its GDP.10 By November 1981, Grenada announced a reduction in unemployment from 50% to under 30%, approximately $4 million in financial assistance was provided to the poorest sectors of the population to assist with home repair, and the Ministry of Housing created the National Housing Project. In addition, through the Community Work Brigades, community centers, bath and laundry facilities, and post offices were built all over the island. By comparison, during the 1979–83 rule of the PRG the United States experienced two recessions, in 1980 and 1981.11
Uprisings in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago that were pushing for Black Power across the region helped to fuel resistance struggles in the smaller English-speaking islands of the Caribbean such as in St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Antigua, Dominica, and Grenada, and these regional and international resistance movements were critical in shaping the political fabric of this small island state.12 The Grenadian Revolution did not just belong to Grenadians: other Caribbean progressives were not only paying attention to what was happening in Grenada, but were also physically involved and very much invested in the material outcomes of the Revolution.
By the 1970s, power and any semblance of democratic control were firmly in the hands of Gairy, with some support in the rural areas. His control was violently enforced.13 Fueled by frustrations of corruption, repressive tactics by the government, and the excessive use of force by state sponsored military groups such as the Mongoose Gang, members of the New Jewel Movement began amplifying their organizing strategies and mobilizing the people of Grenada. In an interview with David Scott, Grenadian author Merle Collins discusses memory and trauma and her recollection of the Mongoose Gang in her book Angel:
DS: What do you know about the infamous Mongoose Gang? I’ll tell you why I ask. It really doesn’t figure at all in Angel. But I also ask because it is so central to the NJM story of the terror of Gairy, and of the need to look at possibilities of removing Gairy from office. But talking to some people recently in Grenada, I have the sense that maybe that story has been exaggerated, that the so-called Mongoose Gang didn’t constitute the kind of threat that it was portrayed to be.
MC: Well, I don’t know. The mythology, if one might call it that, was certainly there and strong in Grenada. So I don’t think they exaggerated that feeling about the Mongoose Gang, the sense that Gairy had a group of thugs that he could rely on. I can’t say how much they exaggerated details, but that feeling was there. And of course there were the beatings [of NJM leadership] in Grenville. There was a sense of siege within the population. I had a cousin whom I thought was in the secret police; I don’t know whether he was actually part of the Mongoose Gang, but I heard rumors that he was in the secret police. And on one occasion, when I was teaching in Sauteurs, I picked him up in Paradise (in a little car I used to drive at the time). Someone was sitting with me in the car and we started talking about politics; no big set of talk about politics. But my friend said something like, “Let’s go up and we have to come back quickly, because these days you never know who’s stopping you on the road.” And me joking about it said, “Well, if they come, I’ll just give them me gun I have here.”
DS: You said that!
MC: Yes. And I was probably being a bit provocative because I had heard things about him [the cousin]. And he [the cousin] made me stop the car. And he said, “If you have a gun, you going have to give it up.” And I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he said, “You just say you have a gun. If you have a gun, give it up. I’m making a citizen’s arrest.” And I say, “You joking.” I say, “You’re sitting in my car; I just gave you a lift! What you telling me ’bout a citizen’s arrest?” And he asked me again, “Do you have a gun?” So I said, “Look mister, I have no gun. Just drop out here for me please.” So there were these kinds of tensions. And I don’t think this was an incident that was just me in my family. There were these tensions within [many] families, because there was the sense that the secret police and Mongoose Gang existed everywhere. And then I remember the Mongoose Gang group jumping in St. George’s around the time of a demonstration and singing, “Jewel, behave yourself, dey go jail us for murder.” So you had that kind of intimidation going on.
DS: But were these fellows “jumping” in the street identifiable in a specific way as Mongoose Gang members? Were they, like the Tontons Macoutes in Haiti, dressed in a distinctive uniform?
MC: No, not dressed in a particular way. You just knew. Around you, people would be saying, “Gairy Mongoose Gang in town.” You kind of knew particular areas that [Gairy] recruited people from. [In that sense] they were people that you could identify; in most parts of St. George’s, where Gairy’s support was generally weak, people would hardly know who they were, but there was a sense that he recruited people from particular areas where his support was strong. So the Mongoose Gang thing was not just an invention. There was intimidation and there was a sense of fear of the Mongoose Gang. I saw them jumping on the street with that chant: “Jewel, behave yourself, dey go jail us for murder.” And this was during that period in the early 1970s of intense organization by the NJM. I’ve also written about it in the poem “Nabel-String.”14
“Bloody Sunday” and “Bloody Monday” were brutal examples of Gairy’s repressive rule and help illustrate the terror and fear that Grenadians were living under leading up to the Revolutionary period. “Bloody Monday” also known as the “Battle of St. George’s” refers to January 21, 1974, the day Maurice Bishop’s father, Rupert Bishop, was gunned down as he stood in the doorway of Otway House, home of Grenada’s Seamen’s and Waterfront Workers Union. One account has it that he had stepped outside to appeal to the police to let the women and children be allowed to go home—the women and children had retaliated against the police after a soft drink bottle truck was confiscated. Rupert Bishop was then gunned down.15 A month prior, on “Bloody Sunday”16 (November 18, 1973) Grenadians witnessed the bloody beating of NJM leaders, including Maurice Bishop, Unison Whiteman, and Selwyn Strachan, who were severely beaten by Gairy’s police (led by the infamous Inspector Innocent Belmar) in Grenville, St. Andrew’s.17 These were all public beatings, meant to be visible, violent, and leave an obvious message to anyone who challenged Gairy’s rule.
When assessing the impact of the Revolution on the emotional, mental, and physical health of the Grenadian society, it is imperative that the events that led up to the formal Revolution of 1979–83 be brought into the equation. The reign of terror, which included the incidents of “Bloody Sunday” and “Bloody Monday,” had fatal and long-lasting impacts on one’s decision to join the resistance movement. Indicative of the intimidation tactics used by Gairy and his Mongoose Gang, Grenadians would joke that “a Grenadian… went to a dentist in Barbados, but the dentist couldn’t get him to open his mouth.”18
In response to the Black Power movements taking place across the region, the state increased its repressive actions. As a response to Trinidad and Tobago, Gairy stated:
Our Police Force is being doubled to meet the situation. The force are aware of the diligence exercised by the Trinidad Police. Grenada’s Police Force is certainly not on a lower level than the Trinidad Police Force in any respect. Today, the Grenadian Policeman knows that by his efforts in stamping out the attempts of those involved in Black Power or any other subversive movement, he can win the award of ‘Policeman of the Year’ and climb the ladder of promotion or receive monetary awards. The Police are geared to keep this country clean and in an atmosphere of peace and quiet at all times.19
Some have challenged the legitimacy of the Revolution and the March 13, 1979 coup, claiming that the NJM should have followed the rule of law and used the Westminster system of governance to win the leadership through general elections. However, as exemplified by the ruthless violence unleashed, encouraged and maintained by Gairy, and compounded by the public’s loss of confidence in Gairy’s willingness to follow “the law,” this critique needs to be challenged. Locally and regionally, it was perceived that Gairy had stolen, and will probably always steal, the elections20 (there were critiques of the first post-Independence elections of 1976 when an anti-Gairy political alliance lost the election by 78 votes.)21 These served as reminders of his tight grip on power and how difficult it would be to remove him. It appeared that the only way to shift power was to forcibly take it. Furthermore, if the Revolution signified a shift toward decolonizing Grenada’s political, economic, cultural, and social landscape, then what would it have meant to continue using a system of law that was created and implemented by the previous colonizer, and that furthermore relied on the unequal application of justice across race, class, and gender divides?
Coloniality of Nationalism and Independence
Defined as a bloodless coup, under the PRG Grenadians witnessed significant improvements in education, health care, the advancement of women’s, children’s, and youth rights, and new structures facilitated a more interpersonal and accountable way of governing and speaking with the masses. However, one of the more significant outcomes of the revolution was a resurgence of personal and political pride, authority, and a redefinition of our relationships with each other, with power, and with our environment, embodied by the Grenadian people. There was an overwhelming feeling of agency, urgency, hope, and an inalienable right to demand more than just basic rights. Grenadians were no longer going to beg: we were going to take what was ours. A renewed and potent sense of community, political, and militant action was developing on the island.
The PRG’s internationalist approach played an important role in legitimizing the PRG, as Grenada linked its own struggles and gains to regional and global struggles for true independence and liberation. This internationalist approach impacted the Grenadian narrative and fostered an understanding of nationalism that acknowledged, yet also challenged, colonial borders. In his opening address to the First International Conference in Solidarity with Grenada held on the island from November 23–25th in 1981, Bishop stated that the
Conference manifests our [Grenadians’] continuing strict adherence to international principles. We have always scrupulously avoided viewing our struggle, our revolutionary process, from a narrow nationalist perspective. We have long understood that the world revolutionary process, the struggle of oppressed mankind everywhere is one and indivisible. Thus, this International Solidarity Conference holds grave importance as it bears testimony to our commitment to the notable concept of internationalism.22
Though Bishop and other PRG freedom fighters did not use terms like Pan-Africanism and coloniality to explain why Grenadians chose to identify with global struggles, it clearly remained an important part of their analysis and political actions. There was a recognition that coloniality did not only manifest itself in the ways by which our bodies and minds were valued as labor producing machinery for the purposes of capital, the ways in which we saw ourselves and our global perspectives as well as the wars being waged by imperial powers; but that coloniality also represented our long-standing crisis of epistemological, cultural, economic, and political dependence. Coloniality is constitutive of the hegemonic mind, the white, masculinist, heterosexist, or national chauvinist.23 Coloniality’s hegemonic power and grasp over our labor, our lands, our sexualities, and governance structures took the form of the “nation-state, capitalism, the nuclear family, and eurocentrism.”24 The Grenada Revolution attempted to challenge the coloniality of our nation and, more so, of ourselves. However, if coloniality constitutes and is constitutive of the nation state, then is it possible to adhere to any nationalism, be it Grenadian, Black, or Afrikan nationalism? Is it possible to engage in liberation under the banner of nationalism? Can nationalism exist devoid of its historic and epistemological ties to white supremacy, coloniality, and capitalism, and not replicate the nation state structure and, ultimately, state-sanctioned violence?
Trauma and memory: the need for healing justice
Examining the impacts of the Revolution within the framework of direct and historical/intergenerational trauma is critical as it helps to shed light on a few things, such as being able to feel such visceral responses to the events of the Revolution, even for those who did not live through it. It helps to explain the feelings of empathy, pain, and anger, when told stories and experiences about the Revolution, and while visiting important physical sites, such as where Bishop and others were gunned down. The concept of “blood memory” within the context of intergenerational trauma is worth exploring.
As described in Native American tribal culture, “Blood memory is … our ancestral (genetic) connection to our language, songs, spirituality, and teachings. It is the good feeling that we experience when we are near these things.”25 It is one thing to witness my father’s friend tear up when responding to the events that he lived through; but having been born post-Revolution, and not having been confronted with these sympathetic understandings of the Revolution in school, it’s another thing to immediately and uncontrollably sob, when calling on the names of Revolutionary fighters.
The events of the Grenada Revolution are included in the Grenadian curriculum but are done so in an incomplete and revisionist way, influencing what, who, and how things are remembered. Public visuals and monuments, such as the monument near the Maurice Bishop airport dedicated to American soldiers (commissioned by Ronald Reagan, and built by the Cubans) and the covering of the bullet holes at Fort George where the leaders were killed, contribute to the erasure and revision of significant events. Yet, there are no public monuments or visuals intended to invoke sympathy for the murdered and disappeared Grenadian revolutionaries. The well-maintained graffiti near the old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Tempe that praises the U.S. invasion, contrasted with the fact that we still don’t know where the remains of Bishop and the other revolutionary leaders gunned down on Fort George are, is indicative of how we value and devalue events in our shared collective memory. The families of those murdered at Fort George have had their closure and mourning impaired, as burials in Grenadian culture remain a significant part of the living bidding farewell to their loved ones. Burying those who embodied such a significant part of Grenadian history would have been critical in shaping the memories and social and political landscapes of the Grenadian people. The associated trauma faced by many Grenadians who have not been able to, or who have chosen not to, deal with these losses enables a silence that reconstitutes and covers up important memories.
Part of this trauma occurred not only when the leaders of the revolution were assassinated, but also through the kidnapping and destruction of their bodies. Was the brutal killing of these revolutionaries an attempt to stamp out hope of change and liberation? Furthermore, the memory of the movement became desecrated when those persons who symbolized and embodied the Revolution were killed and their bodies lost without a burial process, or closure.
The PRG existed under intense local, regional, and international pressure, which required hyper-vigilance in identifying counter-revolutionaries and protecting what Grenadians had taken so long to build. Though many of these fears were valid, one of the ways the Revolution failed the Grenadian people was its resistance to counter positions within the Grenadian populace. As Brian Meeks writes, “each Leninist measure which made the party capable of taking power, also increased its tendency toward hierarchical decision-making and enhanced the autonomy of the leadership both from ordinary party members and the people.”26 The PRG’s clamp down on counter-revolutionary behavior27—such as the closure of the Torchlight newspaper28 and the detention of Rastafarians29—almost mirrored Gairy’s use of terror to stifle and, when necessary, squash dissent. The intended effect was increasingly limited dissent. In some ways, the PRG became the very state apparatus it had fought against.
Increased militarization is often accompanied by increased sexual violence. Whether the Revolution led to increased instances of state-sanctioned and interpersonal violence is unclear, and not much has been done to substantially explore these connections.30 Unfortunately, however, it seems many of the claims by women under the PRG rule—some of whom were active Party members—of sexual harassment and violence were ignored or delegitimized based on moralizing grounds.31
The destabilizing of the Grenada Revolution influenced and hampered the Caribbean Left—a sentiment shared time and time again at the Grenada Country Conference. When looking at the current political and economic landscapes of the English-speaking Caribbean, one sees the proliferation of capitalist and heterosexist ideals that embody the state and trickle down to the day-to-day interactions and ideologies of the populace. Alternative economic systems outside of capitalism are not popular, and any leanings toward socialism or communism are chided and ridiculed. The demise of the Grenadian Revolution impeded other possibilities for liberation.
The Grenadian poor rose up with excitement and conviction, and they were strategic and militant about it. They witnessed much physical, epistemic, and structural violence, which led them to take up arms and redefine their futures, but they unfortunately faced ongoing violence and some mistrust from those in whom they had placed their hopes and dreams. In addition, before they were allowed the space to address the complexities, contradictions, and violence on their own terms, the U.S. came swooping in to “save them.” Not only should the poor be encouraged to rise up, but their agency to engage in reconciliatory measures when things take a turn for the worse also needs to be allowed ample breathing room.
The Grenadian Revolution was a shared and collective experience; however, the post-Revolution shift in the political and economic landscape, coupled with increased individualism and consumerism, resulted in a personal process of healing and addressing the traumatic impacts of the Revolution. Many were swept to the margins, as individual healing proved inadequate in addressing collective grief.
It is also important to note how power shapes the historical narrative:
It is important to recognize that groups and individuals have unequal means to generate accounts about the violent past: those in power can control, frame, and eventually even mask or bury the memory a group or individual holds of collective violence. Therefore, another common social response to a traumatic past event is silence and inhibition.32
Those with access to power, publishing, and media resources, and the “appropriate vernacular” for telling the story dominate the theoretical and historical narratives and analyses of the Grenadian Revolution. Bruce Paddington’s important film, Forward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution (2013), is dominated throughout by voices and narratives that reflect a particular social and class perspective. What about the numerous Grenadians who speak politics to power on the factory floor, in the rum shop, and on the streets? Their experiences are equally valid, but they are not scholars or writers, and unfortunately even if they were able to access publishing and media platforms they would probably be so discouraged by the feedback that they would recoil in silence.
Liberation must include the liberation of our bodies, minds, and spirits, in addition to control over our resources and labor. To ensure collective and inclusive organizing that takes into account people’s full selves and accompanying intergenerational trauma, we must center healing justice in our work and praxis. By healing justice,33 I am referring to the need to confront and analyze the impacts of collective and historical trauma as causing or influencing community survival practices and endemic community health issues. Healing justice also seeks to identify and create spaces and processes to lift up the experiences of those historically exploited, to achieve resilience and transformation.
The healing justice approach requires us to use the theoretical framing of coloniality to interrogate the material and multidimensional ways by which we view ourselves and others in terms of gender, race, sexuality, class, spirituality, and so on. Healing justice uses a historical context that lays the foundations for how we love, resist, and heal. By centering healing justice in post-Revolutionary attempts to remember, heal, excavate, and reconstruct, we honor the lives and experiences of the most exploited and actively work to construct systems, services, and spaces that transform the way we live. There should be an upheaval of the British colonial educational system that we have inherited, and it should be replaced by a curriculum that is inclusive of a vast and dynamic repository on the Grenadian Revolution; embedded in our health care and social programs should be holistic and therapeutic services that address direct and intergenerational trauma and how substance abuse is a coping mechanism. There should be a much more diverse representation of political views and possibilities, to help shift and move our electoral processes beyond the two-party state. Our British colonial laws that criminalize anyone who falls outside the male, heterosexist archetype should be scrapped, and opportunities for people-led and grassroots organizing across a range of equity issues that challenge the status quo should be encouraged and supported.
Today, some Grenadians have begun or continue different healing processes and are finding ways to confront “their demons,” but the road is long and support services are limited. This paper has only scratched the surface, and much more in-depth research needs to be dedicated to interrogating the patterns of direct and vicarious trauma within post-Revolutionary and post-colonial Grenada. In the words of Merle Collins in her book Angel:
As long as you have life you could turn you han to someting
You have to make a move to help youself?
You caan siddown dey like de livin dead
Well yes, wi! You live an learn!
Man proposes; God disposes
Is not everything everything you could believe but some dream trying to tell you something!
Sometimes we have to drink vinegar an pretend we think is honey!34
Endnotes
1 Carlos Martinez citing Dennis Bartholomew, representative of the People’s Revolutionary Government at the Grenadian High Commission in London, phone conversation. Available online: http://www.invent-the-future.org/2014/03/legacy-of-the-grenadian-revolution/.
2 Forward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution. Directed by Bruce Paddington. Trinidad and Tobago. Thirdworld Newsreel, 2013.
3 Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory (New York: Palgrave MacMillan), 4.
4 “Report on certain political events which occurred in Grenada 1971–1991.” Truth and Reconciliation Commission Grenada. The Grenada Revolution online. Vol. 1, Part 4. Accessed Aug. 20, 16. www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/trcreport4-1.html
5 Joseph Ewart Layne, We Move Tonight (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), 29–30.
6 Ibid., 30
7 Ibid., 31
8 José A. Tapia, “From the Oil Crisis to the Great Recession: Five crises of the world economy.” Working paper, (Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2013).
9 Ibid., 6
10 Maurice Bishop, “Long live solidarity, friendship and co-operation!” Address at the opening of the First International Conference of Solidarity with the Grenada Revolution, The Dome, St. George’s Nov. 23, 1981. Available online: http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/bish1stintnlconf.html.
11 José A. Tapia, “From the Oil Crisis to the Great Recession: Five crises of the world economy,” 7.
12 Ibid., 5
13 Joseph Ewart Layne, We Move Tonight (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014).
14 David Scott, The Fragility of Memory, 103–104.
15 The Grenada Revolution Online. www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/bloodymonday.html.
16 Joseph Ewart Layne, We Move Tonight, 166.
17 Chris Searle, Grenada: The Struggle Against Destabilization (London: Writers and Readers,
1983).
18 Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2014), 32.
19 The Grenada Revolution Online. www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/gairya.html.
20 Ibid., 4, 33, 34.
21 Joseph Ewart Layne, We Move Tonight, 4.
22 People’s Revolutionary Government. Speeches by the People’s Revolutionary Government at the First International Conference in Solidarity with Grenada (Grenada: Fedon Publishers, 1981).
23 Lugones, Maria, “Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system” Hypatia, Vol.22, No.1, 2007: 186–209; Lugones, Maria, “Toward a decolonial feminism” Hypatia, Vol.25, No.4, 2010: 742–758.
24 Steve Martinot, “The Coloniality of Power: Notes Toward De-Colonization.” Available online: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~marto/coloniality.htm.
25 Lightning Warrior, “Honoring The Ancestors: The Case For Metagenetics And Folk Consciousness.” Available online: https://joshualightningwarrior.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/honoring-the-ancestors-the-case-for-metagenetics-and-folk-consciousness/.
26 Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993), 152.
27 Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present, 65–80.
28 Ibid.
29 Ras Nang Speaks: Interview with Prince Nna Nna, Available online: http://www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com/nnaspeaks.html.
30 Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present, 65–80.
31 Ibid., 69–70.
32 Ruth Kevers, Peter Rober, Ilse Derluyn, and Lucia De Haene, “Remembering collective violence: Broadening the notion of traumatic memory in post-conflict rehabilitation,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, (2016): 1–21.
33 Bad Ass Visionary Healers, “Healing Justice Principles: Some of What We Believe.” Available online: https://badassvisionaryhealers.wordpress.com/healing-justice-principles/ and “Just Healing Resources Site.” Available online: https://justhealing.wordpress.com/resourcing-the-work/.
34 Merle Collins, Angel (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011).