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Caribbean Islands GRENADA
Country profile: Grenada
Official name: Grenada
Term for Citizens: Grenadian(s)
Capital: St. George's
Political Status: Independent, 1974
Form of Government: Parliamentary democracy and
consitutional monarchy
GEOGRAPHY
Size: 433 sq. km.
Topography: Mountainous
Climate: Tropical, wet
POPULATION
Total estimated in 1986: 90,000
Annual gowth rate (in percentage) in 1986: 0.3
Life expectancy at birth in 1984: 66
Adult literacy rate (in percentage) in 1986: 90
Language: English
Ethnic groups: Black (91 percent); remainder East Indian
or whites
Religion: Roman Catholic (65 percent), Protestant (nearly
35 percent), small Rastafarian sect
ECONOMY
Currency: Eastern Caribbean dollar(EC$)
Exchange rate: EC$2.70=US$1.00
Gross domestic product (GDP) in 1985: US$105 million
Per capita GDP in 1985: US$1,135
Distribution of GDP (in percentage) in 1985:
Government and other services 26.6
Agriculture 16.3
Wholesale and retail trade 15.5
Construction 7.5
Hotels and restaurants 6.4
Manufacturing 5.8
Other 21.9
NATIONAL SECURITY
Armed forces personnel: 0
Paramilitary personnel: 80
Police: 520
Although Grenada has much in common with the other small
islands to its north, it has tended throughout its history to look
to larger states in an effort to define its role in the world.
Since its initial discovery by Christopher Columbus, Grenada has
shared or sought associations of differing kinds with France,
Britain, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba (and, by extension, the Soviet
Union), and the United States.
Spain's association with the island extended little beyond
sighting it and giving it a name, inasmuch as the Spanish made no
effort to establish a colony, perhaps because of the ferocity of
the Caribs already in residence (see The Pre-European Population,
ch. 1). Interestingly, the island's present name is not that given
to it by Columbus. That name, which it bore but briefly, was
Concepción. Assigned in 1498, it had given way by 1523 on
maps and charts of the region to the Spanish variant of its current
designation, Granada. Speculation has it that Spanish
explorers, struck by the resemblance of Grenada's mountains to
those of the Sierra Nevada in Spain, applied the familiar name of
a great city to this strange place so far from home. Over the
centuries, although control of the island passed from France to
Britain (and briefly back to France again), the name endured with
but the slightest of etymological alterations, changing from
Granada to La Grenade to Grenada.
The French were the first to settle Grenada. Legend holds that
in 1652 the last of the defending Caribs threw himself into the sea
from a spot that was christened le Morne des Sauteurs and is
known today as Leapers' Hill. Exploited first for indigo and later
for sugar production, the island prospered and, like many others in
the Caribbean, attracted the attention of the British. Taken by
Admiral George Rodney in 1762, near the end of the Seven Years' War
(1756-63) in Europe, Grenada reverted to French rule from 1779 to
1783, when it was restored to Britain by the Treaty of Versailles
of 1783. The inhabitants' loyalties remained divided between the
two European powers for many years, as illustrated by the Rebellion
of 1795 (Fédon's Rebellion). In the course of this violent episode,
a group of rebels under the command of the mulatto general Julien
Fédon and inspired by the rhetoric of the French Revolution wreaked
havoc on the island and its British settlers in an unsuccessful
attempt to reunite with France.
From 1784 until its independence in 1974, Grenada remained a
member of the British Empire, passing through various stages of
colonial status and multiple associations with other regional
states. Early in the twentieth century, it produced one of the
region's outstanding leaders, T. Albert Marryshow. His
Representative Government Association, which inspired similar
movements in other Windward Islands states and in Trinidad, did
much to encourage the liberalization of British rule in the
Caribbean.
It is ironic that the achievement in 1950 of universal adult
suffrage, long a goal of Marryshow's, led directly to his
displacement in Grenadian political life by a new figure, Eric
Matthew Gairy. Whereas Marryshow had been a man of the middle
class, Gairy and his Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) appealed to
the lower class, the peasantry. Suddenly empowered by the vote,
Gairy's supporters swept him to the leadership of the Legislative
Council in 1951; he dominated the island's politics for almost
three decades.
The most successful electoral challenge to Gairy between 1951
and 1979 was posed by Herbert Blaize's Grenada National Party (GNP)
in 1961, mainly on the issue of union with Trinidad and Tobago (the
"unitary state" proposal). Again reflecting the Grenadian penchant
for looking outward for support and viability, the GNP campaigned
on a platform urging acceptance of the Trinidadian offer of union.
Although Blaize's party won the election, it subsequently lost a
large measure of prestige and credibility when Trinidad failed to
follow through on the proposal. The GNP's fall from grace paved the
way for the return of Gairy, who has never tired of the role of
political savior of his country.
In March 1979, Maurice Bishop and his followers in the New
Jewel Movement (NJM) seized power in Grenada. Looking to Cuba and
other Marxist-Leninist countries as its models, the NJM attempted
to implement the first Marxist revolutionary state in the Englishspeaking Caribbean. The initial promises of this "revo"--as the
revolution was dubbed--focused on the welfare of the people, for
Bishop pledged to provide jobs, food, housing, and education. Free
elections were also promised. The People's Revolutionary Government
(PRG) established by the 1979 coup failed to live up to the
expectations of the Grenadian people, however. Although
representative government was promised, the constitution was
suspended. In its place, the PRG brought forth a series of
"people's laws," the most effective of which were those that
curtailed individual freedoms and facilitated the detention of
dissidents.
In the economic sphere, the PRG made only slow and halting
progress toward socialism. Constrained by the need to attract high
levels of foreign aid and frustrated by the intractable nature of
the island's economic problems, the ideological fervor of some
members of the NJM gave way to increased repression and intensified
conflict within the NJM Central Committee. This internal struggle,
essentially a contest between the more pragmatic Bishop and his
doctrinaire deputy prime minister Bernard Coard, led directly to
the downfall of the PRG and the murder of Bishop and many others on
October 19, 1983. His death exposed the truth that the hard-liners
among the NJM had failed to recognize, namely, that if the PRG had
any claim to legitimacy at all, it was through the charismatic
authority of Bishop, who had remained generally popular in Grenada
throughout the PRG period.
Bishop's murder set the stage for the October 25, 1983,
military intervention by United States and Caribbean forces (see
Current Strategic Considerations, ch. 7). After that date, Grenada
turned to the United States as its principal ally and benefactor.
Although the harsh repression of the PRG was a thing of the past,
Grenadians continued to face a number of thorny political and
economic problems as they looked toward the future.
Data as of November 1987
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