Martine Powers:
The thing is, this is where the record also gets complicated. Maurice Bishop did come down hard on opposition. He did talk about ruthlessly crushing people who wanted to overthrow the government. And, yet, looking back, some Grenadians now say that he didn't come down hard enough because of what happened next. In the fall of 1983, Dessima started to notice that things were off. She would call cabinet members and colleagues from her office in D.C., and they would seem distracted and unfocused. Then the foreign minister told her that there was some "trouble" on the island. At the same time, strange things were happening in D.C. Dessima noticed someone following her to a 7-Eleven. Somebody broke into her office at the embassy. The security guard was acting strangely. He was standing outside her room in the middle of the night. She realized later that that is when she began to feel like a hostage.
[ Woman gasps, telephone rings ]
Martine Powers:
Then another phone call. The deputy prime minister had staged a government takeover. He and others in the party were communist hardliners who wanted to go in a more radical direction. And they placed Maurice Bishop under house arrest. He stayed there for a week until a crowd gathered outside -- this crowd that included children and teenagers and Wendy Grenade.
Wendy Grenade:
I still recall that day. The crowd was saying, you know, "We want our leader."
Martine Powers:
This mass of people pushed down the gate where Bishop was held, and they got him out. Then they marched together to this big fort overlooking the capital. That's where the army was headquartered and that's where they would take back control of the government.
Wendy Grenade:
The crowd went to the fort. Maurice Bishop went to the fort. He was in the room.
Martine Powers:
Wendy was outside with hundreds of other people.
Wendy Grenade:
I was in the market square at the time. It was the loudest explosion I ever heard in my life.
Martine Powers:
Witnesses heard the sound of machine guns. And then they say they saw black smoke coming from the fort, probably from grenade launchers.
Wendy Grenade:
About three armored cars came up on the fort. And they just started shooting off at the people.
Martine Powers:
Members of the army who supported this coup were shooting at the crowd inside the fort. People ran. They tried to escape. Some of them climbed onto the walls of the fort, which was several stories up, and they jumped. Many of them died. Many others were severely injured.
Wendy Grenade:
I left there a few minutes before that happened. And I stood in my kitchen and just looked at the fire blazing and people just falling down. Yeah. It was real terrible.
Martine Powers:
Then the military dragged out Maurice Bishop and his ministers, and they stood them up against the wall.
Wendy Grenade:
Then there was a lining up and an execution.
Martine Powers:
What is your memory of when you heard that he had been executed?
Wendy Grenade:
I could not stand. I was like, "No. No. They didn't kill him. No."
[ Telephone rings ]
Martine Powers:
Back in D.C., a phone rang at the embassy.
Dessima Williams:
The prime minister was killed. The foreign minister was killed. The minister for education, my good friend Jackie, was killed. Trade unionists -- many people were killed. And, for me, I was not a minister or anything like that, but I knew if I were in Grenada, I would have been in and around those circles. And I couldn't understand.
Martine Powers:
In that moment, Dessima was also terrified. She knew that she was being followed. She knew that there were people inside the embassy who might see her as a target, Grenadians or even Americans. She grabbed her passport and a radio and she went into hiding, because Dessima also knew what was coming next.
Woman:
Part 3, "Urgent Fury."
Martine Powers:
The days after the assassination of Maurice Bishop were objectively scary for everyone on the island. These new, more radical leaders declared martial law on the radio. They announced that anyone who violated curfew would be shot on sight. As word spread about what had happened, other Caribbean leaders started to speak out against the coup, calling it a travesty. All flights between Grenada and neighboring islands were halted. No one could get in or out, including hundreds of American medical students who lived and studied near the capital. And that presented President Reagan with an opportunity.
Ronald Reagan:
Early this morning, forces from six Caribbean democracies and the United States began a landing -- or landings -- on the island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean.
Wendy Grenade:
It was about 4:00 on the morning of the 25th, and we heard planes flying above and we realized that something was happening. Yeah.
Man:
United States paratroopers have invaded Grenada with helicopter gunships. Our armed forces are engaging them in fierce battle.
Ronald Reagan:
We have taken this decisive action for three reasons.
Man:
The Grenadian people are asked to block all roads and obstruct the enemy's progress.
Ronald Reagan:
First and to overriding importance, to protect innocent lives, including up to 1,000 Americans, whose personal safety is, of course, my paramount concern.
Wendy Grenade:
There were bombings. We heard a lot of it because of where we were located.
Ronald Reagan:
Second, to forestall further chaos.
Wendy Grenade:
Every glass in the house was smashed. The whole room was smashed up.
Martine Powers:
They bombed the house.
Wendy Grenade:
Then they bombed the house, yes.
Ronald Reagan:
And, third, to assist in the restoration of conditions of law and order and of governmental institutions to the island of Grenada, where a brutal group of leftist thugs violently seized power, killing the prime minister, three cabinet members, two labor leaders, and other civilians, including children.
Wendy Grenade:
Operation Urgent Fury -- that was the name.
Ronald Reagan:
The initial operation of landing, securing the immediate targets, taking control of the airports -- completely successful.
Martine Powers:
There was never any doubt that the invasion would be successful. In total, it took four days. But there were significant casualties. 19 members of the U.S. military died. One of these deaths and multiple injuries were later found to be the result of friendly fire. Several dozen Grenadians were killed, including the patients at a psychiatric hospital that was accidentally bombed by the Americans. 24 of the Cuban soldiers who were working on the airport also died. But after a few days, the American medical students were evacuated.
Reporter:
Mr. President, as late as yes-- as late as yesterday, your own spokesman said that Americans on Grenada were in no danger. Did you have information that things had changed?
Ronald Reagan:
They were in no danger in the sense of that right now, anything was being done to them. This was a case of not waiting until something actually happened to them.
Reporter:
In the final hours of the battle for Grenada, the Americans were still pouring in more combat troops who arrived at the new airport, one wave following another.
Martine Powers:
These troops fanned out throughout the island, looking for weapons. And they found them.
Reporter:
Russian and Cuban ammunition was found, as well as communications equipment.
Reporter:
And the Americans came in here, in the house?
Woman:
Yes.
Reporter:
Looking for who, for what?
Woman:
For guns, they said, in the roof.
Reporter:
It was all there in such quantities that the Americans believe this to be the makings of a full-scale military base.
Ronald Reagan:
Grenada, we were told, was a friendly island paradise for tourism. Well, it wasn't. It was a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy. We got there just in time.
Martine Powers:
Did you watch Reagan's speech when he announced the invasion?
Wendy Grenade:
I saw it after.
Martine Powers:
Was there any part of you that was like, "The president of the U.S. is talking about my community, you know, where I'm from," and if there was, like, a strangeness of seeing the way that he was describing Grenada, which I imagine is very different from how you think about your own country?
Wendy Grenade:
Yes. Yes, of course. You feel insulted and angry, really, in the way that your country is made invisible, really, the people within it made invisible for a larger imperialist goal. I did not believe it had anything at all to do with the U.S. students at the medical school at the time. I believe it had a lot to do with reclaiming U.S. preeminence in the world and making a point to the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Martine Powers:
For the record, Wendy's reaction was not everyone's reaction. There were quotes in media reports of Grenadians thanking America for saving them.
Man:
Grenadians are free. We are thankful to the President of the United States for what he has done for Grenada. At last, we are free.
Martine Powers:
And these reactions were real. There are still a lot of Grenadians who say the invasion was good. It got the country back in order.
Wendy Grenade:
It was very much a divided response. Some of the older people and for those who were not supportive of the revolution, of course, felt that this was a rescue mission.
Woman:
Praise God, and thanks to Mr. Reagan that we are delivered and we are once again so happy.
Wendy Grenade:
Most progressives, younger people, and so forth took offense.
Martine Powers:
They felt that Grenada could have rescued itself. They could have decided their own political fate without the intervention of the Americans.
Martine Powers:
It seems to me that part of what made this an attractive operation for Ronald Reagan and what ultimately, I think, made it successful in many people's, or in many Americans', eyes, is the fact that they were just sort of, like, in and out, very different from something like Vietnam, where the U.S. got stuck there forever and ever. I guess, is that your sense, that this operation was politically expedient for Reagan and for the U.S. government?
Wendy Grenade:
Oh, yes, definitely. Because, at the end of the day, it wasn't a prolonged, boots-on-the-ground -- as we see now, for example, in Afghanistan. So, in that way, I think it was an easy win from an American perspective. It was about conquest, you know?
Ronald Reagan:
The United States is safer, stronger, and more secure in 1984 than before.
Martine Powers:
U.S. troops left Grenada. A little over a year later, there was an election won by a new party and prime minister who were very friendly to the U.S. and the U.K. By that time, Reagan had started running for re-election. And one of the big themes of his campaign was "America is back."
Ronald Reagan:
America is back, standing tall, looking to the '80s with courage, confidence, and hope.
Martine Powers:
And at least in the U.S., this became the story of the invasion of Grenada, the story of either Reagan saving the med-school students or Reagan being an opportunist in the middle of the Cold War or even the story of how so many Americans can completely cease to remember that this even happened in the first place. But for me and for people in my family and for many people from this part of the Caribbean, this is not the part that we remember -- or at least it's not the only part that we remember.
Dessima Williams:
I felt that I have never stopped grieving the loss of what happened on the 19th of October, 1983. Sometimes, I, you know, grieve it more than others. I've never stopped feeling what a terrible, terrible loss of human life, of spent opportunity, and so on. And the sadness for me is that we were not really allowed -- ourselves and those who invaded -- we were not allowed to make and fix our errors. Once you kill somebody, that can't happen. And once you, you know, invade and occupy and tell people that they were -- their lives had no value or meaning, well, then you destroy something for a long time. It's not killed, but it's a setback, enormously.
Martine Powers:
Shortly after the invasion, Dessima came out of hiding. She became a public and outspoken critic of the Reagan administration's decision to invade her country. But the invasion is still just one part of what she wishes could have gone differently.
Dessima Williams:
Had the revolution survived and had Bishop been able to figure out which way forward, that it would have remained as something that was of value to neighbors and to the United States, as people thought, that they didn't have to be so subservient within a democracy.
Maurice Bishop:
And if we have 95% of predominantly African origin in our country, then we can have dangerous appeal to 30 million Black people in the United States.
Martine Powers:
For Wendy Grenade, that image and that message is what makes this history still so powerful. And what is your message to people of why the Grenada revolution is still important, why it still matters?
Wendy Grenade:
It still matters because, at the end of the day, it's about that search for freedom. How do we shape the societies that we deserve? And the Grenada revolution becomes one example of a very small country where people worked to build a new society. And I think it's important to understand it because it was about how do you transform, how do you create an alternative world? And for my generation, we would forever be speaking about that period because it was a period where we saw possibilities for what could be.
Martine Powers:
So, right now, we're in the middle of the courtyard at the fort. And there is a plaque here, and I'm going to read the plaque. It says, "In everlasting memory of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop." And then it lists names -- Fitzroy Bain, Norris Bain...
Martine Powers:
A few months ago, I went to the fort in Grenada's capital where Maurice Bishop was killed to see where the executions took place. And when you're there, it's weird how immediate all of this history feels. You can walk right up to this 300-year-old wall where Bishop and his cabinet were shot and you can still see the bullet holes. It's all right there.
Martine Powers:
"They have gone to join the stars and will forever shine in glory."
Ramtin, I'm curious -- after hearing this whole history, how does it make you feel?
Ramtin Arablouei:
I try to be a positive person. I try to take as much positive takeaways from the things I listen to and I hear, particularly the stories that we tell on this show. But I got to be honest, I leave this history feeling sad, because, to me, when you consider that, you know, all that we learned about the context and motivations for the invasion, it just reminds me of this cycle in the U.S.'s foreign policy where we go to these countries that people live in with hopes and dreams and their own political complexities, and we use -- I mean, I don't want to say -- The U.S. military uses its immense military and its immense force to go in and change the dynamics in these places and to upend the lives of people that live there and then just go away and permanently change the country's futures. So, for me, it's -- I'm really leaving thinking about all the other countries, as well.
Martine Powers:
Totally. Totally. And I think it's also worth asking the question of, like, why don't we know this history? Like, why don't we talk about it? And why we choose, as a country, to, like, not make this a part of who we are. And I think that has a lot to do with not wanting to be seen as this big country that is coming in and, like, bigfooting everybody else and, you know, not wanting to reckon with the impact that we have on other countries. But in the specific case of Grenada, I also think that part of the reason that we don't hear about it is because it is a story of Black revolution and Black empowerment. And I heard people who described it at the time as a utopia. And I do feel like that's a flawed idea, right? Because no place is perfect, and Grenada was a complicated place. And people still have complicated feelings about it.
Ramtin Arablouei:
Of course.
Martine Powers:
But at the same time, you hear these stories about what it was like there and what it was like to be a Black person in the U.S. or in Africa or in other parts of the world, like, hearing about what was happening in Grenada and how inspiring that was. And I feel like that story gets erased because it is this empowering story of Black people going off on their own and being like, "We don't need this. We can just run ourselves." And that's what I find really inspiring about it. Yeah.
Ramtin Arablouei:
And have you felt personally inspired? Like, did you walk away from that experience of being there and talking to people, feeling kind of, you know, inspired in your own life?
Martine Powers:
Yeah, I would say that I did. I feel like -- I think what it made me feel as proud. I think you could look at this revolution and be like, "Well, ultimately, it failed. Ultimately, Maurice Bishop died. So this was not a story of success." But, to me, I feel like I hear Maurice Bishop's voice. I hear the way that he talked to people and the ideas that he was sharing and this pride of like, "We are not in America's backyard. We are no one's backyard. We are our own people." And I feel like that -- that makes me feel proud to be a Caribbean-American, and I feel like that's a different -- That's not the Caribbean that is portrayed in the media, right? Especially this part of the Caribbean, that places like Grenada, Barbados, Trinidad, that they're often just, like, vacation spots, beautiful beaches. Like, people can go there and hang with chill music and steel pan, and, like, that's the thing. And to hear this voice that was like, "No, to be a person from this part of the Caribbean is to be powerful, to be revolutionary, to be radical."
Ramtin Arablouei:
Yes.
Martine Powers:
I just -- I love that. And it just made me feel proud.