Revolt and Refuge: #1
A Two Part Series
Part One: The Grenada Revolution
This piece may have some sensitive information about political unrest. Any opinions/statements made in the piece are not intended to be incendiary or incite violence. Revolt and Refuge discusses Anon’s role in the Grenada Revolution as a child, and the impact that education and travel had on his life. This is but part one of a two part series on how a young boy helped shape his nation’s socialist government, and how a coup d'etat and foreign invasion both saved his life and casted him from his home country. To maintain anonymity and protect the speaker, some details have been altered. All else, including historical detail, remain as told.
The government told us that this was a revolution and in a revolution things change. We took that seriously. But before I talk about this, let me start from the beginning.
1967
I had a very good childhood, in which I was raised by my mom and my grandmother.
Mom was very strict and was a stickler for discipline and schoolwork. So we had to do our homework, and Mom would check it. If we got it wrong, we would either get a beating or some form of punishment. Mom's form of punishment always involved reading. We usually had to read little books like Three Little Pigs and Jack on the Beanstalk and recite it to her.
We never got toys. Most kids got trains, trucks, and dolls, but my sister and I never got those. It was always books. She either bought them herself or with us at a little bookstore. If we went shopping with her, mom would buy us whatever book we picked up.
We spent a lot of our time reading, and ended up developing a love for it. This had a profound impact on our academic and intellectual development. My sister and I were considered nerdy kids, and because we went to the same schools- from kindergarten to high school- we were always at the top of our class.
1979
It was in high school that I met my history teacher. In class she was Ms. Hancock, but outside of school we called her by her first name. Unlike most of the other teachers, she was relatively young and better than some at teaching. She taught differently.
She introduced us to another side of academics, outside of the traditional subjects like reading, writing, math. She spoke of local culture, music, and the art of debate, and formed a cultural group in which we sang and performed. It was a group of us, both girls and guys, that developed differently than the larger student body.
Ms. Hancock encouraged us to read a different kind of history than what we were taught in school. In school we were taught European history, like the Greeks, and the Romans. With Ms. Hancock, we were reading Caribbean history, the roles of Africans in history, and more.
Simultaneously, the government of Grenada changed. The government held a dim view of the West, especially in terms of British and American policies, or what was called Westminster style Parliamentary democracy and Washingtonian Congressional democracy. We were taught about it from a perspective of how it negatively impacted us and stunted our development and those of similarly situated countries in the global South.
And therefore we will be able to locate our existence in the wider world. See ourselves as a third world, see ourselves as developing, see ourselves as being oppressed and exploited. And how then we approached that and what we needed to do to either overcome it or to develop differently from it. I was twelve or thirteen at the time.
We began adopting and subscribing to ideas that were very different from those that prevailed in previous generations and, as a result, were able to locate and identify ourselves as an integral part of the struggle of the global South for freedom from Western imperialism. We began to identify with the national liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, Asia and South Africa.
The government told us that in a revolution things happen differently. We took that seriously and changed the curriculum of the school. We requested the holistic teaching of social studies, history, math, and more.
I became involved with the national student council, which housed representatives of each high school.The president of the national student council had the opportunity to sit in on the central committee meetings. We were student representatives in the government, and as a result, we got to travel all over the world.
That's where my love of international travel comes from. First we saw Cuba, then Eastern Europe. We visited nations like the then Soviet Union, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and many more. We were exposed to a wider world out there. We saw people having the same problems as us, but they were so very different from us. We realized we weren't alone in this struggle.
We began to appreciate the fact that not every white person who was here to oppress us. We knew there were allies in certain countries. The fact is: I was a kid who was academically or intellectually advanced for my age, that interacted with other students, role models, and influential people not just in the Caribbean, but in the world. It had a profound developmental impact on me in terms of maturity, how I carried myself, and how I spent my free time.
My dad had a major role within the police, and he served the government that was overthrown. Once the revolution happened, he decided it wasn't safe for him to be in Grenada anymore. In fact, he was arrested. So he left and came to the United States and my mom followed shortly thereafter.
1983
We still don’t know the exact circumstances under which the socialist movement in Grenada was destroyed. However, we do know the faction that killed the beloved prime minister and half of his cabinet, including a pregnant woman, on October 19th, 1983. This led to the US invasion six days later, on October 25th.
We didn't want to live under this faction because we didn't like that strict form of Stalinist Marxism that they were trying to impose on the country. There are many in Grenada today who view the US invasion of Grenada as a “Rescue Mission”, because the Stalinist faction traumatized the entire country.
The faction had imposed a twenty-four hour curfew on the country. I remember the general who announced the curfew could never say the actual word. “Anyone found breaking the cur-foo, will be shot on sight.”
While the events of October 19th, 1983 traumatized the country, guys like us routinely violated the curfew. We’d just go into the rural areas and hang out like we normally did. They drove big heavy Soviet military vehicles, and you could hear the engine from miles away. You’d wait until it got closer, and then you’d hide in the bush, and wait for them to pass through.
October 25th, 1983 is a special day because of the events that occurred on October 19th.
There was a list of people that this government was supposed to kill in each village. It was organized in alphabetical order, and my name and my sister’s were at the top.