Nutmeg, 2009.

© Hegel Goutier

Thesmallest independent country in the Western hemisphere is brimming with life. Lying to the south of the Caribbean arc and just to the north of Trinidad and Venezuela, Grenada consists of three islands: Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, each with its own particular charm. St. George’s, the capital of the country and of the largest island, Grenada, with its modern-day air, is one of the loveliest and most elegant cities in the Caribbean. Nestled around a bay of exceptional beauty, its idyllic ports and marinas invite the visitor to wander, particularly around nightfall.

Shakespeare’s Tempest

The majority of the population are descendants of Africans and, to a lesser extent, of its first inhabitants, the Arawaks and, above all, the Caribs. There are also small communities of descendants of former European colonists and of workers who came over from India in the 19th century. As with all the Caribbean islands populated by the Caribs (Kalinagos), colonisation was late, not just because the Carib warriors were fierce, but also because they built themselves a reputation that terrorised the colonists. Along with many other references, Caliban, a slave and the son of a witch in Shakespeare’s Tempest, attests to the awe that their reputation aroused. Christopher Columbus landed on the island in 1498 during his third voyage in the Americas, but the island was only really occupied for the first time in 1650 by the French.

When Columbus landed, Grenada was mainly populated by Caribs as the Spanish did not succeed in settling the island and British attempts were also futile. In 1636, Cardinal Richelieu’s ‘Compagnie des Iles d’Amérique’ (American Islands Company), through its representative in Martinique, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, set its sights on laying claim to Grenada. After the Company collapsed in 1649, Du Parquet ‘purchased’ the two islands. He sent in his infantry and, after many skirmishes, conquered the Carib warriors, the last survivors of whom threw themselves into the sea rather than surrender.

Ping-pong between France and Britain

Possession of the island then became a game of ping pong, with Grenada changing hands between the British and French until the 1783 Treaty of Versailles, which ceded it once for all to the British. Originally a sugar colony, it diversified at the end of the 18th century with the introduction of nutmeg, of which Grenada, Indonesia and India are, to this day, the three near-exclusive producers. It became a Spice Island. It abolished slavery in 1834 and in March 1967, after various colonial administrative regimes, it was granted complete autonomy under the Associated Statehood Act before formal independence in 1974. It remains, however, part of the Commonwealth and has kept the British monarch as its head of state.

Upheaval and romanticism

Its first head of government, Sir Eric Gairy was overthrown five years after independence in March 1979 by a coup led by Maurice Bishop under the flag of a tropical version of Marxist-Leninism. This was the beginning of a major upheaval as Bishop, who had won the sympathy of a good part of the population, mainly through his social programmes, was overthrown and eventually murdered on 19 October 1983 along with eight of his ministers and supporters by a party fraction led by Bernard Coard. A few days later the island was invaded by US troops with the blessing of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). Following the invasion, 17 people were sentenced to death. The death sentences were subsequently commuted, the prisoners recently having been released.

Bishop is still a symbol and some sort of romantic hero. Even his fiercest opponents pay tribute to him for his social achievements and the modernisation of the country’s infrastructure while, at the same time, condemning the restrictions on individual liberties imposed by his regime. This is, for example, the position that Georges Brizan, former prime minister and co-president of the ACP-UE Joint Parliamentary Assembly, described to The Courier.

The elections held in December 1984 re-established the constitution under the traditional Westminster-style bipartite system. The party currently in power, since the elections of July 2008, is the National Democratic Party with Prime Minister Tillman Thomas as the head of government.

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