Full independence didn’t come until 1974, when Gairy became the island’s first prime minister. It didn’t take long for his popularity to fade, though, both with the local population and with international observers.
“Gairy turned from a benign leader to a demagogic and manipulative, even vindictive, force in Grenada,” writes Pool. In addition, he was perceived as “a symbol of ignorance since he was reputed to dabble in obeah magic and believed the world should be made aware of extra-terrestrials.”
Enter Maurice Bishop, a London-educated barrister, and his party, the New Joint Effort For Welfare, Education and Liberation (also known as the New JEWEL Movement, or NJM). The NJM seized power in 1979 in a revolution during which their supposedly left-leaning but neutral status was quickly revealed to be a pose that disguised what were actually deep ideological ties and growing economic links with the Soviet Union and Castro’s Cuba.
Bishop didn’t last long as Grenada’s new leader. A 1983 meeting of the Central Committee resulted in a coup, led by Bernard Coard. A week later, the Grenadian army executed Bishop along with many of his most loyal supporters. This level of political violence, conjoined with the fear of having yet another Communist Caribbean island on its doorstep, prompted US President Ronald Reagan to act, explains military historian Edgar F. Raines Jr.
“Popular revulsion at [the executions] led the [Grenada] Revolutionary Military Council that now proclaimed itself the interim government to decree a 24-hour curfew, in effect putting the entire island under house arrest,” writes Raines. The new government,
[h]eaded by General Hudson Austin, the minister of defense in the Bishop cabinet and now a Coard ally…also cut links to the outside world, closing to all traffic both Grenada’s port of St. George’s and its only operational airport at Pearls. The US government became concerned because there were about one thousand Americans resident on the island, of whom some six hundred or more were associated with the St. George’s University School of Medicine.
Along with six Caribbean nations, the US invaded Grenada on October 25, 1983. Around 7,000 American troops landed with a mission to protect the medical students, remove Coard, and restore order.
“The marines seized Pearls against minimal opposition,” writes Raines, but
the Rangers captured Point Salines [only] after a hard fight. They also secured the True Blue campus of the medical school without injury to any of the students or faculty. At almost the same time, the Grenadian Army repulsed special operations forces sent to capture Richmond Hill Prison and Fort Rupert.