The year was 1999 and then prime minister Keith Mitchell was coasting to a memorable 15-0 victory at the polls in Grenada. The campaigning was intense.
Fabian Horsford, 18, was with his father
and the family cattle in a rural pasture in Petit Calivigny.
Suddenly, off ran one cow … and Fabian …
toward some bushes, with Dad trailing exhaustingly behind.
Some distance away, just as Fabian was on
the verge of declaring a winning race, there was an explosion. The youngster
fell in the bushy overgrowth bleeding and in pain. He subsequently died - a
victim of previously unexploded munitions from the events of 1983.
I was in Grenada at the time and wrote the
story. The IPS headline was: “The Invasion that Will Not Go Away.” The fields
of past battles, you see, aren’t easily cleared.
As the country observed a rainy Heroes Day
– 42 years since the October 19 slaughter of Maurice Bishop and members of his
People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), and the subsequent US invasion of the
island – I could not get Fabian out of my mind.
As the headline in 1999 suggested, history
has a way of lingering. It also has a way of influencing the senses and
emotions. Wounds stick around much longer than we care to believe.
That boy, you see, represented the most
vulnerable of the vulnerable – victimised by the decision-making of the
powerful … near and far.
It had been no metaphorical overreach to
conclude then, as I do now, that Fabian’s demise signified the durable, tragic
impacts not only of the 1983 violence, but of the circumstances set in train in
1979.
Many who participated in the revolution now
acknowledge fatal errors and those who have stopped romanticising about what
occurred may now regret several things – engaging the Cold War trap included.
Amidst the rubble of collateral damage of
the era were strained Caricom relations – 10 years into the process and younger
than Fabian. Though Grenada remained active within the grouping, things were
not about to immediately return to the heady days of 1973 and the fresh signatures
on the Treaty of Chaguaramas or when Grenada itself came on board in 1974.
The PRG years remained, arguably, the most
challenging period in the history of Caricom. Yes, Bishop hosted the July 1979
Summit and missed just one such meeting, but the murmurings and divisions were
pronounced, and the country was about to become increasingly estranged from an
already unsteady grouping over those four years.
When the 1983 assassinations and subsequent
US invasion (Operation Urgent Fury) occurred, T&T, Guyana, and Belize – at
that time (and now ironically) citing “international law” - set an effective
distance from those who had unreservedly endorsed the “intervention” (one
contentious descriptor).
Immediately after, T&T imposed a visa
restriction on Grenadians entering the country out of fear that surviving
militants could enter and stir up some of the trouble T&T had sought to
avoid.
Up to that time, there had been nothing to
prepare the regional grouping for what had transpired barely a decade since its
inauguration.
Since then, there have been good reasons to
be concerned that the claws of geo-politics would re-enter the fray more
visibly to test regional foundations.
As with other integration movements, there
has since been an extensive list of challenges, highlighted most recently by
the situation in Venezuela but including a solution to Haiti, several
skirmishes linked to free market conditions, and occasional scuffles over
international candidatures.
Sadly, T&T’s independent posturing and
decision-making in international relations, which held firm in 1983, is now
marked by unconditional sycophantic support for actions widely declared to be
in clear breach of international law and due process when addressing alleged
criminal behaviour.
Alignments reminiscent of the events of
1983 - with T&T representing a significant shift in independent posture
together with Guyana and others (wait on Grenada) - are emerging to once again
test the sturdiness of Caricom’s solidarity doctrine.
If you do not pull all of this together, it
would be difficult to come to terms with last Friday’s terse communique on the
“security build up in the region” and which included a note that T&T had
“reserved its position.”
The statement virtually takes us back to
the heady years of Grenada’s revolution and the deep discomfort of (largely)
polite discord. But there are potentially deadly consequences.
We may well find in the coming years
scattered, unexploded munitions awaiting the arrival of more Fabians if we
aren’t careful.
