Hands Off Grenada! supplement (offset cover)

next step Hands Off US marines and Grenada. TINY GRENADA has lived under the threat of invasion by its neighbourhood superpower for the last four years.

October assault was the culmination of a relentless build-up of pressure towards direct American interference in Central America and the Caribbean.

nada's small and ill-equipped militia has been crushed by thousands of US marines and paratroopers, backed up by naval frigates, fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships and equipped with the latest in murderous military technology.

years the people of Grenada have been asking when would the us invasion come? Now the peoples of the whole - where will Reagan region are asking strike next? The centre cannot hold The world recession has ravaged Central America and the Caribbean. countries dependent on the export of coffee, cotton and bananas have sugar, been devastated by a decade of declining prices on the world's commodity markets.

Central America has been hardest hit every country suffers mounting trade deficits and debts and burgeoning unemployment and misery. Last year alone the economy of El Salvador shrank by 10 In the Caribbean the feeble per cent. manufacturing sector of Puerto Rico, the bauxite mines of Jamaica and Guyana and the oil wells of Trinidad, as well as agricultural production have gravely affected by the world slump. Tourism, which provided foreign exchange and some jobs in the 'sixties and 'seventies, steen decline Between 15 now in quarter and a half of all workers in the region are now out of work. Deepening poverty has generated growing hostility among the masses against the imperialist system that dominates their lives.

Guatemala to Guyana popular resistance has erupted against foreign domination and the local agents who enforce the imperialist order through repression and terror. The chain of events which led to the US intervention in Grenada 1979. In that year two incidents shook the region, threatening the domination of In March Maurice Bishop's the lISA New Jewel Movement overthrew Grenadian Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a popular coup that ended a corrupt and repressive dictatorship. In July the Sandinista review of the Revolutionary Communist Party • On 25 October a force of 3000 paratroopers stormed the Caribbean island of • We condemn this barbarous attack by the world's most powerful nation on one of the smallest We salute countries in the world. the heroism of those Grenadians and Cubans who have fought back against overwhelming odds.

guerrilla movement finally hacked dictator Anastasio Somoza whose family had run The Nicaragua 'thirties. Both changes of government set dangerous precedents for US influence.

The New Jewel Movement had staged the Now Grefirst ever radical coup in the Englishspeaking Caribbean. pulled off the first successful popular revolt in Latin America for decades.

these examples were imitation throughout the slump-stricken For four region, the USA had to act fast.

The USA is acutely sensitive to instability on its 'fourth border' to the south.

Neither Grenada nor economic threat to mighty indeed the whole of Central America and the Caribbean is of minor importance in the USA's total trade and investment setup. Yet the region is of central strategic Poor importance as the gateway to the major economies of Latin America and as an avenue for oil imports from Nigeria and the Middle East. was the USA's first imperial domain and small shifts in the local balance of power can have far-reaching consequences at home. The USA has a long history of gunboat diplomacy from its expulsion of Spain in 1898 to its attempt to take Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

Equatorial triangle In recent years the USA has held back all been from direct military Central America and the Before Grenada the US marines' last outing was to the Dominican Republic in 1965. Through the rest of the 'sixties and seventies the interests through dollar-financed client states, diplomatic manoeuvres and CIA intrigue. For a period President Carter From posed as a benevolent reformer dispensing aid programmes and homilies on human rights to the USA's favoured dictators.

By the late ment with Cuba seemed possible.

revolts of 1979 brought the USA's softly softly' approach to an abrupt end.

began in The threat of popular rebellion alarmed the US authorities and their local puppets.

The Sandinistas' victory ignited guerrilla in neighbouring El Salvador which war threatened to spread and engulf Honduras and Guatemala. ment's triumph over Eric Gairy terrified the ruling cliques on the neighbouring cremedia! • We demand an end to British complicity in the rape of Grenada, whether in the form of diplomatic approval, military back-up, or suggestions of a Commonwealth role' in imposing a new form of domination over the people of Grenada. • We condemn the British Labour Party for beating its breast on behalf of Britain while American islands. ousted us. since the lopments in the Caribbean.

'One "Eric" The Sandinistas had If not inspire Lucia Ine combined counter-offensive Nicaragua are an and Grenada. America batallion on Cuba in 1979.

The Caribbean basin El Salvador. intrusions into Caribbean. ragua and Grenada. USA pursued its connections is InTererence in their attair seventies even a rapproche- But the and the Caribbean. forbade grants The New Jewel Move- Creased covert imperialism rampages through the Caribbean. Labour has denounced the USA, not because of America's crimes against Grenada, but because Reagan's initiative insulted the Prime Minister and the Queen.

• We call for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops Grenada and give our from unconditional support to the Grenadian fight for freedom.

Linking anticontemporary to try imperialist movements in Iran with deveopposition wall posters in Guyana asked Shah gone.

Gairy gone, who next?' The Trinidad oilworkers' paper ran a front page headline gone.. which caused some distress to Prime Minister Eric Williams.

Within months of Bishop's takeover in Grenada riots swept Dominica and St USA responded with a Caribbean To justify further US intervention, the invasion. USA invented the notion of a 'triangle of communist subversion': Cuba, Nicaragua The prospect of better relations between the USA and Cuba to and Fidel Castro's hopes of a relaxation of the crippling economic blockade ended with Carter's 'discovery' of a Soviet Both Carter and Reagan have accused Cuba of channetegy ling Soviet weapons and supplies through and Nicaragua to the guerrilla movement in forces This year Reagan produced satellite photographs which were supposed to reveal the construction of a military airfield in Grenada for use as a Cuban- Soviet base; it subsequently emerged that the British firm Plessey and a substantial EEC loan were involved in a joint project with a number of Arab countries and Cuba to build a tourist airport.

Despite the marginal influence of the Soviet Union in the area and the virtual economic collapse of Cuba, the USA has carefully cultivated the notion that they are engaged in sponsoring a network of bases in Nicaimaginary The object of raising the bogey of communism in these contries which have little in common and few to legitimise American Grenada Grenadines. The turn of the screw Behind its crusade against communism the USA tightened the economic screw on the radical regimes in Central America American officials worked flat out to block loans to Nicaragua and Grenada from the IMF and World Bank. Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative for aid and preferential trade explicitly "communist

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countries. Financial sanctions have sometimes been used to help the CIA in its in- Grenada, efforts to undermine troublesome regimes. The CIA stepped in during Jamaica's 1980 election campaign Special Supplement November 1983 and get rid of Prime Minister Michael Manley, who had remained too friendly with Grenada for American tastes The unrest stirred up by a well-timed IMF austerity programme for Jamaica helped the CIA ensure Manley was defeated and replaced by the pro-Western Edward Seaga.

Soon after the Grenada coup the USA encouraged Grenada's hostile neighbour states into the Organisation of Eastern States. which subsequently provided the invitation' for the October Earlier this year American diplomats attempted to have Grenada kicked Market out of the Caribbean Common The USA has used Canada and Venezuela assist its financial manoeuvres and manipulated the leaders of Jamaica and Barbados to act as its local agents.

Counter-insurgency and direct intervention provide the sharp end of US stra- The USA gives money, weapons specialist training to reactionary throughout the region It has backed genocide in Guatemala, mass terror in El Salvador and the Contra counterrevolutionary guerrillas in Nicaragua. This month 4000 US troops are practising a full scale invasion of Central America in Honduras, the latest in a series of similar exercises. The Grenadian invasion has had a number of dress rehearsals. In 1980 1800 US marines staged a mock landing at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. In August 1981 120 000 US and NATO troops, 250 ships and 1000 aircraft participated in an exercise involving the invasion of two Caribbean islands with the object of seizing power and installing a pro-US government. The fictitious islands were named "Amber' and 'Amberdine' a grim warning of things to come for and its neighbours, the Imperialism out! The invasion of Grenada takes the USA a bloody step further into a struggle to assert its power over the masses of Central America and the Caribbean.

The USA's careful ideological, political and military preparations indicate its determination to enforce the imperialist order whatever the The continuing popular resistance to US terror, direct and indirect, in Nicaragua, El Salvador and throughout the region shows the resilience of the forces fighting American barbarism.

We must not let them be defeated.