Grenada: The People’s Revolution Government, US Intervention, and the Conflicting Media Narratives

On March 13, 1979, Maurice Bishop  and the People’s Revolutionary Government seized control of Grenada in a “bloodless” Revolution and ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy.  Because as a socialist leader Bishop with established trade ties with the Cuban government, the US government rejected Bishop’s numerous attempts to establish a friendly relationship between the US and Grenada.  Ultimately, the United States invaded Grenada in October 1983 under Reagan’s orders.  The event proved extremely controversial because for the first forty-eight hours, Reagan’s administration barred the press from covering the invasion.  My paper examines several media artifacts: newspaper and magazine articles, speeches by Prime Minister Bishop and President Reagan, a comic book produced by the CIA.

I first learned about the US invasion of Grenada when I watched Damani Baker’s film, The House on Coco Road (2016) that evaluated his understanding of the events as a US-born youth who moved to the island with his mother and sister when Bishop came to power.  Because the film focused on the contentious relationship between Bishop and Reagan, I was a little surprised to learn that President Jimmy Carter played a role in undermining Grenada’s efforts to build an economy independent of neo-liberalism.  In my research I learned how Carter’s administration attempted to weaken Grenada’s economy heavily dependent on tourism by disseminating dubious travel warnings to punish the Grenadian government for creating a trade relationship with Communist Cuba.

As a nation embroiled in the Cold War politics against the Soviet Union and Cuba, Reagan employed anti-Communist rhetoric to play on public anxieties.  Invading Grenada contradicted the US supposed commitments to democracy, peace, and freedom of the press. I will argue this aggression not only violating Grenada’s sovereignty it revealed the larger issue of US paternalism and hegemony over the Americas.   I made this argument by analyzing Maurice Bishop’s vision for Grenada, Ronald Reagan’s private and public conversation about the invasion, the US public’s response to the invasion, and a comic book that condemns the United States invasion of Grenada.

The first section of this paper evaluated the Maurice Bishop and the way he used radio and interviews to present the ways this government attempted to build a friendly relationship with the United States.  The second section looked at how Reagan administration publicly and privately discussed the invasion and the way the public used news to condemn Reagan’s actions. The last section examined a comic book that the CIA produced and airdropped on the island called Grenada: Rescued from Rape and Slavery to manipulate Grenadians.

Paper link

Intro — Rachel

Hi everyone!

I am Rachel a first-year grad student in the Comparative Media Studies program alongside Libby & Sultan (as Libby pointed out).  I interned and worked at a few media startups and a media conglomerate after college.  I studied history as an undergrad where I focused my research on the post-World War II Afro-Caribbean community in London. At MIT I work as a Research Assistant in the Global Media Technologies & Culture Lab led by Professor Lisa Parks in CMS.

I have experience working in grassroots organizing both from the diverse research I conducted on social movements in Central America, Western Europe, and personal experience.   I thought taking a course that examined social movements through a tech/civic media perspective would push me to explore new tools and strategies for designing media production & distribution systems (television/film) for Afro-Diasporic audiences.

After reading R. Kelly Garrett’s article, ‘Protest in an Information Society: A Review of Literature on Social Movements and New ICTs,’ I realized how I saw many of the tools and recommended strategies Garrett offered in his piece.  Namely when he discussed “opportunity structure” (favorable conditions to enable social movements) and “framing processes” (strategies around how to describe or challenge certain narratives about a movement).  “Opportunity structure” was synonymous with “using your privilege” and “framing processes” connected to assigning certain “spokesperson(s)” that would communicate the goals of the movement to press.

I read Alicia Garza’s piece when it was first published.  After talking with Dasjon during class about how much time passed since Garza wrote this piece, it seemed markedly unique in the way it positioned how three Black Queer women (Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi) founded the Black Lives Matter movement.  It reminded me how in the past Black queer actors often were erased from the official narrative (Bayard Rustin) despite the tremendous contributions they made to social movements (Rustin — Civil Rights Movement & the organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom).

I look forward to learning from everyone over the next couple of months.