"THE AMERICANS' MAN" A talk with Eric Gairy
Black, George
Report on the Americas editor George Black recently visited six small island states in the Eastern Caribbean. The conclusions of his research will appear in our July/August issue which will...
...I went to the State Department to ask for it, but the other leaders in the region just laughed and mocked me...
...When I lived in the United States after the Bishop coup, my relations with the Administration were not very good...
...Then, I was called to Atlanta, Georgia, to open an art museum in the early 1970s...
...That has not changed, despite the one American resident here responsible for the foul play of which we are victims...
...No, I mean the big ones...
...Brizan was a member of the NJM for four months in 1973 and claims to still agree with its basic goals of social reform...
...No other island got so much...
...showcase increasing tendency toward corruption and often bizarre personal behavior...
...We always maintained a celebration of the Queen's birthday, but we also brought in the Fourth of July...
...But none could equal the eccentricities of "Gairyism...
...On UFOs Now everyone talks a lot about how I used to mention UFOs all the time...
...forget all the other things I did...
...According to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times, private conservative groups in the United States were heavily involved in backing the NNP's campaign...
...That's my own charisma...
...And what of Gairy...
...The survivors of the NJM remain riven by factional disputes...
...None of them have any positive feelings for the United States...
...But while many of the older generation of labor leaders cum politicians-such as Grantley Adams of Barbados or Norman Manley of Jamaica-became legendary elder statesmen, others discredited themselves with an Post-invasion Grenada-a U.S...
...Dominican Prime Minister Eugenia Charles started it, the election fraud I mean, then the others--Compton, Seaga of Jamaica and Son Mitchell of St...
...Another thing: every time the Americans came to Grenada, I would organize a function for them...
...I have been talking to two people in the U.S...
...Blaize did not win the elections: he was placed in power by the Americans...
...Vincent's Union Island and agreed on an electoral front-the New National Party (NNP), with Blaize as its leader...
...They were good to a certain level with the Carter Administration-Carter himself was a personal friend of mine...
...The votes cast by Grenadians didn't show up...
...They watched me dancing, they studied all the things I did...
...There was a discrepancy between the crosses that appeared on the ballot papers, which were all identical and obviously machine-made, and the mark made by voters with the colored pencil...
...They believed what Bishop said about methat I was corrupt, that I was involved in witchcraft, that I had a Mongoose Gang...
...On His Regional Leadership I won seven elections out of eight here...
...They must have been impressed with me...
...The building has a vaguely paramilitary air, its entrance guarded by stacks of cement blocks like impromptu sentry posts...
...The elections were handed to him, as he himself said, "on a silver platter...
...There's no doubt at all that I'm the Americans' man here...
...I also have the Medal of the Americas, which is the most enviable award in the hemisphere, given by all the chambers of commerce...
...They were Red Skelton, who was sitting on my left, and John Glenn, who was on my right...
...To make matters worse, his opponents approached the December 3 elections badly divided...
...One is called Richard James Tierney...
...They're all mad...
...He made a speech here where he said that we don't need democracy, we need socialism...
...On Fraud in the Elections Yes, of course there was fraud in the elections...
...I've got hundreds of them...
...He's a communist...
...They could have had Sir Grantley Adams, or Eric Williams of Trinidad, or Norman Manley, the father of Michael Manley in Jamaica...
...Neither the MARCH/APRIL 1985 9interim government nor the government that came in after the elections can deal with it...
...On His Political Future I will run for office again...
...NDP leader Brizan is Minister of Agriculture and is widely considered Blaize's heir presumptive...
...When Trinidad was trying to get rid of the American bases, I asked if Grenada could have them instead...
...The communists are very shrewd about making their propaganda...
...Six months later she called me back and asked me to be a member of her Privy Council...
...They cloak themselves in the advice they get from the mulatto class in this country, those who don't want to be called black...
...Vincent...
...I've been travelling around the countryside, having fireside chats with the people of Grenada...
...I was awarded that in a very touching ceremony...
...Gairy's GULP took 36% of the vote, but only a single seat under the winner-take-all system...
...For 21 years now, I have been asking for an American military presence here in Grenada...
...I don't want to say too much about the British...
...Listen, they even gave me 200 used tennis rackets for the kids...
...Who else did so much for Grenada...
...I was the first West Indian leader to be invited by President Carlos Andr6s P6rez of Venezuela...
...Tierney brought in the votes already marked with special chemicals...
...He is holed up these days in a friend's rambling pink-walled house in the hills above the town's beautiful harbor...
...The problem is that the Americans don't see the danger...
...Patrick John in Dominica and the Bird family in Antigua were good examples of the type...
...Our party was the only faction supporting the Americans but our people are now bitter and angry and hostile to the Americans because of what they suspect took place...
...George's...
...It is very touching to see their love...
...Below we share with you one of the lighter sides of Black's field work...
...It's the Americans who have the money...
...I asked Gairy about the elections, his feelings about the United States and his plans for the future...
...Well, it's true that I brought the matter up twice in the United Nations...
...They all looked at me and said, "What manner of man is this...
...He sent his private executive jet to pick me up and have lunch with him at his residence, Miraflores...
...Who do they think it was who had the dancing horses flown in from Guyana...
...he is the head of the political section...
...I'm the pro in politics of the whole Caribbean area...
...The conclusions of his research will appear in our July/August issue which will look at the evolution of U.S...
...You see, the other leaders were glad to see me go, because Grenada overshadows the other islands when Gairy is in power...
...The main task for Washington was to encourage these three parties to unite against Gairy...
...The new government is full of communists: Brizan is a communist...
...So they figure, well, there must be something special between Grenada and the United States...
...Brizan also said the Americans must go...
...Listen, I was one of the three most important guests to be invited to the most important event in America-the Fourth of July-and to the most important place, which is Philadelphia...
...These people are all indoctrinated, they're all communists...
...They were happy to see my downfall...
...It seemed to be the end of an era...
...The people love me...
...I was the only one to reject all the invitations from Castro, even to have exchanges with sportsmen...
...And Miss Grenada won, she became Miss World...
...Blaize said that the American troops had done their job and now they should get out...
...In a meeting which he had with me on December 17, he acknowledged direct responsibility for the fraud with the election ballots...
...The other politicians in the Caribbean are Trying to Keep ulsnopsa legacy alive against me out of simple jealousy...
...I was the original patron of the American military presence in the Eastern Caribbean, quite definitely...
...The Bishop people didn't just start the propaganda in 1979 you know...
...Opposing Gairy on the right was his longtime rival, Herbert Blaize, still leader of the GNP despite his advancing years and infirmity...
...So my proper title is The Right Honourable Sir Eric Matthew Gairy...
...Another was the Grenada Democratic Movement (GDM), led by lawyer Francis Alexis and university statistics professor Keith Mitchell, which enjoyed some backing in rural areas...
...well, 70% of the people love me...
...Here are some of his answers...
...Bodyguards lounge on packing cases, playing cards and drinking Carib beer...
...That.old, automatic, spontaneous smile for the Americans has gone...
...Yet when he returned to Grenada after the invasion, Gairy proved that his support, concentrated among poor farmworkers, was remarkably resilient...
...Gairy was one of the generation of political leaders who led their islands to universal suffrage and then to independence from Great Britain...
...For life...
...He was the brain behind it...
...They knew I was the strongest and most outspoken of all the leaders against communism...
...And do you know who the other two guests were...
...But do people think I would have been awarded all those 31 honors, things like the Venezuelan Order of the Liberator Simon Bolivar, if I only talked about UFOs...
...But the lower echelons of both the Carter and the Reagan administrations imbibed the propaganda of Bishop and the communists...
...On the Revolution The communist threat is not altogether removed...
...My feelings toward the United States remain positive, as they have been for three decades...
...oil company in Aruba, an affiliate of the New Jersey Standard Oil...
...Tierney is the one who put the factions of the NNP together into a synthetic-or rather a syncretic-soup...
...At the behest of St...
...Tierney allowed them to take power just because he wanted to take the credit...
...On U.S...
...Embassy here...
...In the aftermath of the October 1983 invasion of Grenada, perhaps the biggest headache facing the United States was the prospect that former Prime Minister Eric Gairy might be returned to power...
...Those now grouped in the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (MBPM) were tainted in voters' eyes by the traumatic violence of October 1983 when the revolution destroyed itself...
...Relations Twenty-seven years ago, the Americans realized my leadership and my friendship for the United States...
...The election resulted in a virtually clean sweep for the NNP, which took 59% of the vote and 14 out of 15 seats...
...Doubling as labor leaders and party chiefs, they came to dominate island politics in the Eastern Caribbean...
...Bishop indoctrinated the young people into communism and atheism...
...I will be prime minister of Grenada again...
...If the Bishop coup hadn't happened, I would have done the same thing in 1979 that I had done before-an official reception at the residence of the Governor General for every American citizen who lived on the island...
...Alexis is a communist...
...But no, they chose me instead...
...Then it was Grenada that got the big Caribbean exposition-Expo '69...
...Look, all these people are jealous of me...
...I got the last one kneeling before Queen Elizabeth...
...That's an exalted position for a West Indian man to be in...
...They...
...Eventually, after controlling Grenada for the better part of three decades, the GULP and "Uncle Gairy" were swept away on March 13, 1979 by Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement...
...Now the powers-that-be can't handle the situation...
...economic and security policies in Jamaica and the smaller English-speaking countries...
...But the other islands knew that with American support I would be too powerful...
...I can't stop that...
...I'm the best friend they have in Grenada...
...They had people who came here from Europe in 1976 to study the sources of my popularity with women...
...I have 31 honors on my shoulder-and I don't mean all that little stuff like the keys of the city...
...I have been awarded the highest honor of the State of New York by Governor Rockefeller...
...But we don't have the money to take the case to court...
...The first book ever written on the politics of the REPORT ON THE AMERICAS region had my profile on the cover...
...Gairy's Grenada United Labor Party, or GULP, defeated its leading opponent, Herbert Blaize's Grenada National Party (GNP) in six elections U : Gairy out of seven between 1954 and 1976...
...Today, Blaize is the island's prime minister...
...Ninety percent of Grenadians will tell you that...
...It was me who was invited to be a judge at the Miss World contest in London in 1970...
...I have five knighthoods...
...We have a British heritage and a British culture here, but I have always felt closer to the Americans, in that I worked for a U.S...
...One group, headed by urban professionals, was the New REPORT ON THE AMERICASDemocratic Party (NDP), a vehicle for educator George Brizan...
...Do they think I'm a clown...
...I would take them to the beach, or prepare them spice baskets with nutmeg and everything, or give them my car and take them for a picnic to show my love and friendship for America...
...I talked with him at length in early February in the Grenadian capital of St...
...Tierney admits that special ballots were brought in from Georgia-he even mentioned the name of the company...
...Other new parties sprang up in 1984, each with charismatic leaders but only rudimentary organization...
...I am the only man who has ever been elected prime minister of Grenada...
...That special rapport went on right through until 1979...
...When I go to those countries, I get a bigger welcome than the local leaders...
...I would have believed some of the things they wrote about me if I didn't know myself so well...
...Lucia's conservative Prime Minister John Compton, and with strong behind-the-scenes urging from the United States, leaders from the GNP, NDP and GDM met last August 26 on St...
Vol. 19 • March 1985 • No. 2
