REAGAN'S FANTASY ISLANDS

...The two options being forced upon it seem to be either complete acquiescence to Washington's pressure, with the probable removal of Bishop and the shelving of his reforms, or sharply increased reliance on the Eastern Bloc for support...

...But when Bishop set out in search of construction funds among the international community, he met with a decidedly mixed response...

...the richness of its spice harvest (these are commonly called the Spice Islands), and the eccentricity of Prime Minister Eric Gairy, who was given to delivering lengthy speeches before the United Nations calling for communication and cooperation with UFOs...

...interest to support corrupt systems, no matter how compliant, of the old neo-colonialist order, instead of applauding, befriending, and encouraging such experiments as Grenada's...

...several, including Maurice Bishop, were savagely beaten...

...To criticism of its decision to postpone elections, the government replies that elections are a luxury which a struggling young nation trying to rectify centuries of exploitation does not need and can not afford...

...Satisfied, he drops to his knees and murmurs, "It's no good, no good for my business...

...Though aid in the construction of the airport had long been promised to Grenada, enthusiasm for the assistance rapidly waned, reaching the point where Reagan and Haig not only reneged on the promise but imposed stringent economic sanctions...

...Bishop's fears become more credible in light of recent U.S...

...There is also no question that Grenada, like Nicaragua, is important in the geopolitical picture as a symbol of rebellion against a dreadful cycle that began with U.S...

...The average annual wage hovered around $500, there was virtually no manufacturing sector, and the few crops—nutmeg, cocoa, and bananas—provided total annual export earnings about equal to what the Pentagon spends every two hours...

...For no reason...

...He thinks for a moment, and then, no longer checking for eavesdroppers, says, "No, not for most folks...

...In terms of the U.S...

...The people are handsome, square-shouldered, and healthy-looking, modest without being servile, talkative but not garrulous...

...There is no question that the vast majority of the Grena-dian people are better off, in terms of self-respect and the prospect for materially rewarding lives, under the new regime than they were under the old...

...And finally, Bishop himself insists that the Cubans offered no-strings aid...

...And as for the Germans...

...Those are the two hidden dimensions of Grenada: the adamant pride and the wrenching deprivation...

...National Security Council, "The airfield site commands the deepwater channel alongside the island of Grenada through which flows 52 per cent of all imported U.S...

...It is Reagan who is killing us...

...Early on the morning of March 13,1979, forty-five members of the opposition New Jewel Party (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation), led by thirty-four-year-old British-educated lawyer Maurice Bishop, stormed the barracks of Gairy's True Blue Defense Force and arrested 100 sleeping and unarmed soldiers...

...It was not just the erstwhile prime minister's bizarre interest in extraterrestrials that led to his overthrow...

...As late as 1979, the tiny nation of three islands (Grenada, Car-riacon,and Petit Martinique) off the northern coast of Venezuela was distinguishable from its West Indian neighbors only in relatively minor respects: the almost disconcerting friendliness of its inhabitants...

...A few months ago, the U.S...

...Time will be the test of the policy's success...

...Otherwise, conditions for the 110,000 Grenadians were typical of what might be called post-colonial detritus...

...It is the airport that has become the focus of the island's troubles...

...And those two dimensions, in combination, have elevated this island-nation, in large part against its own inclination, trom the status of a pawn to that of a major piece in the parlous game of power politics...

...On the beach, the young steel-drum salesman is finally persuaded he will not make a sale, even to this American, and I ask him whether things really were better, everything considered, under the old government...

...Small wonder, then, that Bishop's daring coup was greeted with almost universal popular support, especially when he immediately announced plans to establish farming cooperatives, begin a universal literacy campaign, hold honest elections within a reasonable time, and start seeking funds for construction of a modern airport near the capital city of St...

...Washington has refused to recognize the credentials of the Grenadian ambassador and attempted to block the island from diplomatic channels in the organization of Eastern Caribbean Countries...

...speeches...

...Earlier this year, President Reagan and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig singled out Grenada as the latest "surrogate" for Soviet and Cuban expansionism in the Western Hemisphere...

...The island, though one of the most desperately poor in an impoverished region, was specifically excluded from Reagan's recent Caribbean Basin Initiative...

...For the United States, that was the final straw...

...In 1973, during a general strike protesting Gairy's financial and political stranglehold, he unleashed the Gang on opposition leaders...

...He was an active voodoo practitioner (Time magazine headlined the report of his ouster The Fall of a Warlock), and closely modeled his regime after that of Haiti's notorious "Papa Doc" Duva-lier...

...Bishop claims to have learned from the example of El Mercurio in Chile and the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica, which, with substantial CIA support, were instrumental in the overthrow of Salvadore Allende's socialist government and the electoral defeat of Michael Manley's leftist party...

...Its language, though in a dialect so musical as always to seem on the edge of song, is intelligible English...

...For the traveler, there is a strong temptation to regard the island simply as beguil-ingly quaint, a place Rodgers and Hammer-stein might have conjured up out of the sea...

...Everyone walks everywhere, except the cabdrivers, who are the island's single alarming phenomenon...

...But that raises, in turn, the deeper and more troubling question of what the long-term strategic interests of the United States really are, and how they are to be balanced against the traditional—and not wholly mythological—American concern for justice and social equality...

...There was general agreement that a modern facility was necessary to the country's economic future—not just for the boost it would give to tourism, but to spur exports and imports...

...And he was offered and accepted labor and technical advice from Cuba...

...George's...

...Two months later, during another protest, Bishop's father was killed by the police...

...invasion and usurpation, found its limit and stability over dozens of generations of arrogant oppression, and now, like an inappropriate passion, seeks through contrivance and sham to disguise its nature—generously, even from itself— while still enjoying the poor pleasures of its corruption...

...Bishop looked elsewhere...

...Why all the fuss...

...Are we dealing here with an idealistic young government intent upon remedying centuries of poverty and exploitation, or with one which, as Reagan charged in a speech last February before the Organization of American States, is enmeshed "in the tightening grip of the totalitarian Left...

...First the Carter Administration, then Reagan's, viewed these developments with alarm...

...Our business way down...

...Is it truly in the U.S...

...Bishop is simply trying to do what's right...

...He had deviously used his position to gain extensive island holdings which were used, in turn, to extort large sums of money from Grenadians seeking political favors...

...Grenada will provide a test case...

...The danger was aggravated by the fact that, in the words of a member of the U.S...

...government's general suspicion of Bishop's motives are the facts that new elections—promised immediately after the coup—have been indefinitely postponed and that the island's opposition newspaper has been shut down...

...Moreover, Venezuela, a stone's throw to the south and one of the major suppliers of U.S...

...It cannot afford them because—and this seems contradictory to some—they foster an atmosphere of dissidence and criticism, when what is needed is unity and single-mindedness of purpose...

...And his Mongoose Gang—his version of Duvalier's vicious Tonton Macoute—spread terror throughout the island...

...A leading hotelkeeper, one of the few thriving capitalists on the sun-drenched southern Caribbean island of Grenada, when asked the same question, replies, "It is not the government's fault...

...disenchantment became complete, and the State Department embarked on a political and propaganda campaign designed to isolate Grenada from the rest of the Caribbean community...

...Critics of that argument respond that airports on Guadaloupe, Barbados, and Saint Lucia (each with 9,500-foot runways) also provide easy access to the channel, so that, if and when any of these places undergoes a similar shift to the Left, the United States will be put in the absurd position of having to contend that their runways are also too long...

...military maneuvers in the area, and Eric Gairy's work among mercenaries and expatriate Grenadians, whom he is trying to organize into an invasion force to recapture the island...

...The Administration's central argument was that the runway for the proposed airport was longer (at 9,000 feet) than was strictly necessary to accommodate tourist and import/export traffic, the implication being that it was designed to handle Cuban military aircraft...

...Until, that is, one reads about the native Carib Indians who leapt to their deaths from a cliff to avoid capture by French slavetraders, and until one travels the back Donald Algeo, an assistant professor of philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has been a frequent visitor to various parts of the Caribbean...

...oil, seems undisturbed by—in fact, it supports—the prospect of an enhanced landing facility on the island...

...Although almost every island has its ardent admirers, a disproportionate number of travelers familiar with the entire region proclaim Grenada (pronounced Gren-ay-da) to be the loveliest in the Caribbean, its people the most amicable, its native cuisine the most delectable, its prices the most modest...

...It does not need them because the New Jewel Party has overwhelming public support...

...strategic interest in preventing a leftward tilt among developing nations in its spheres of influence, the central question is whether a "get tough" policy really will have the desired result...

...Aside from the farm and literacy reforms, he moved his country in the direction of a "workers' democracy," patterned after the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which involved intensive participation in the form of village discussion groups and advisory councils at the local level, while retaining final decision-making prerogatives at the upper levels, among the elite cadre who had brought about the revolution...

...Already, other countries in the region—Dominica, Barbados, Trinidad, Curacao—are waiting to see what the fate of that piece will be...

...He found support among the European Common Market nations, in the Arab world (including Libya), and in Venezuela...

...For beach salesmen, though...

...At the same time, government ministers were taken from their beds and incarcerated, and the single radio station was seized...

...As for closing down the conservative opposition's paper...

...All the Americans are staying away, and the Germans"—he snorts—"the Germans don't like to spend...

...small danger, since it is practically deserted...

...Gairy's elections had been blatantly rigged, the registration rolls listing thousands of dead Grenadians...

...Bishop's rhetoric, and some of his initial policy moves, were avowedly socialist...

...country and sees the kind of utter poverty one associates with Calcutta or Manila...

...Defense Department staged an enormous mock military exercise in the area, in part—at least in the opinion of many Grenadians—to frighten the island's new government and serve as a warning to others who might be impressed by its achievements...

...Traffic flows—rockets, rather—British-style, on the left...

...Today, the only authorized national newspaper is that of the New Jewel Party...

...He looks up and down the beach to make sure no one is close enough to overhear...

...Well, thank God they are still coming...

...The issues brought into focus by Grenada's situation are complex and important, but seldom so sharply defined as in this fledgling island-state...

...In support of the U.S...

...Or are we perhaps dealing with both...

...Within ten hours, only three lives having been lost, the coup had placed Bishop and his party in effective control of the government...

...It lies outside the hurricane zone, and the sun, even at midday, is for some reason never the menace it is elsewhere...

...Gairy was in New York to deliver one of his peculiar U.N...