The Fall of a Warlock

When voodoo failed to stop a revolution

Everyone in Grenada suspected that the island's Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, 56, was a black-magic nut as well as a UFO freak. Still, Grenadians were astonished last week by the cache of bizarre objects Sir Eric left behind when he went to the U.S. earlier this month. His well-timed departure came just before a coup that ousted him after twelve years of oppressive rule over the Caribbean island. On display at his residence atop picturesque Mount Royal last week were a donkey's eye, indigo, saltpeter and a mysterious white powder. Presumably these had been part of the spooky, voodoo-like rituals that the deposed Prime Minister is said to have practiced to help keep himself in power.

Huge stacks of books and magazines on UFOs and other astral bodies were reminders of the Grenadian leader's principal foreign policy concern. On three separate occasions in the past five years, he had proposed that the United Nations undertake studies of UFOs, which he insisted were space vehicles used by aliens of extraterrestrial origin.

The revolutionaries managed to oust Sir Eric's warlockracy with the loss of only three lives. On the morning of March 13, 45 members of the opposition New Jewel movement (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation) stormed Sir Eric's True Blue Defense Force barracks; they arrested 100 soldiers who were sleeping and unarmed. At the same time, Sir Eric's government ministers were routed out of bed and confined in the garden of the local prison.

The fire station quickly ran up a white flag of surrender--actually, a shirt borrowed off the back of a friendly passerby. During the ten-hour uprising, the island's radio station, which had been seized by revolutionaries, broadcast calypso and reggae songs. After the coup, the music was interrupted by such pleas as "Will the people who kept animals on Mount Royal come back and feed them" and "Will whoever borrowed the keys of the police wagon please return them." Three boatloads of tourists, including a group off a Soviet cruise ship, scarcely noticed that anything was going on, though a few were annoyed that they could not buy stamps at the tightly shuttered post office.

The leader of the coup, Maurice Bishop, 34, a British-educated lawyer, immediately set up a 14-member Revolutionary Council, which is committed to achieving moderate socialist reform. Bishop promised to hold free elections soon and guaranteed Grenadians a constitutional government and full human rights.

Few of Grenada's 110,000 citizens are likely to mourn Sir Eric's hasty departure. His popularity as the island's foremost labor leader in the 1950s was soon dissipated by his authoritarian methods when he became Prime Minister in 1967. Following Grenada's independence from Britain in 1974, Queen Elizabeth knighted Gairy, though he had given himself the title of Sir Eric years before.

Gairy claimed that God had appointed him to carry out a "divine plan" and that he regularly sent out "love waves" to his political opponents. Actually he ran a hateful little dictatorship. According to Bishop, Gairy was several times re-elected in blatantly rigged contests that included the registration of thousands of dead Grenadians and the bribing of living ones. Chief enforcer of his regime was the Mongoose Gang, a ferocious 30-man secret-police unit that he had recruited in the Grenadian underworld. He also attracted crooks and fugitives from justice from abroad, like Eugene Zeek, whom the FBI is seeking for allegedly cashing $1 million in bad checks in the U.S.

The Prime Minister himself profited while in office: his holdings included a beauty salon, several hotel guesthouses and the Evening Palace nightclub, where Grenadians seeking the favors of Sir Eric were expected to spend freely. When a 1973 general strike threatened Sir Eric's financial idyl, the Mongoose Gang savagely beat up three opposition leaders, including Maurice Bishop. Two months later, Bishop's father was killed by police during a demonstration.

Although few leaders in the Caribbean had been fond of the flamboyant Sir Eric, they were alarmed by the precedent that might be set by a coup d'etat--the first for the English-speaking islands of the area. Barbados, Jamaica, Dominica, Guyana and St. Lucia issued a stuffily worded statement that the coup had been "contrary to the traditional method of changing governments" in the region.

Back in Grenada meanwhile, members of the new government feared that Sir Eric would try to stage a countercoup. Sure enough, while in New York City last week, Sir Eric vainly appealed to the U.S., Canada and Britain to return him to power. According to Bishop, Sir Eric then began seeking men and arms for a mercenary army that would retake the island.

Though the ousted leader had a certain genius for accumulating cash, it seemed unlikely that he would succeed in reinstating himself on an island that has been impoverished by his greed and mismanagement. The economy is nearly bankrupt, 50% of the labor force is unemployed, and most of the islanders live at subsistence level. Last week Bishop's government was planning to establish farming cooperatives and to seek foreign aid in an attempt to repair the damage.

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