Waiting in Paradise

By George Russell

A year after the U.S. invasion, an island faces its future

The first anniversary of liberation came and went with only quiet fanfare on Grenada. In the dining room of the Grenada Beach Hotel, home for most of the 240 U.S. soldiers and military policemen still on the island, Rear Admiral Ralph Hedges, commander of U.S. forces in the Caribbean, paid tribute to the 19 servicemen who died in last year's momentous rescue mission. In the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, some 450 local citizens and dignitaries heard Father Cyril Lamontagne of St. Lucia thank the Lord, who, he said, "stretched forth his mighty hand to bring us back from the mouth of hell." On the main campus of the St. George's University School of Medicine, where the presence of some 600 American students had provided the rationale for the Oct. 25 invasion, preparations were under way for the unveiling this week of a bronze plaque honoring the U.S. troops who died in the three-day invasion battle. Throughout St. George's, the island's postcard-charming capital, most shops and offices were closed for the occasion.

There were minor Grenadian fireworks, however, in Washington. Reagan Administration officials vehemently denied a charge by Richard Gabriel and Paul Savage, military historians at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., who claimed that a "significant" number of U.S. commandos were not counted in the official casualty toll. While hotly disputing that assertion, Pentagon Spokesman Michael Burch admitted that the names of only 88 of 115 injured servicemen were released, either to protect the identity of special U.S. forces or at the request of the wounded.

The dispute over casualty figures was barely noticed by Grenadians, who are also notably restrained about their Dec. 3 election, the first since 1976. The island's 49,000 voters (out of a population of about 90,000) will choose a 15-member National Assembly and a new Prime Minister, replacing the nine-member advisory council that has ruled since last November. Council Chairman Nicholas Brathwaite says that the group's main task has been "creating the atmosphere" for the elections, but that job remains far from complete. Says Brathwaite: "I'm not getting much enthusiasm. It may be that many people have not made up their minds."

Officially, the U.S. has no interest in the outcome, provided the balloting is free, fair and open. But U.S. diplomats are concerned that Sir Eric Gairy, 62, the country's first Prime Minister following independence in 1974, will make a comeback. He was ousted after five years of increasingly brutal, eccentric and corrupt rule. Gairy's successor, Maurice Bishop, was deposed by a hard-line faction of his leftist New Jewel Movement and murdered six days before U.S. troops arrived. The trial of 19 former New Jewel members accused of the deaths of Bishop, 39, and ten of his followers resumes this week.

Gairy returned to Grenada last January after five years of exile. From a pink frame house overlooking St. George's Harbor, he now directs the affairs of his Grenada United Labor Party (G.U.L.P.). Despite a promise that he will not be a candidate on Dec. 3, Gairy and his party machine remain popular with many Grenadians. Should G.U.L.P. win a majority, predicts Herbert Blaize, head of Grenada's centrist New National Party (N.N.P), "all hell will break loose."

Blaize, 66, is Gairy's strongest rival for the prime ministership. The N.N.P, however, is still feeling its way as a party, having been thrown together only last August from three disparate centrist groups fearful of Gairy's return. That merger was denounced by another major candidate, Kendrick Radix, as "a shotgun marriage put together by the U.S. with surrogates and satellites." As head of a group of former New Jewel adherents who call themselves the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement, Radix is trying to capitalize on affection for the martyred leader.

Along with election concerns, there is the problem of Grenada's economy. Its main pillars, tourism and agriculture, are tottering. In the past year the U.S. has sent the country about $47 million in direct aid, equivalent to almost half of Grenada's gross national product. An additional $10 million is budgeted for next year. Nearly $19 million of the 1984 aid went to complete the Cuban-built Point Saline International Airport, which was the focal point of the U.S. invasion. At that time, the U.S. claimed that the unfinished airport posed a military threat to the Caribbean. The British construction managers of the project disagreed, saying the airport was unquestionably civilian. The project has been scaled down a trifle, and a U.S. diplomat now calls the controversial airport "a neutral instrument." This week the airport will open officially. Local businessmen are counting heavily on the facility to revive the economy, and especially tourism, which until now depended mainly on visits by cruise ships.

While Grenada's pearly beaches are inviting, its main exports--nutmeg, cocoa and bananas--are suffering from low world prices and bad harvests during the Bishop regime. Nearly one-third of the work force is unemployed. Construction of the airport created 420 jobs, and the U.S. plans to spend $6 million improving Grenada's roads, bridges and power stations, creating work for an additional 2,000 people.

Those jobs are only temporary. The Administration expects private investment, chiefly from the U.S., to provide long-term relief. But so far the only new businesses in operation are a small wooden-toy factory and a tiny souvenir-nutmeg concern. Other foreign investors, like the islanders themselves, seem to be waiting for the Dec. 3 election before embracing Grenada's future.

--By George Russell.

Reported by Bernard Diederich/St. George's

With reporting by Bernard Diederich