Grenada Intervention

U.S. intervention on the small Caribbean island of Grenada. On October 25, 1983, U.S. forces invaded the island of Grenada (one of the smallest in the eastern Caribbean), which was immersed in chaos after a bloody coup brought the People's Revolutionary Army to power. The Grenada invasion, called Operation Urgent Fury, marked the first U.S. military incursion overseas since the Vietnam War.

Operation Urgent Fury involved 5,000 U.S. Marines, Army Rangers, Navy Seal commandos, and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, as well as 300 troops from a number of Caribbean states. By mid-December, all military targets had been secured and were under close American control, and an Interim Advisory Council governed Grenada until December 1984. In the parliamentary elections held that year, Herbert A. Blaize, from the pro-America New National Party, was elected as the new prime minister of the island.

People's Revolutionary Government

Frustrated with the authoritarian and corrupt administration of Grenada prime minister Sir Eric Gairy, a group of young members of the leftist New Jewel Movement (NJM) launched a coup that deposed Gairy in 1979. Gairy had served as prime minister of the island since it became independent from British rule in 1974. Gairy was known as a despotic and egotistical leader, and his secret police—called the Mongoose Squad—suppressed all political dissent on the island.

After the 1979 coup, the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) was created, and a charismatic leader, 34-year-old Maurice Bishop, became prime minister. Bishop's revolutionary government favored relations with socialist countries, particularly Cuba, and it promoted policies to create a popular socialism.

Within the NJM, however, were elements that were even more radical than Bishop and his collaborators. Among them was a group led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. In early 1983, Coard's faction began to push for a power-sharing arrangement to counter the economic decline that the revolutionary government was facing. Disagreements over the arrangement created a power struggle between radical and moderate factions within the NJM.

The NJM's internal strife culminated with Bishop's arrest on October 19, 1983, a move some interpreted as a military coup masterminded by Coard. After crowds of supporters—by some accounts 10,000 people, nearly 10% of Grenada's population—rallied in the streets against the arrest, Bishop was freed, only to be assassinated the same day by members of the People's Revolutionary Army. Dozens of protesters and some cabinet members were also massacred.

A Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) seized power at this time, but its involvement in Bishop's killing attracted severe criticism, isolating the new rulers from internal and external support. Coard and other members of the RMC were found guilty of the killing of Maurice Bishop and are still in prison (they are known as the Grenada 17). October 19, 1983, has become known in Grenadan history as “Bloody Wednesday.”

U.S. Involvement

Six days after the killing of Maurice Bishop, on October 25, 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced to the nation that U.S. forces were being deployed in Grenada. In his words, the invasion was launched to “protect innocent lives, including up to 1,000 Americans…to forestall further chaos…and to assist in the restoration of conditions of law and order and of governmental institutions to the island.”

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