Wave

Abstract

The hills of Grenada resounded with chants like these in the 1970s as the swelling numbers of opponents of independent Grenada’s prime minister Eric Gairy faced off with his supporters. In the restless years leading up to the Grenada Revolution of 1979, “you just made up a chant and sang it out,” as one participant put it to me.1 Long gone was the period known as Sky Red (1950–1951), so named for the way that plantations and buildings set aflame by workers had painted the sky. At that time, Gairy had appeared to be the champion of the underclasses, leading a general strike and winning from the plantocracy a 25 percent wage increase for the working class.2 Many Grenadians of that generation remained fiercely loyal to Gairy, but by the 1970s the majority of the nation was alienated from his government. Gairy’s extravagance and the corruption scandal popularly referred to as “squandermania” had emptied the nation’s coffers; unemployment in 1970 was at about 75 percent.3 Gairy’s crackdown on the Black Power movement that was sweeping the Caribbean had undermined his credentials as a leader who defended the black masses, as did his acceptance of a knighthood from the Queen. His belief in unidentified flying objects had made him the object of international ridicule. It was rumored that he practiced obeah against his opponents.