By Clayton Goodwin
In November 1983, I stopped over in Puerto Rico on my way from Jamaica to the Eastern Caribbean in reporting, on the commission of Gleaner newspapers, the American-led military intervention in Grenada, and recorded the following experience.
“In the evening I watched American television news programmes, and immediately wished I hadn’t. My anti-American attitude in world relations stems from watching these bulletins. Until then I had been sympathetic to their cause. As speaker after speaker spoke in Congress, and before the cameras, in bellicose tones, twisting and exaggerating the “facts”, that sympathy drained away. The American politicians were spoiling for a fight, and I haven’t trusted them entirely since”.
Then, the following morning ….
“I found a bar that looked as if it came straight from the Wild West and went in with the hope of picking up a story. The bar room was extensive, with tables and chairs dotted or strewn around. A tough-looking American hombre was drinking at the bar. A wide flight of stairs led to upstairs rooms where, it was indicated, a Colombian girl was available for those services for which bar-girls were available in westerns but which were never quite defined in Gunsmoke.
Hearing my English accent, the lone drinker launched into a diatribe, rich in epithets, about the cowardly “Brits” refusing to join the Grenadian invasion. Then he sounded off about losing good friends through Americans having to help out our country when we got ourselves into a hole in the Second World War. We owed them our liberty – or so he said. I thought of my father, who had been called up in that conflict, and my grandfather in action (and wounded) from the first exchanges in the First World War, fighting for several years while this idiot’s countrymen waited on the sidelines before committing themselves. If ever I wanted to “land one” on some-one, and was deterred by his muscles and menaces, it was then.
I went out to change some money at the bank. The clerk, a charming young Hispanic lady, smiled a welcome. When she saw my British passport her mood changed. Her people blamed us for being too aggressive in fighting the Argentinians the year before. I was pleased to get out of the place – we couldn’t win”.
And I concluded of the Grenadian “intervention” –
“The Caribbean merged fully into the American sphere of power and influence with only a whimper (of opposition)”.