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Audre Lorde speaks on Grenada

"Grenadans...

By Cara Vaughn 1984

..walk

like African peoples. When I visited Grenada, I saw the root of my mother's power walking through the streets. There is a softer edge of African sharpness upon these women and they swing through the rainwarm streets with an arrogant gentleness that I remember as strength and vulnerability."

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Two hundred people gathered February 22 at U. C. Berkeley to follow Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde on a tour to the island of Grenada. Lorde spoke of pre- and post-invaded Grenada during a benefit for Women's Voices Creative Writing Workshop.

Audre began the evening by reading from Zami, her "biomythography combining history, mythology, coming of age." In the book's introduction she describes Grenada, the birthplace of her mother. Lorde's words are vivid, sense-touching; women herding sheep with slender switches tucked under their arms, fat women frying fish while customers drink chocolate tea from mugs made out of Campbell's soup cans, roadcrews working barefooted with handtools. place-names are curiously enticing: Kick'em Jenny, Beauregard, Birchgrove, Grannytown Moun- tain.

Even the

Audre read only briefly from Zami. She spent the next 35 minutes describing the recent history of Grenada from the people's revolution to the U.S. invasion and occupation.

Lorde first visited Grenada 11 months before the March 1979 bloodless coup of the New Jewel Movement. Maurice Bishop became Prime Minister, replacing Sir Eric Gary whose 29 year reign Audre described as "wasteful, corrupt and, of course, sanctioned by the United States govern- ment." Lorde then gave an account of the

new movement.

Absentee

Bishop led the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in providing and up- grading basic services for Grenadans. For the first time, paved roads and a bus service were developed. School fees were abolished and teacher education was instituted. The island's doctors in- creased from 23 to 40. Unemployment decreased from 59% to 14%. landlords, who had left one third of the farmable land idle, were forced to work the land or deed it to the state. An agroindustry began and included the island's first processing plants for fruits and fish. The World Bank noted that the growth rate of the Grenadan economy was surpassing that of all other Caribbean nations.

The

People's Revolutionary Government ended when the United States invaded Grenada in the most recent of over 100 military actions against Caribbean and Central American nations. (One of these was the 1897 invasion of Puerto Rico. It was supposed to be a short stay.)

Lorde asked, "What does it mean when the country in which we are citizens occupies and conquers another sovereign state while we, the citizens, sit silently?" It is Audre's hope that the women who read Zami will know, more than most people, the farce of the American mili- tary occupation of Grenada, an island of 100,000 people.

Lorde discussed the main reasons given by the Reagan administration for the invasion: 1. "The St. George Medical School students were in danger. Staff and students denied this and Grenadan offi- cials assured their safety.

2. "The U. S. was invited to intervene by the signers of the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States Treaty." The decision to invade was made by four of seven treaty signers. The U. S. drafted the proposal and convinced three other Caribbean nations of its worthiness.

3. "Grenada threatened U. S. security because a military airport was being built and weapons were being stockpiled." The airport, in planning for over 25 years, was being built with Western European and Canadian funds to civilian, not military standards. All U. S. re- ports clearly indicate that Grenadan tourism would diminish if a modern air- port were not developed. The weapons stockpile was less than two warehouses and included 300 antique, and several hundred very old, rifles.

Lorde quoted Arthur Schlesinger, "We launch a sneak attack on a pathetic island of 110 [110,000] people with no army, no navy, no air force, and we call it a glorious victory." This was war: missles; bombs; internment camps; inter- rogation booths; isolation cells; house- to-house searches; neighbors offered rewards to inform; American soldiers at roadblocks with notebooks listing enemy sympathizers; street passes; relatives missing; hundreds of dead buried in unmarked graves; the fear of being jailed; the smell for weeks of decom- posing undiscovered bodies; complete exclusion, for the first time ever, of wartime coverage by the American press.

Lorde explains why. "The Pentagon has been spoiling for a fight it could win for a long time. The last one was the battle for Inchon [Korea] in the 1950's. How better to wipe out the bitter memory of Viet Nam defeats by 'Yellow people'

(Continued on p. 5)