Andrew Sage

American students weren't under any actual threat, obviously.

Nobody was mining them or threatening them or anything, but they always have to have some kind of story, right?

Yeah.

So 25th of October, 1983, America's boots land on the ground.

Joined later by the military personnel of Barbados and Jamaica.

There were more deaths, mostly in Grenadians, but also some Cubans who were there working on the new international airport.

An airport that later became known as Maurice Bishop International Airport.

An airport that just over a month ago, the United States requested to use for its military operations in the region.

The United States kept the media out of the island for two days after the invasion.

They were sure to curate an image of the communist threat.

They wanted to paint a picture for the media to tell a story back at home about how, yeah, they were actually preparing to work with the Soviets as a staging ground to attack the United States.

So this invasion was the first overt invasion

As opposed to covert use of force since Vietnam.

The party in power at the time needed an easy win.

So party members, this is neutral movement party members, were imprisoned.

An interim government was established by Grenadians living abroad.

And the revolution was over.

Let's talk aftermath.

The fall of the New Jewel Movement and the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada led to the disintegration of the Workers' Party of Jamaica.

It nearly destroyed Karakom, the Caribbean community, as a united bloc, as Jamaica and Trinidad sided with the US in their invasion, while countries like Trinidad stood against the invasion.