GRENADA observes its 49th Independence Anniversary today (February 7), against the background of many changes at home in the past six months, starting with the ground-shaking 2022 regime change that saw the defeat of longstanding Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell and his replacement by a younger namesake.

Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique – the actual formal name of the three-island state – became independent in 1973 under Eric Gairy, a popular trade unionist and political leader who later became a notorious dictator whose barbaric hostility to any opposition resulted in his overthrow by the New Jewel Movement (NJM), led by Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard, on March 13, 1979.

Gairy’s Mongoose Gang, modelled on Haitian dictator ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier’s patently barbaric ‘Tontons Macoutes,’ was earlier held responsible for the brutal death of Maurice Bishop’s father, Rupert, a fearless opponent no-less verbally-potent and publicly defiant than his radical lawyer son.

The young nation almost fully supported ‘The Revo’ — the first genuine and armed popular revolution in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) — that came alongside those in Iran and Nicaragua that year and would radically transform people’s lives, generally for the better.

Unfortunately, the revolution would last only four-and-a-half years, committing suicide in 1983, only to be buried by the occupying US-led multinational forces bent on erasing and burying the past and dictating the young nation’s future.

Approaching 40 years later, the country has been through several stages of political misfortune.

After Bishop’s death (October 17, 1983) and the invasion one week later (October 25, 1983), several US-backed ‘interim’ governments served under occupation, followed by a return to general elections — and a period that saw Dr Mitchell’s New National Party (NNP) three times win all the seats contested, until its uprooting last year by the younger Mitchell’s National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Current Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, like Bishop, has been widely embraced by cross-sections of the population, both for his informal gaiety (playing ‘Jab Jab’ days after taking office) and his early moves to clean up the financial mess inherited from an outgoing administration that threw everything at staying in — from promising post-election salary increases and pension payments, to the many efforts to attract more votes than available for victory, at a time when the tide and climate had both radically changed and it was time (again) for yet another change.

With 49 years of independence and 43 years of memory and experiences from the revolutionary era, the current administration largely represents a sizeable and decisive post-revolution citizenry and electorate that, unfortunately, grew up without the access to most the (hidden and denied) truths about the revolutionary achievements.

Thanks to over four decades of anti-revolution propaganda shaped by those ideologically opposed to the politics and economics that bore fruits of social and cultural integration through programmes directed at and involving communities— including the introduction of popular democracy at grassroots levels that saw residents discuss budget proposals and new laws being proposed— the Dickon Generation was denied the experiences learning the true history of and lessons from the revolution, at home and abroad, even in academia.

But history cannot be erased and lessons are never too late to learn.

Coard has published a series of review books that included apologies for decisions that went terribly wrong. There is global support for a Grenada government to formally request the return of Bishop’s remains from US custody (so he could be given the Christian burial his mother fought so hard for, but died without attending) and the atmosphere in Grenada today is one that’s offering signs of a very possible national regeneration for positive change and adjustment, with the help of rear-view review and adaptive recalibration for necessary fast-forward progress into the near and distant future.

Understandably, political hangovers remain from the trauma of four-and-a-half decades ago that will probably never go away.

But the general feeling everywhere is that Grenada has paid too much for too long and it’s again time for more changes that people can see and feel, in ways like never before since 1979, only accelerated by the positive global changes in science and technology and international diplomacy, in the Age of the Internet of Things and with the opportunities that always come with every challenge facing developing nations and small-island states globally, from climate change to inflation.

Take the island’s experience on the issue of reparations, which featured in Buckingham Palace’s decision to call off last year’s planned Royal Visit to Grenada and the upcoming visit of Apology and Penance by representatives of the Trevalyans, an aristocratic British family that owned plantations and hundreds of slaves on the island and has accepted the courageous challenge of agreeing to formally apologise and atone by establishing a US$100,000 fund in Grenada later this month – both events attributable to the work of the Grenada National Reparations Commission (GNRC) chaired by Ambassador Arley Gill, appointed by the previous PM Mitchell and blessed by the current government.

Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique are on the cusp of 21st Century change, with real demographic possibilities for supporting new national democratic and developmental policies that will not only make the three-island state better by far, but also help in the process of accelerating the necessary regional developmental renewals that will continue to alter the geopolitical and attendant directions in the Caribbean and Latin America in the post-pandemic age.

It is enhanced by the successive and hurtful COVID-19 supply chain and sanctions-related measures, triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict one year ago.