Memory, Memorializing and Martyrdom in Post-Revolutionary Grenada

Abstract:On 13 March 1979, the small island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean staged a big uprising known as the Grenada Revolution (1979–1983). That uprising saw the ousting of the then prime minister Eric Matthew Gairy by the socialist opposition party, the New Jewel Movement led by the young, popular, and charismatic lawyer Maurice Bishop. But after four years of running the country under the People's Revolutionary Government, the revolution imploded on itself when Prime Minister Maurice Bishop along with his government ministers and supporters were killed at Fort Rupert on 19 October 1983. Since then, several memorials have been erected to the memory of Bishop and by extension, the Grenada Revolution. But not everyone wants to remember Maurice Bishop and the Grenada Revolution. The nation is polarized over the Grenada Revolution, and particularly the events of 19 October 1983, and grapples with its memory and re-memory decades after. This paper is interested in how memory, memorializing and martyrdom intersect in the post-revolutionary state.