Anti-Americana: Common Interests

Dating from the 1960s, when the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was a little more self-identified with the socialist camp, this poster shows an armed Korean and and a very Che-looking armed Cuban bayoneting a cowering American figure in the corner who seems to look a lot like U.S. President Lyndon Baynes Johnson (LBJ). The flags are those of North Korea and Cuba, and sadly, once again my ignorance of Korean means I have no idea what the caption says. It's a classic distillation of the North Korean anti-American propaganda style.

North Korea and Cuba have of course both defied the presence of the strongest anti-Communist military power camped out right on their borders for decades. The threat to the Cuban and North Korean governments is evident every day still in 2013. Solidarity apparently actually helps!

In 1960, Che Guevara actually visited the DPRK on behalf of revolutionary Cuba, and here is a brief clip of him sitting down with DPRK leader Kim Il Sung. 

Anti-Americana: Anti-Imperialist BFFs?

Back in the early 1960s the People's Republic of China seemed firmly committed to the anti-imperialist camp. In 1963 it issued a series of stamps "in solidarity with revolutionary socialist Cuba." This value of the series is entitled, "Support Cuban People's Patriotic and Just Struggle Against U.S Imperialism." It shows a solidarity with Cuba rally being held in Beijing. Other values in the series showed a rally in Habana, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and some stellar cartoonish images of Cuban revolutionaries.

As the Sino-Soviet split worsened, Cuba and China grew apart. By the late 1970s, Cuba and China wound up on different sides of a number of proxy conflicts. In Angola, for instance, Cuban troops backing the MPLA government fought an extended civil war with the forces of the rival UNITA faction, armed by China, Apartheid South Africa and the American CIA. The moral of that story? Realpolitik is never good for revolutions.

Anyway, remembering this stamp is a good way to mark today's date, July 26, the date of the failed 1953 revolutionary attack on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba, and the namesake of the revolutionary movement that would go on to kick out the Batista dictatorship and its U.S. sponsors in 1959. The Movimiento 26 de Julio had a beautiful black and red banner that served as an inspiration for later revolutionaries in Chile (the MIR) and Nicaragua (the FSLN).

While we're at it, here's an LP from China in the 1960s having something to do with a celebration of the Cuban July 26th Movement. I don't read enough Chinese to get more than that, but that's pretty clearly an illustration meant to evoke Fidel. They don't make record covers like that anymore!

Anti-Americana: Enemy of Humanity

From 1983, a poster from the Cuban "Anti-Imperialist Tribunal of Our America." Bearing completely still-relevant text, it reads:

WANTED

Charge: Enemy of Humanity

Reward: Peace, Sovereignty, Freedom

In a country where the media narrative routinely suggests down is up and up is down,  it's worth remembering how warped American perspective is. Things look different from outside our borders. U.S. foreign policy isn't quite the gift to world progress it's made out to be.

In compiling the beginnings of a reading list on the Occupy movement, I ran across this brilliant passage:

"The American population, the 1% of the world, is wrapped in a skin filled with memory we must shed. Memory of false historical narratives, of manipulations we knowingly uphold, of dreams about “making it” and of an existence that seems to have stopped evolving. These false memories require our collective insomnia. We are not at the end of history, as some would have us believe. Our current society does not represent the best we can do. There is nothing inherent to human beings that allow some to achieve financial success by their own volition and others to remain stagnant in reaching an acceptable quality of life."

That's by Sandra Mae Nurse, from the article "On Losing Fear and Complacency" in issue 2 of the Occupy Wall Street theoretical journal Tidal, downloadable here.

"Anti-Americana" is a series featuring Anti-American propaganda art here at The Cahokian.

Republican Candidates Threaten Cuba

I watched about half of tonight's Republican Presidential debate in Florida. I'm struck by how little these people actually talk about. The debates have been a really bad long-running reality show where they basically accuse each other of all manner of horrible things. They don't discuss their plans, they don't discuss the reasons things are the way they are, they don't discuss any real facts or issues. Except they do make a lot of threats and insinuations. Against each other. Against President Obama. Against black people. Against gay people. Against immigrants.

Tonight they threatened Iran, and, it being a debate in Florida, they threatened Cuba. There was something so visceral in their attempt to outdo each other in their bloodthirsty desire to return the laws of organized crime and plantation rule to Cuba. Well, except for poor Ron Paul, who said the U.S. should leave Cuba alone. Though today I also watched a video clip of him speaking in front of a Confederate flag in 2003 denying that the Civil War was fought over slavery which pretty much cancels out anything he says about anything else at all. The new Republican frontrunner Newt Swingrich basically said the CIA should be going to Cuba to overthrow its government. Which we presume the US has already been trying to do for over fifty years.

The government established by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 has made its share of mistakes, sure. But there is something about what Cuba has managed to do through the course of its revolution that really is meaningful, and that has to do with values and priorities. These start with healthcare and education. It really shouldn't be a surprise that someone like Gingrich, who thinks poor children should be earning their keep cleaning out bathrooms, sees the Cuban reality as a threat. American politicians have never actually cared about democracy in Cuba; they certainly didn't care about democracy when Batista was in power. What they care about is returning the rule of capitalist property relations and US dominance to a country that has dared to reject those things so close to our shores.

There's lots that could be said about the horrible things these candidates keep saying: their bigotries and their swaggering lies, their love of ruthless financial exploitation. Their charade is going to go on for a while, and I for one am not convinced that Gingrich won't be the last man standing.

It's often hard to know where to start when considering just how awful all these politicians are — from both parties. But here's another thing to add to the list. When they talk about attacking Cuba, they're talking about attacking the right of any and every social movement to break free from the clutches of corporate America.

There's only one response for the 99%: Defend Cuba!

Anti-Americana: Peace President

Since on New Year's Eve he signed the despicable and dangerous NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act, let's dedicate the first post of 2012 to President Obama, elected three years ago on a largely anti-war, reform platform. With his signing of NDAA — see previous posts here — Obama has in quite a real way significantly eroded the rights of American citizens to due process. He's proved that his definition of "peace" is not particularly cognizant with the one in the dictionary.

This poster is from the Cuban OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, an organization with a long tradition of brilliant graphic design. While this poster isn't artistically their best, their anti-imperialist message remains sharply on point. President Obama is shown winning the Nobel Peace Prize as a warlike American eagle swoops down from behind. Captioned at the sides are the scenes of the President's "peaceful" actvities: Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East, Honduras, Terrorism, Yemen, the blockade against Cuba, military bases in Colombia, and Pakistan. The poster pre-dates Libya, probably produced in 2009 or 2010.

I must note that this blog marked the awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama, indeed his very election, with a sense of hope. To my credit I think by the time of his actual prize acceptance speech my critique was developing. At some point this year I'm sure I will sum up my own trajectory and thinking about how all that worked out. I think it's important to take responsibility for positions I have argued in the past, and where necessary, to revisit them with a proper sense of self criticism. Let's just say that Obama has been a tremendous disappointment to those who gave him their support, even those of us who offered that support with a critical eye. This disappointment was also entirely predictable, and looking at what happened in the past four years will be important as this year's election season heats up. The question needs to be answered whether voting defensively for Obama last time around did anybody any good. It certainly didn't help an awful lot of innocent people killed by predator drones on his orders. Stay tuned.

For more examples of Anti-Americana, the regular Cahokian feature on worldwide anti-American propaganda art, click here.

History IS Absolving Him

"If Mr. Kennedy does not like socialism, well we do not like imperialism! We do not like capitalism! We have as much right to protest over the existence of an imperialist-capitalist regime 90 miles from our coast as he feels he has to protect over the existence of a socialist regime 90 miles from his coast. Now then, we would not think of protesting over that, because that is the business of the people of the United States. It would be absurd for us to try to tell the people of the United States what system of government they must have, for in that case we would be considering that the United States is not a sovereign nation and that we have rights over the domestic life of the United States."

"Rights do not come from size. Right does not come from one country being bigger than another. That does not matter. we have only limited territory, a small nation, but our right is as respectable as that of any country, regardless of its size. It does not occur to us to tell the people of the United States what system of government they must have. Therefore it is absurd for Mr. Kennedy to take it into his head to tell us what kind of government he wants us to have here. That is absurd. It occurs to Mr. Kennedy to do that only because he does not have a clear concept of international law or sovereignty. Who had those notions before Kennedy? Hitler and Mussolini!"

--Fidel Castro, May 2, 1961

A few days ago was the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. My blogfriend Casey put up a very nostalgic post featuring the cover art to the Kennedy-era comedy album "The First Family." Casey reminds us that everyone who is old enough remembers that moment in time in November of 1963. It turns out this time of year is also the anniversary of Fidel Castro's 1956 voyage from Mexico to Cuba on the boat Granma that initiated the guerrilla struggle that lead him to victory. And it's also the the anniversary of Fidel declaring the Cuban revolution to be socialist in character in 1961.

It's funny to me, living through as many decades as I have, what happens to the icons of the past over time. Of course Mr. Castro is still alive; Mr. Kennedy was not that lucky. And while every good American is supposed to have a special reverence for the beloved JFK along with a mocking hatred of the dictator Castro, the longer I live the more these two switch places in my own personal hall of heroism.


I know how much hope JFK held for my parents: young, supposedly progressive, handsome, a Catholic like my mom and unlike the long line of presidents before him, brave, and the (pyrrhic) defeater of the evil Nixon. And in the end he brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, laid the basis for the Vietnam War, and foisted the CIA on various of the world's peoples. In addition to the trifling complaint of running the White House with a less than decorous reputation a la Bill Clinton decades later.

Castro became to me a stereotype: I confess to having readily dismissed him as a Stalinist dictator. The long speeches, well, I never bothered to read them. And Cuba in the 1970s was not a good place to be gay: with the Mariel boatlift at the end of that decade the tales of arbitrary imprisonment and state-sanctioned bigotry were horrifying. And yet it is Fidel who made the remarkable confession to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that the mistreatment of gays by the revolution was "a great injustice" and that "if anyone is responsible, it's me. I'm not going to place the blame on others."

I've begun to go back over some of those long, long speeches. And you know what? I would rather read Fidel telling truths few others managed to so concisely present than JFK talking about asking what you can do for your country. Fidel is brilliant, witty, and to the point. His analysis of imperialism is spot on and righteous. And in this day and age of the U.S. continuing to act like a bully on the world stage, it's more relevant than ever.

In 1953 Fidel made a historic speech before a court in Cuba before being sentenced to prison for subversion (he was released early). It's known as the "History Will Absolve Me" speech, and at great length he blasts the Batista dictatorship for injustice and corruption, and lays out a vision of social change based on Cuba's history of revolution. He closed with these famous words:

"I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

It remains to be seen how Cuba's revolution will survive the next fifty years. But it's hard to imagine Fidel's legacy not surviving. In a time when so many noble words from the past turned out so hollow, I find so many of Fidel Castro's words remain principled, and inspiring. History is indeed absolving him.


(The top photo is a postcard of Fidel Castro looking incredibly sexy in 1963. The middle photo is Fidel meeting with Malcolm X in Harlem in Sept. 1960. Bottom photograph is Fidel Castro appearing on Nicaraguan TV; photographed by me in Managua, 1986)

Anti-American Art: Stopping Traffic

From the Palestine Popular Struggle Front ca. 1980 comes this expression of solidarity between Palestinians and Cubans: "Our People Stands with Cuba Against American Imperialism." With a special traffic sign the PPSF says no bombing America's southern neighbor.

Of course given the relationship between the State of Israel and the United States, Cuba's Che Guevara is and was a popular icon of rebellion for Palestinians, but he was killed before the days of major Palestinian resistance in the wake of the 1967 June War. The illustration at left is from Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff ca. 2002.

The PPSF poster is another archived at the Palestine Poster Project.

Anti-American Art: Against the Terrorist Empire

This is a stamp with souvenir sheet from Cuba, issued in 2009 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. It shows a photo of a demonstration and a sweeping montage of Cuban flags next to a statue of Jose Marti, hero of Cuban independence from Spain.

The banner reads: "Contra el Imperio Terrorista, La Solidaridad Junto a los Pueblos. Avanza!" "Against the Terrorist Empire, The Solidarity of the People Together. Forward!" Shown on the banner are portraits of the Cuban Five.

The Cuban Five are five heroic Cuban intelligence agents who came to the United States to monitor the actions of anti-Castro Cuban organizations including the terrorist network led by CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles. They were arrested in September of 1998 and charged with espionage and other charges. Despite the fact these agents were actually engaged in trying to stop real bomb-throwing, aircraft-exploding terrorists, they have been imprisoned as political prisoners for the past twelve years. There is an international campaign for their release.

Ironic, isn't it, that actual terrorists are being protected by the United States. Who'd'a thunk it? Just....well, el pueblo.

Anti-American Art: The Forgotten War

This is a 1967 poster from ICAIC, the Cuban Institute of Cinemagraphic Art and Industry, promoting a 1967 documentary from Santiago Alvarez entitled "La Guerra Olvidada" or "The Forgotten War." The poster shows an American B-52 bomber pierced by a spear; the film documented the spread of the Vietnam war to Laos, and portrayed the society built by the Pathet Lao insurgents under the American saturation bombing.

The "secret war" in Laos started in 1964, and the Pathet Lao retreated to caves to escape American bombing. Vieng Xai Cave City in northeastern Laos is today a destination for adventure travellers. One travel website reminds visitors to watch out for "leeches and unexploded bombs."

Anti-American Art: Poor Broken Bird

From 1964 comes this Cuban stamp marking the anniversary of the victory at Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs). Everybody knew--and knows--that the "Cuban exiles" defeated in their attempt to invade Cuba and defeat the revolution were recruited, funded, armed, and organized by the American CIA on the orders of President Kennedy. Everyone also knows the Cuban people defeated them.

The stamp shows an eagle, with eyes x-ed out and with a target on its breast, falling from the sky.

"Poor Broken Bird" is also apparently what I said, probably about 1964, when seeing a roasted turkey set on a table for Thanksgiving dinner. We didn't have turkey again til I was a teenager. And the U.S. has not tried to invade Cuba again.

Anti-American Art: Passive-Aggressive Neighbor

"No Al Bloqueo Economico a Cuba!" "No to the Economic Blockade of Cuba!" reads this 1991 poster from Cuba's OSPAAAL. It shows a map of Cuba breaking through the bars of Uncle Sam's top hat.

It's the American argument against Castro's Cuba that makes me furious. "Oh after fifty years of revolution the country is still so poor! Look they have nothing!" Because the real story is that the United States has spent fifty years trying to isolate Cuba into submission. Cuba's pre-revolution economy was intimately connected to the U.S. economy; its agricultural products from sugar to fruit to cigars had a market beginning just across a few miles of water. Tourism, even though it was tainted with organized crime and prostitution, further channelled money back and forth between the island and the U.S. And then Cuba dared to kick out its corrupt politicians and exploitative landowners and dared to break free of the U.S. sphere of influence. This country has never forgiven them; never forgiven its embrace by the Soviet bloc in the cold war.

The economic survival of Cuba, rather than being seen as a condemnation of its socialist government should be held aloft as a miracle of determination in the face of unbelievable odds.

Anti-American Art: A Beautiful Day at the Beach

With a design similar to a Cuban stamp of the early 1960s, the cover of this Cuban pamphlet entitled "Playa Giron: Derrota del Imperialismo" (Playa Giron: Defeat of Imperialism) possesses its own Anti-American charm. Playa Giron, of course, is better known here as the Bay of Pigs, and the defeat of imperialism refers to the spiked 1961 attempt by CIA-backed exiles to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. In the illustration Cuban resistance fighters watch as one of the CIA's planes is downed and their ships is sunk. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of this crucial victory.

Here is slide show I found on youtube of the victory at Giron set to the music and lyrics of Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodriguez's powerfully metaphorical and poetic song "Playa Giron."

Anti-American Art: Murder On His Mind

Another poster from Cuba's OCLAE, the Latin American Student Organization, ca. early 1970s for the "Continental Day of Support for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos." The poster shows a harsh caricature of the eminently caricaturable President Nixon, with a cut-away on his heading showing that he has the dead bodies of a lot of Indochinese civilians on his mind.

If the American war of aggression on Vietnam was seeded by Kennedy and started by Johnson, it blossomed into new horrors courtesy of Nixon. Nixon expanded military operations on the ground into Cambodia. The U.S. engineered a military coup in Cambodia, establishing a puppet regime to replace the nominally non-aligned ruler Prince Sihanouk. In 1970 U.S. and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in pursuit of National Liberation Front sanctuaries. The invasion ultimately strengthened the Khmer Rouge insurgency which gained the support of Sihanouk, then exiled to China. The Khmer Rouge liberated Cambodia from that dictatorship shortly before the fall of Saigon to the People's Army of Vietnam and NLF. That, of course, would lead to several other stories. Here's a thought-provoking essay on how different the world might be had Nixon been tried for his war crimes at War Is a Crime blog.

Anti-American Art: When Will You Shut Up and Get Gone?*

1960s or 70s poster from Cuba's OSPAAAL for the Sept. 23 Day of Solidarity with Puerto Rico. Clever photo montage on a Yankee Go Home theme showing symbols of American military might tossed in a wastebasket labelled "Go Home." Until not so long ago, a number of (beautiful!) smaller islands off the coast of Puerto Rico were used as testing grounds by the U.S. military.

Puerto Rico was seized by the United States in the Spanish-American war along with Cuba, the Philippines and Guam. Unlike Cuba, which was made an independent client state of the U.S. right away, and the Philippines, granted independence after the second World War, Puerto Rico and Guam remain in a sort of partially autonomous partially colonial associated netherworld with the U.S. today. Independence movements like the radical and Cuban-allied Puerto Rican Socialist Party, the urban guerrilla movement FALN, and the more mainstream Puerto Rican Independence Party suffered tremendous repression and disruption at the hands of the U.S. government. The PIP continues to exist today, but does not perform well in local elections.

(* extra credit.)

Anti-American Art: Godwin's Law?

Poster from the Cuban OCLAE, Organización Continental Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Estudiantes, or Student Organization of Continental Latin America and the Caribbean, ca. 1973, showing a new playing card, the King of Swastikas: rightside up it's Hitler, flipped around it's U.S. President Nixon. OCLAE was founded in Cuba in 1966, and engaged early on in solidarity activities with the Vietnamese then defending themselves from American attack. One of its early leaders, a young Puerto Rican named Jose Rafael Varona, was killed by a US air raid while on a solidarity mission to Vietnam. Thus OCLAE reserved special venom for Republic President Nixon, who escalated the war that had been started by his Democratic predecessors Kennedy and Johnson.

Godwin's Law refers to the notion, according to Wikipedia, that "given enough time, all discussions —regardless of topic or scope —inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis....[and] that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact."

Given the scope of U.S. violence against Vietnam, I'm not sure that comparing Nixon to Hitler is particularly hyperbolic.

Anti-American Art: No Place to Land

From Cuba's OSPAAAL comes this 1985 poster: "Alto a la Agresion Yanqui A Nicaragua / Stop Yankee Attacks on Nicaragua." A fairly simple graphic treatment, as the predatory American eagle threatens the armed silhouetted people in Sandinista colors. OSPAAAL continues its international solidarity work today.

Yesterday, July 19, was the 31st anniversary of the triumph of the revolution, the FSLN liberation of Managua in 1979.

Anti-American Art: That's No Guantanamera That's a Prison Camp

"No a la Base Naval de Guantanamo / No to the Guantanamo Naval Base" cries this 1971 poster from Cuba's OSPAAAL. That scary big bird is back, this time sinking its talons in the eastern end of the island of Cuba.

It's one of great ironies that the U.S. has a military base and prison camp on the territory of its greatest local adversary, but Guantanamo was "leased" in perpetuity to the United States after the Spanish-American war in 1903. The current socialist government of Cuba wants the land back, not recognizing the sweetheart lease signed by the earlier pro-U.S. client state. President Obama promised to close the prison camp for "terrorists" that the Bush government opened up there, but after being stymied by bipartisan opposition, Obama doesn't talk too much about the prison any more and his failure to make good on that promise. Apparently both republicans and democrats in Congress like having a blatantly extra-legal place to dump foreigners they've accused of terrorism without having to prove anything. As heinous as Guantanamo is, it's certainly only one of a chain of heinous prisons operated by the United States, its military and its intelligence forces including Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq, Baghram airforce base in Afghanistan, and various CIA "black sites" across the globe where alleged enemies can be held without anybody actually questioning these allegations. While it's not entirely Obama's fault that Guantanamo prison remains open, he didn't even promise to close the rest of these.

Guantanamo, of course, should be returned to the Cuban people. Ailing former leader Fidel Castro has called for its return recently: "Maintaining a military base in Cuba against the will of the people violates the most elemental principles of international law."

Anti-American Art: Don't Tread on Me

Speaking of Cuba's "Symposium on Yankee Genocide in Vietnam," here's the cover of a pamphlet published in Cuba on the occasion of the second one in the late 1960s. The line drawing shows an American GI crushing a rose with his boot; he's covered in psychedelic lettering including "Yankee Go Home" and "Love," although his uniform and helmet also contain elements of stars and stripes. The metaphor seems a little unclear to me: I'm not sure what is irony and what is wishful thinking, cause that gun looks pretty deadly and the rose looks pretty squished. I guess that's avant garde Cuban art for you.

Right-wing American POW veterans claim that Cuban interrogators tortured American POWs in Vietnam to gather information for this symposium. I haven't seen any reputable information on this claim so I won't link to it.

Anti-American Art: Napalm Psychedelia

Here's a Cuban stamp from 1972, part of a series issued to mark the "Third Symposium Against Yankee Genocide in Vietnam and its Extension into Laos and Cambodia." Its hip, Peter-Max-like kaleidoscopic eye-candy illustration becomes completely less sweet when you see that it's a burned out Vietnamese house surrounded by cancerous bomb craters and defoliated trees: it's brilliantly subversive Cuban graphic design.

Cuba rightly saw a natural affinity with Vietnam's struggle to defend itself against the U.S. attack. From Che Guevara's famous speech: "How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world! And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people — how great and close would that future be!"

The U.S. sprayed millions and millions of gallons of defoliants like Agent Orange over Vietnam during the war to destroy the natural landscape and deprive the Vietnamese of "food and cover." The result was hundreds of thousands of deaths and ongoing health problems including serious birth defects for the Vietnamese themselves and even health problems among the American GIs exposed to these chemical defoliants. Generations of innocents paid a dear price for the American determination to "win" at any cost. Fortunately, the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam.

Che concluded: "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory."

Anti-American Art: Another Scary Predator

Here's a straightforward poster from Cuba's OSPAAAL, 1983: An American bald eagle bearing an uncanny resemblance to a military airplane prepares to sink its talons into a teeny Caribbean island. The sole copy is the name of the island, "GRENADA."

The New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop came to power on the small island of Grenada in 1979. The revolutionary forces quickly established fraternal relations with Cuba and the NJM's social transformations were far-reaching. A military coup from within Bishop's government executed Bishop and a number of other NJM leaders in 1983; shortly afterwards US President Ronald Reagan sent US troops in allegedly to protect American students at a local medical school. The primary opposition to the US forces was lead by Cuban construction workers who had been aiding Bishop. After the invasion Grenada was returned to the ranks of Caribbean islands safely in the US orbit.

If you've seen the truly awful Clint Eastwood movie "Heartbreak Ridge," about how one man finds narcissistic redemption by killing some inept and overdressed commies, that was Grenada through Hollywood's eyes. Shameful.