Guyanese-born university lecturer Walter Rodney had also shown the relevance of Black Power to the cultural and political situation in the Caribbean. By the 1970s, the flourishing of new ideas shaped by these international developments had produced a generation of young people who openly questioned the appropriateness of the inherited British political system. civil rights movement were all inspirational in the English-speaking Caribbean. The Cuban Revolution, successful independence struggles in Africa, the growth of Rastafarianism, and the U.S. The emergence and rise of the NJM must be seen within the context of several international movements of the late 1950s and 1960s that had a great impact on the Caribbean. Chief among these techniques was his seizure of the lands and property of his political opponents, intimidation of civil servants, the establishment of a system in which decisionmaking depended on the Gairy-dominated Cabinet, and the establishment of an extralegal paramilitary body that inflicted bloody beatings on his political opponents. Seeds of this revolution had been sown during the previous twelve years of Gairy ’s rule, during which he had alienated many Grenadians through his increasing use of legal and extralegal means to silence his critics.

The NJM set up the People ’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) with the avowed task of transforming Grenada ’s society and political culture and creating a socialist state. Residents on the 121-square-mile tri-island nation of Grenada, Carriacou, and Petit Martinique (population 110,000) awoke on the morning of March 13, 1979, to radio reports that the elected government of Prime Minister Eric Gairy had been replaced in a relatively bloodless coup by the New Jewel Movement (NJM).

Unison unscramble