Leader of the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) David Abdulah says one of the most important lessons to be learned from the US military invasion of Grenada in 1983 is that the same fate should not befall Venezuela.
He was speaking at a panel discussion hosted by the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) and the MSJ on March 13, 1979: The Grenadian Revolution 40 years after—We Must Not Forget, held at BIGWU) headquarters in Barataria, on Saturday evening.
The session was held to coincide with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) launch of its international solidarity campaign with Venezuela.
Abdulah underscored the importance of not forgetting the Grenada Revolution and “the tremendous positives that developed between March 1979 and when the Revolution was tragically ended in October 1983.”
He added: “The US sees the Caribbean and Latin America as their sphere of influence. Anything that happens in this region that is counter to their national security interest, they aggregate unto themselves the right to intervene which is, of course, a violation of the sovereignty of independent states. We can see a parallel today with the US interventions in Venezuela.”
According to Abdulah, while the T&T Government took a very principled position of non-intervention in Grenada under former prime minister George Chambers, Caricom was deeply divided and Barbados, Dominica, and Jamaica supported the US invasion of Grenada.
He said as a result of T&T’s principled foreign policy stance the country was punished by the IMF with draconian economic measures.
Present for the discussion were educator Merle Hodge, who was working in Grenada during the Revolution, Ozzi Warwick, general secretary of JTUM and the MSJ and Cuban Ambassador to T&T Tania Diego Olite.