through the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank was mysteriously blocked, aid from the International Monetary Fund was restricted, and any participation in the Caribbean Basin Initiative was dismissed out of hand. Reagan even refused to meet with Bishop when the Grenadian Prime Minister visited Washington in June, 1983. According to the Washington Post , the CIA had been engaged all along in a campaign to destabilize Grenada both politically and economically.
Grenada: Bitter History
Grenada's controversial domestic and foreign policies would soon give the White House the pretext to intervene. Bishop had sought to align Grenada with Cuba and had welcomed hundreds of skilled airport construction laborers, medical personnel, and military advisers from the Communist island to translate their skills to their Grenadian counterparts. After a hard core Marxist-Leninist island official named Bernard Coard led a military coup placing Bishop and other moderates under arrest, Bishop's supporters were at first able to liberate their prime minister. However events deteriorated rapidly after army troops massacred dozens of protesters, as well as murdering Bishop along with two of his cabinet members.
Reagan immediately invented the scenario that the Cubans were behind the anti-Bishop coup and his assassination. In reality however, Fidel Castro was outraged by events on the island and quickly condemned Coard's actions. Angry Cuban officials threatened Grenada with a cutoff of assistance and declared that its forces would only fire in self defense. On October 25, several thousand U.S. troops invaded the island, ousted the government, and took full control of Grenada within two hours.
In seeking to justify its actions, the Reagan administration had invented the claim that the Cubans more
