Grenada/History

Background: The second smallest independent country in the western hemisphere (after St. Kitts-Nevis), Grenada's Government was seized by factions of a legally elected Marxist government on 19 October 1983. The [Coard faction]? imprisoned and executed the elected President, the charismatic Maurice Bishop.

Six days later the island was invaded by US forces and those of six other Caribbean nations, which quickly captured the ringleaders and their hundreds of Cuban advisers---most of whom were laborers working on the construction of a major airport for the island which the United States completed years later. Free elections were reinstituted the following year.