Granada. Caribbean island, located between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, located 160 km north of Trinidad and Tobago. [2]
It is located at 12 ° 3 ′ N 61 ° 45 ′ W. [3] There are no large bodies of water inside the island. It has an area of 340 square kilometers, and the coastline is 121 km long. [2]
According to Topb2bwebsites.com, the official language is English, the form of government is a parliamentary monarchy, whose head of state is the monarch of the United Kingdom, since it is part of the Commonwealth.
This small country was the protagonist in 1983 of one of the many invasions that the nations of the hemisphere have suffered by the United States under the pretense of safeguarding democracy and human rights as well as protecting the lives of Americans.
Cologne
The first settlers of present-day Granada were the Arawak (Arawak) aborigines, who, by the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island on August 15, 1498, had already been displaced by the Caribs. Upon arrival Columbus named her Concepción. Already in the 18th century, the island was known as Granada.
As a consequence of its aboriginal population with cannibalistic habits (the Caribs had this custom), the island was not colonized until 100 years after its discovery. [4]
These first colonizing efforts were carried out by the English, although to no avail. Around 1650 the island was bought by a French company from the English.
The new colonizers managed, with reinforcements brought from the island of Martinique, to put an end to the threat of the Caribs, the last of whom is told jumped into the sea so as not to surrender to the invaders. The origin of this name is unknown, possibly a copy of the Spanish city of Granada, like so many other colonies of the New World that acquired names of cities and provinces of the old continent.
Granada remained under French control until its forced occupation by the British in 1762 during the Seven Years’ War. Granada was formally ceded to the British Empire by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Although the French regained control of the island in 1779, the island was retaken by the British by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. Despite heavy pressure on the British due to a pro-French revolution in 1795, Granada remained British for the remainder of its colonial period.
During the 18th century, the economy of Granada underwent a very important transition. Like the rest of the West Indies, Grenada was colonized to grow sugar, which was grown on the estates using slave labor. [5]
Around 1782, Sir Joseph Banks, the botanical adviser to King George III, brought the nutmeg to Granada. The island’s lands are excellent for this crop, which made Granada a source of spices that was also closer to Europe than the East Indies of the Dutch, gaining importance for European merchants.
The fall of the sugar plantations and the arrival of nutmeg and cocoa favored the development of small properties, developing a crop based on small landowners. Slavery was outlawed by law in 1834. In 1833, Grenada became part of the British Administration of the Windward Islands.
The governor of the Windward Islands administered the island for the remainder of the colonial period. In 1958, the Windward Islands Administration was dissolved, and Grenada then joined the Federation of the West Indies. [6]
After the demise of said federation in 1962, the British government attempted to form a small federation from its remaining possessions in the eastern Caribbean. After the failure of this English attempt in 1967 Granada became an associated state of the United Kingdom.
Present
After Blaize’s death in 1989, Ben Jones of the National Party, backed by big business and landowners, took office. In the general elections of March 1990 – the anniversary of the coup that overthrew Eric Matthew Gairy in 1979 – Nicholas Braithwaite, the former acting head of the post-invasion government, won, and was viewed with sympathy by the United States. [19]
In 1994 there was a 30% unemployment rate and a strong emigration trend. The fall in the international prices of bananas, coconut, wood and nutmeg influenced this trend.
In the 1995 elections the ruling NDC party was displaced by Keith Mitchell, former professor of mathematics at Howard University (in Washington), and leader of the NNP. [twenty]
This victory was attributed to his promise to repeal the income tax, in force until 1986 and reimposed by the NDC in 1994. The government rejected in March 1997 a request from the Council of Churches of Granada to release the two condemned to Life imprisonment for the 1983 murder of former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and a group of ministers and union leaders. In April, Grenada and Cuba reestablished their diplomatic relations, interrupted since the US invasion in 1983.
In the January 1999 elections, Mitchell’s NNP won all 15 parliamentary seats.
Granada was located in the period 2001 – 2002 as the Caribbean economy with the highest growth, due to the boom in tourism, foreign investment and the growth of agriculture; but unemployment, which mainly affected the youngest, did not decrease. In October 2003, marking the 20th anniversary of the Bishop assassination and the US invasion, Amnesty International published a report calling the 17 convicts the “last prisoners of the Cold War” and calling on the government to conduct an independent review of the case..
Those convicted included Bernard Coard – the ultimate culprit in Bishop’s murder. The report denounced, among other flaws, the irregularity in the selection of judges, the lack of legal representation of the accused, the presentation of dubious evidence and the obtaining of confessions under torture.
Hurricane Emily passing through Granada in July 2004 left one person dead, destroyed crops and damaged homes.
The material damage it caused to the country was estimated to be around $ 110 million. In September, 90% of the territory of Granada was hit by Hurricane Ivan, which left 34 dead and some 5,000 families homeless.
Only 1 in 10 buildings had been left standing, and even some of those designated as shelters were seriously damaged. The leaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) called for a moratorium on Grenada’s external debt to help it recover from the natural disaster. [24]
