A small 18th-century plantation set in riotously fragrant grounds, it harvests visitors these days rather than the cocoa and spices that the one-time Scottish owner, John Copland, planted after slavery was abolished here in 1838.Ī thunderous clear-the-air downpour woke me the next morning, sending peacocks on the lawn scurrying for cover, after which I set out on a tour of the beautiful north of the island with local guide Roger Woodruffe. My destination was Mount Edgecombe, near Victoria. A white-cassocked preacher on an outdoor platform bellowed salvation as we drove through Gouyave. I arrived into Maurice Bishop Airport as daylight was waning a taxi took me along the coast northwards, past rum-shack bars pumping out Calypso-inspired soca. There was no parachuting out of a Blackhawk helicopter for me. Operation Urgent Fury lasted barely three days. And after Bishop’s death unleashed chaos as a new hard-line Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) emerged, thousands of American troops were sent to sort things out, with President Reagan using “concerns over the 600 US medical students on the island” as a pretext. Alarm bells rang for the US, already at odds with Left-leaning regimes in the region at the time. The NJM courted Cuba and suppression was rife, but Bishop was popular until a split in the movement saw him executed in 1983.
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